Fair enough, I don't want to be one of those people who says never do anything new. Imagine not using antibiotics cause EVENTUALLY there would be resistance.
So why the wait?
I'd like to see it work some scale larger than a large cage before trying it out in the whole world.
Yes a bio-sphere sized experiment would be expensive and take a while but not compared to putting the genie (i mean modified mosquitoes) back in the bottle.
In 1990 Agriculture minister John Gummer posed with his 4 year old daughter Cordelia, tucking into a beef burger.
Shouldn’t we at least create the resistant ones before releasing the gene drive ones? Wiping a species out intentionally is not the same. We just don’t know enough
OK, but worse than losing a million people, mainly kids, per year? Actually, I would be grateful for a two or three examples of ecological interventions going horribly wrong. I'm sure you can name them, as there certainly must be some. DDT maybe?
I don't put Chemical interventions in the same risk category, you can stop applying them and they will go away eventually. I'm thinking of examples like the Cane Toads in Australia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toads_in_Australia. You can stop bringing them over from Hawaii, but they are not going away anytime soon.
Thanks! As I see people are using biodefence in agricultural settings quite a lot, e.g. releasing parasitoids or predatory insects, beneficial fungi to fight pathogenic fungi, planting attractive/repelling plants around and inside fields. Results mostly good so far? It's probably a matter of agreement, which percentage of these interventions should end up badly (and how badly) to make us hesitate either more or less before implementing new ones, right.
> There are also plenty of bad arguments, such as that mosquitoes are ecologically essential. They aren’t.
The linked article https://www.nature.com/articles/466432a doesn't seem like very strong evidence that mosquitoes are not ecologically essential. The article quotes several scientists. Some of them say that mosquitoes are important, and some of them say they aren't. The scientists don't debate each other (presumably because each scientist was asked to make their case in isolation, without having the opportunity to hear what their opponents said), so you just end up with a bunch of assertions in both directions.
It's unclear why one would, from this evidence, conclude therefore mosquitoes are not essential. What I conclude from the evidence is "There's lots of disagreement among scientists, and we don't really know."
The reason is unintended consequences. Where does this type of intervention stop? If we start genetically re-engineering entire ecosystems and the planet to better accommodate our existence here it is a guarantee that we will ruin the place for all species. We, unfortunately, have the technological tools to do things way before we have the wisdom to properly use them.
The question is also asked through a lens that values human life above all other life with no attempt to quantify things. However uncomfortable it may be, there needs to be something placed on the other side of that equation.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/10/study-claimed-a-gmo-trial-went-horrifically-wrong-the-studys-authors-disagree/
What does seem clear is that the mosquito population rebounded, with new genetics.
That wasn't a gene drive though. It's just male mosquitoes engineered to be sterile.
For info on the actual modification see: https://www.regulations.gov/docket/EPA-HQ-OPP-2019-0274/document
Was that dispute resolved? Jeffrey Powell might have acted in a questionable way, if one is to believe the incendiary reporting. Moreover the company is currently doing https://www.oxitec.com/en/news/next-phase-of-florida-keys-pilot-project-set-to-commence-in-the-florida-keys so they don't seem to agree.
There is a long history of people getting these kind of ecological interventions wrong. 'What's the worst that could happen' is pretty bad.
I view this as an isolated demand for rigor. After all, humans are already driving many insect species to extinction without thinking about it.
Furthermore, if it turns out to be a problem, we can engineer mosquitoes to be resistant to the gene drive and release them.
Fair enough, I don't want to be one of those people who says never do anything new. Imagine not using antibiotics cause EVENTUALLY there would be resistance.
So why the wait?
I'd like to see it work some scale larger than a large cage before trying it out in the whole world.
Yes a bio-sphere sized experiment would be expensive and take a while but not compared to putting the genie (i mean modified mosquitoes) back in the bottle.
In 1990 Agriculture minister John Gummer posed with his 4 year old daughter Cordelia, tucking into a beef burger.
Those Unknown Unknowns are a b!tch.
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-agriculture-minister-john-gummer-with-his-4-year-old-daughter-cordelia-106260685.html?imageid=C6D99AD6-14B7-4D5D-AD25-1116946830E2&p=316655&pn=1&searchId=3ea756d2e014c22159d22fbe2c7deb3d&searchtype=0
Surely we can 1000x this... six 4.7 m3 cages of 2 m × 1 m × 2.35 m
Shouldn’t we at least create the resistant ones before releasing the gene drive ones? Wiping a species out intentionally is not the same. We just don’t know enough
We do in fact have resistant ones already, see: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-021-00386-0
OK, but worse than losing a million people, mainly kids, per year? Actually, I would be grateful for a two or three examples of ecological interventions going horribly wrong. I'm sure you can name them, as there certainly must be some. DDT maybe?
I don't put Chemical interventions in the same risk category, you can stop applying them and they will go away eventually. I'm thinking of examples like the Cane Toads in Australia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toads_in_Australia. You can stop bringing them over from Hawaii, but they are not going away anytime soon.
Here is a list but I didn't have the $$ for more than the abstract. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1024054909052
Thanks! As I see people are using biodefence in agricultural settings quite a lot, e.g. releasing parasitoids or predatory insects, beneficial fungi to fight pathogenic fungi, planting attractive/repelling plants around and inside fields. Results mostly good so far? It's probably a matter of agreement, which percentage of these interventions should end up badly (and how badly) to make us hesitate either more or less before implementing new ones, right.
Exactly, I just think it's too big a jump from a few cubic metres to the whole world.
> There are also plenty of bad arguments, such as that mosquitoes are ecologically essential. They aren’t.
The linked article https://www.nature.com/articles/466432a doesn't seem like very strong evidence that mosquitoes are not ecologically essential. The article quotes several scientists. Some of them say that mosquitoes are important, and some of them say they aren't. The scientists don't debate each other (presumably because each scientist was asked to make their case in isolation, without having the opportunity to hear what their opponents said), so you just end up with a bunch of assertions in both directions.
It's unclear why one would, from this evidence, conclude therefore mosquitoes are not essential. What I conclude from the evidence is "There's lots of disagreement among scientists, and we don't really know."
The reason is unintended consequences. Where does this type of intervention stop? If we start genetically re-engineering entire ecosystems and the planet to better accommodate our existence here it is a guarantee that we will ruin the place for all species. We, unfortunately, have the technological tools to do things way before we have the wisdom to properly use them.
The question is also asked through a lens that values human life above all other life with no attempt to quantify things. However uncomfortable it may be, there needs to be something placed on the other side of that equation.