Gunnar_Zarncke comments on Fighting Mosquitos - Less Wrong

17 Post author: ChristianKl 16 October 2014 11:53AM

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Comment author: trifith 16 October 2014 12:06:39PM 9 points [-]

I'm a little cautious about deliberately eliminating a species, even a harmful to humans one. The environment is a complex system, and sticking our monkey hands in and pulling leavers can backfire in unpredicted ways.

What other environmental effects do the mosquitoes have? Do they control some other pest species? Are they food for something larger? Does the additional infection vector of mosquito bites significantly improve the general immune system functions of humans or other species bitten by these mosquitoes?

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 16 October 2014 12:41:42PM *  6 points [-]

I'm also very cautious about manipulating our complex environment without really understanding what is going on. But in this case, after careful reading of the post (where it is explicitly mentioned to keep healthy mosquitoe populations in the lab until sure) and Wikipedia I tend to agree that this would reduce human suffering without noticable environmental impact. Apparently there even have been studies to the effect:

Studies have shown that this process has been very effective in preventing sleeping sickness in people who live in the area.

I still upvote your post because you do name a few points that are all not addressed by the article. And there could be more which are plausibly problematic.

Comment author: XFrequentist 17 October 2014 03:41:51AM 0 points [-]

Sleeping sickness is transmitted by the Tsetse fly, which is not a mosquito. Even ignoring this I'm unsure what the effect on sleeping sickness has to do with environmental impact - this is the target effect of the program, no?