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Douglas_Knight comments on Now is the time to eliminate mosquitoes - Less Wrong Discussion

21 Post author: James_Miller 06 August 2016 07:10PM

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Comment author: ChristianKl 09 August 2016 09:24:56AM 0 points [-]

Some may hope that if you do population control long enough, they eventually go extinct, but I think the evidence for that is pretty low.

We already eliminated Malaria carrying Mosquitos from large parts of the West with DDT and related techniques. Those mosquitos didn't manage to easily recolonize the areas from which they were driven away.

Louie Helm article suggest that SIT is enough to drive mosquito species to extinction. Do you think there a reason he's wrong? His numbers might be on the low end but spending a few billions would very much be worth it to eliminate all human biting mosquitos.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 15 August 2016 01:38:14AM 1 point [-]

We already eliminated Malaria carrying Mosquitos from large parts of the West with DDT and related techniques. Those mosquitos didn't manage to easily recolonize the areas from which they were driven away.

No, the extent of mosquitoes was reduced by draining swamps. Other methods, such as DDT did not reduce the extent of mosquitoes, but eliminated malaria from them.