The proposal is only to eliminate the disease born mosquitoes, letting the other mosquitoes take over. So if your polity has eliminated mosquitoes it's likely using chemicals rather than a more environmentally sound choice.
Most mosquitoes are not the blood-sucking kind. It is possible to replace the blood-suckers with other species which still mostly fill the appropriate niches, like the birds' food chains, etc.
If the various regulatory bodies are disclaiming jurisdiction over the matter, then what is preventing these companies from proceeding without their blessing?
Mosquito dunks kill larvae. It's used as a mosquito population control in warmer areas. Me and a few neighbors used it this year with good results.
Get a 5 gallon bucket, add water/grass/leaves/dunk and let it sit for a few weeks. Every few weeks add more dunks. Put a stick in there so small animals don't get stuck when trying to get a drink.
Lots of animals eat mosquitos, but they really aren't the primary food source of any species, especially this particular type of mosquito. It would have a very minimal effect on food supply.
There are still a lot of other mosquito species. removing just the few that carry human disease will not have a major impact on creatures that eat mosquitoes.
Aedes aegypti is an invasive species native to Africa so removing it from the environment everywhere else in the world that it has been spread to would benefit the local mosquito species which don't spread the same diseases and are less of a nuisance to humans.
There are many mosquito species in competition for the same resources, only a few (iirc 10% in the US) of which sting humans and carry diseases. Wiping out the ones that attack people would allow other mosquitoes to take over the ecological niches.
I guess we have the capability to change a lot (from the technology we posess), but what would be the consequences of such impact on the rest of the ecosystem?
I mean, we eliminated smallpox viruses, and the impact was that humans no longer die from smallpox. We have almost eliminated polio, which has the impact that nobody needs an iron lung any more. We have massively reduced the incidence of a whole range of other pathogens. Are you concerned about that, too?
I'd be much more concerned about the changes humans do to our ecosystems that we know cause harm, but aren't stopping (like filling the atmosphere with CO2 and other greenhouse gases) than about changes that would, almost certainly, reduce harm and have only extremely unlikely and hypothetical risks.
Well, one notable difference between your examples of eliminated pathogens is that there is a food chain built on top of mosquitos. There are plenty of animals that eat both mosquito larvae (ex: tadpoles, some fish) and adults (ex: bats, dragonflies). I don't believe there is a similar food chain built on top of viruses.
I agree that many of the risks are hypothetical, but I disagree that we can simply dismiss them. Taking a decent amount of time to understand cause and effect on ecosystems seems like a perfectly prudent thing to me.
We wouldn't have to destroy all mosquitos, though. Only a few species that are carriers of human pathogens. Once they are gone, other, benign mosquitos will occupy their spot, and will be eaten by the same animals as before.
From memory, mosquitos are a food source for some birds and bats, pollinate some plants, and, most uniquely, help drive wild cattle migration (to keep them from overgrazing areas into barren mud-fields).
Basically 0, there are only a few species of mosquito that carry disease. Other species fulfill all other ecological roles without spreading horrible diseases.
Famous last words... (Edit typo:) Till we find out when its too late that they had a genuine purpose in a very specific ecosystem after we've eradicated them?
Growing up my sister got dengue, so I hate mosquitoes, she was fine, I know dengue was no joke, but I always worry we make too many assumptions as humans, only to be proven wrong by nature somehow.
Do you have the same level of concern for all other recently-extinct species, widespread habitat loss, and overall large decline in insect biomass?
Or do you reserve most of your concern for just the few species of human disease-carrying mosquito?
Kind of a genuine question, because I've observed over the years people popping in to this topic to exclaim deep concern for the potential ecological impacts of intentionally extincting a couple of species -- that most biologists reportedly agree aren't keystone species. Meanwhile, species loss continues to occur globally for a variety of reasons and yet it's still really difficult to get the average person to care very much about that.
The psychology here is peculiar and I don't understand it.
I'm much more puzzled by the many retorts to people asking about the unforeseen consequences of eradicating a whole species given how little we know about ecosystems.
Many such comments are very dumb, asking 'and how do you feel about viruses, screwworms, etc.?', but since you say this is a genuine question: mosquitoes are numerous and we know that they represent a source of food for many species (bats, birds, other insects). As far as I know, there is genuine debate among scientists about the role that mosquitoes play in their ecosystems. Everyone here has seen species of animals and plants eradicated and then being reintroduced or replaced, when we realise what role they were playing.
Again, assuming you're asking in good faith: you're asking why these commenters are so concerned while humanity is eradicating species all the time anyway: these are not the same populations... I'd wager there is a big overlap between those wondering about consequences and those taking action for the planet (not eating animal products, not flying, etc.). Similarly, I'd wager there's overlap between those posting such illogical retorts, and those eating animals at every meal and driving their car daily.
I see the same ridiculous retorts in HN debates about the condition of animals.
I don't want any species to go extinct if I can help it, but I also understand that sometimes nature finds a way in some cases.
I'm not versed in everything with all these species, but I believe everything has a purpose, look if someone goes all out into mosquitoes and proves they had absolutely no purpose, I'll concede, I just think its worth studying these types of things. For example, some years I fight wasps near my house, then the following year, I'm fighting fire ants. If I don't eradicate one or the other, they show up the next year, every year I fight one or the other, I assume they compete with one another. I wish I could curb stomp both from ever coming back, fire ants make me bust out with sores all over, however, I know me killing them from my lawn / property isn't killing ALL of them.
In that case, it would be a very niche/small ecosystem if we're don't know about it. OTOH, the benefits of eliminating malaria and dengue are massive to ecosystems we do know about.
My fear is, what comes out of the woodworks once mosquitoes are gone? Because nature finds a way... Will it be drastically worse? Will we wish we never messed with mosquitoes afterwards?
> My fear is, what comes out of the woodworks once mosquitoes are gone?
Well, what would come out of the outback once the rabbits are gone? Since we know the state of Australian wildlife before the rabbits, the answer is "nothing".
All ecosystems are local, and local eradication has been a thing since the first shovel was invented, and nothing too bad has happened.
If there's an abandoned lot and you eradicate the mosquitoes by removing the water filled abandoned car tires, the existing ecosystem does pretty well. In a similar way you can willfully decide to make a livestock pond either a mosquito factory or mosquito free and mosquito free has not resulted in any problems.
Local eradication programs have successfully worked for centuries, at least. What makes this story interesting is its very wide ranging and likely very expensive.
It’s sort of weird to act concerned over mosquitos while humans are accelerating massive destruction over the entire planet because they like to eat meat and dive cars
You can be concerned about all of that at the same time. I'm a lifelong vegetarian who had never owned a car, but I'm also wary of attempts to alter existing ecosystems. I don't think it should be out of the question, but it should be approached with extreme caution.
Humanity is eradicating entire species left and right. Mosquitoes are our worst enemies. Can we have a deal to save some little poor amazonian frog (the doomed one which has only ~100 animals and 1 location left) and after we accomplish that, in return wipe out one species of mosquitoes?
I hope the Amazonian frog doesn't depend too much on mosquitos as food. Or that by eradicating mosquitoes, insectivorous animals don't eat more of other, less abundant and fast-breeding, insects as a replacement and it starved the Amazonian frog.
(I don't know what the Amazonian frog eats; my point is that biotopes are complex and second- and third-order effects need to be monitored. That's why smaller interventions - e.g. making humans poisonous to mosquitoes, pushing them to the evolutionary path of avoiding humans - would be better than whole eradication.)
I hate all the glib wordplay that reframes a policy decision and turns it on its head to make it seem like a different kind of policy decision. Nobody is “choosing” to have mosquitos. Mosquitos exist naturally. Maybe we can undertake a large scale intervention in the environment and wipe them out, but it that’s different than “choosing” to have them. Just say what you mean.
It's a choice to wipe them out or let them continue to exist. We were on our way to doing that using DDT until the unfortunate side-effects of that chemical were understood.
If we are "choosing" to live with mosquitoes, then we also are "choosing" to let people starve, die of cancer, etc.
We could in one stroke take half of what multi-billionaires and quasi-trillionaires have hoarded. If they didn't have personal accountants, they wouldn't even notice it, as they have far more money than what they manage to burn through - and we would have the means to "choose" to solve real problems affecting hundreds of millions of people.
Sterile insect releases are a tool for suppressing populations and have been used for about a century. This is not really a new suppression technique but a novel way of producing the sterile insects.
It has been used to suppress screw worm in the United States for decades until the administration cut the funding.
These are almost always a temporary solution that need constant funding and seasonal releases to work. The populations will surge back as soon as it's stopped.
Aedes aegypti are container breeders, you can totally eliminate them from an environment through diligent removal of standing water left in buckets, tires, pots, etc. This has been done before but the effort wasn't properly sustained so they've made a major comeback in disease prone areas. Killing a lot of them does have a substantial effect because they don't easily travel long distances by themselves so if the remaining resistant population is small enough it might just as easily end up dying out due to its breeding cycle being interrupted through other means. The part that should be criticized here is that any eradication campaign should also involve efforts to eliminate their breeding environments by removing junk and unattended containers that collect water.
The idea is to hit the population with a cataclysm so sudden that it goes extinct before it can adapt. We can calculate mutation rates and reproduction dynamics, so we know how to predict whether this is likely or not.
If it's one-and-done, everywhere on Earth (eg smallpox), it can work. If it drags on for decades or isn't rolled out globally (eg malaria) then it won't work.
>Sustained releases cut a wild Aedes aegypti population in the Cayman Islands by 80 percent, and in a field trial in Juazeiro, Brazil by about 95 percent.
Penicillin used to kill 100% of Staphylococcus aureus. My point still stands - even if a selective sweep takes out 99% of the population, they will recover.
The gene gives a sizable advantage to mosquitoes that don't carry disease. Those mosquitoes will then take over the niche making it very difficult for disease carrying mosquitoes to come back.
I think you’re right. I’d want to pair this approach with introducing a replacement species that can hopefully out compete the one we’re eliminating. No idea what that looks like, though.
>It shouldn’t have to take fifteen years to deploy effective products that can save lives.
I completely disagree. This is a reasonable and responsible timeline to look for unintended consequences. Some things, you simply cannot undo.
What if the bacteria (somehow) jumped to monarch butterflies and killed them off? Controlled releases and multi-year environmental studies are the correct and responsible course of action. In fact, when the injected insects are released into an area, the entire thing should be monitored carefully, as each ecosystem might respond differently.
All of that being said, excited to see this adopted more broadly. It's time these fuckwit insects die.
From what I understood, they didn't spend 15 years collecting data on the efficacy and risks of the product. Much of it was spent just waiting for regulators to respond.
I can imagine a scenario where the testing takes 15 years, and a scenario where the testing is done in 1 year. I think it's probably wrong to look at it purely as "we should wait X years". The author describes the 15 years as "regulatory limbo" implying that it was known as safe before that, but I have no idea whether that's the case.
In general, you have to weigh the irreversible cost of unintended consequences with the irreversible cost of known human death from mosquitoes.
The mosquito is part of the ecosystem, and remove that and you remove the food source for many creatures including bats, frogs, swallows/swifts and many others.
I agree they are a nuisance but they do not exist on their own. Many of them spend their time feeding on plants rather than blood.
Bill Gates is involved in this. Always a red flag.
Aedes aegypti aren't native to anywhere outside of Africa. Native mosquito species in most other continents don't spread the same diseases that infect humans. Aedes aegypti mostly breed around where humans live since they lay their eggs in containers of stagnant water, other mosquito species live primarily in wetlands and areas that stay moist due to thick vegetation or soil conditions. The native species of mosquitos are a much larger food source than Aedes aegypti for that reason.
I'd say paranoid-by-default folks are a huge red flag on any agenda. Something about disservice to the cause and all that.
Anyway since they kill north of half a million folks yearly and infect couple of hundred millions as official minimums, I am more than happy with some other species of small insects take their empty spot. Of course not everybody cares much about poor folks dying quietly half around the world, but some do. One of very few benefits of global warming is the migration of these bastards more north so rich folks in US and Europe will have more personal stake in this topic rather than usual 'oh that's so horrible, next'.
Some minor re-adjustement of ecosystem is more than fine, anyway we do it constantly for rather pathetic reasons if any. I would add ticks, all forms, to the effort.
Get a 5 gallon bucket, add water/grass/leaves/dunk and let it sit for a few weeks. Every few weeks add more dunks. Put a stick in there so small animals don't get stuck when trying to get a drink.
https://store.photonmatrixlab.com/
Does anything eat them as food? Wouldn't it be environmentally damaging to remove a source of food for X?
I'd be much more concerned about the changes humans do to our ecosystems that we know cause harm, but aren't stopping (like filling the atmosphere with CO2 and other greenhouse gases) than about changes that would, almost certainly, reduce harm and have only extremely unlikely and hypothetical risks.
I agree that many of the risks are hypothetical, but I disagree that we can simply dismiss them. Taking a decent amount of time to understand cause and effect on ecosystems seems like a perfectly prudent thing to me.
Growing up my sister got dengue, so I hate mosquitoes, she was fine, I know dengue was no joke, but I always worry we make too many assumptions as humans, only to be proven wrong by nature somehow.
Or do you reserve most of your concern for just the few species of human disease-carrying mosquito?
Kind of a genuine question, because I've observed over the years people popping in to this topic to exclaim deep concern for the potential ecological impacts of intentionally extincting a couple of species -- that most biologists reportedly agree aren't keystone species. Meanwhile, species loss continues to occur globally for a variety of reasons and yet it's still really difficult to get the average person to care very much about that.
The psychology here is peculiar and I don't understand it.
Many such comments are very dumb, asking 'and how do you feel about viruses, screwworms, etc.?', but since you say this is a genuine question: mosquitoes are numerous and we know that they represent a source of food for many species (bats, birds, other insects). As far as I know, there is genuine debate among scientists about the role that mosquitoes play in their ecosystems. Everyone here has seen species of animals and plants eradicated and then being reintroduced or replaced, when we realise what role they were playing.
Again, assuming you're asking in good faith: you're asking why these commenters are so concerned while humanity is eradicating species all the time anyway: these are not the same populations... I'd wager there is a big overlap between those wondering about consequences and those taking action for the planet (not eating animal products, not flying, etc.). Similarly, I'd wager there's overlap between those posting such illogical retorts, and those eating animals at every meal and driving their car daily.
I see the same ridiculous retorts in HN debates about the condition of animals.
I'm not versed in everything with all these species, but I believe everything has a purpose, look if someone goes all out into mosquitoes and proves they had absolutely no purpose, I'll concede, I just think its worth studying these types of things. For example, some years I fight wasps near my house, then the following year, I'm fighting fire ants. If I don't eradicate one or the other, they show up the next year, every year I fight one or the other, I assume they compete with one another. I wish I could curb stomp both from ever coming back, fire ants make me bust out with sores all over, however, I know me killing them from my lawn / property isn't killing ALL of them.
Well, what would come out of the outback once the rabbits are gone? Since we know the state of Australian wildlife before the rabbits, the answer is "nothing".
If there's an abandoned lot and you eradicate the mosquitoes by removing the water filled abandoned car tires, the existing ecosystem does pretty well. In a similar way you can willfully decide to make a livestock pond either a mosquito factory or mosquito free and mosquito free has not resulted in any problems.
Local eradication programs have successfully worked for centuries, at least. What makes this story interesting is its very wide ranging and likely very expensive.
(I don't know what the Amazonian frog eats; my point is that biotopes are complex and second- and third-order effects need to be monitored. That's why smaller interventions - e.g. making humans poisonous to mosquitoes, pushing them to the evolutionary path of avoiding humans - would be better than whole eradication.)
The population of an endangered Australian bat suddenly dropped by up to 16%. No one knows why
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/30/southern...
We could in one stroke take half of what multi-billionaires and quasi-trillionaires have hoarded. If they didn't have personal accountants, they wouldn't even notice it, as they have far more money than what they manage to burn through - and we would have the means to "choose" to solve real problems affecting hundreds of millions of people.
A gene which incurs a fitness cost will be purged from the population under selection!!
It has been used to suppress screw worm in the United States for decades until the administration cut the funding.
These are almost always a temporary solution that need constant funding and seasonal releases to work. The populations will surge back as soon as it's stopped.
If it's one-and-done, everywhere on Earth (eg smallpox), it can work. If it drags on for decades or isn't rolled out globally (eg malaria) then it won't work.
This is at best a temporary solution.
I completely disagree. This is a reasonable and responsible timeline to look for unintended consequences. Some things, you simply cannot undo.
What if the bacteria (somehow) jumped to monarch butterflies and killed them off? Controlled releases and multi-year environmental studies are the correct and responsible course of action. In fact, when the injected insects are released into an area, the entire thing should be monitored carefully, as each ecosystem might respond differently.
All of that being said, excited to see this adopted more broadly. It's time these fuckwit insects die.
In general, you have to weigh the irreversible cost of unintended consequences with the irreversible cost of known human death from mosquitoes.
I agree they are a nuisance but they do not exist on their own. Many of them spend their time feeding on plants rather than blood.
Bill Gates is involved in this. Always a red flag.
Anyway since they kill north of half a million folks yearly and infect couple of hundred millions as official minimums, I am more than happy with some other species of small insects take their empty spot. Of course not everybody cares much about poor folks dying quietly half around the world, but some do. One of very few benefits of global warming is the migration of these bastards more north so rich folks in US and Europe will have more personal stake in this topic rather than usual 'oh that's so horrible, next'.
Some minor re-adjustement of ecosystem is more than fine, anyway we do it constantly for rather pathetic reasons if any. I would add ticks, all forms, to the effort.
People like the author actually belive that there is no chance of real world interactions happening.
Eg what is the bacteria jumps to some other organism? What if it mutates? What if the birds eat the mosquitoes and carry a mutated bacteria elsewhere?
There is a reason why you need autistic level safety for such projects, and even then things like this might happen.
It's completely impossible to guarantee theses things, no matter how long you study it in a lab.
Some people just aren't capable of thinking more than 1 step ahead.