Floridian here. For all those people who are concerned about the environmental impact of eliminating these species, I suggest you take a closer look at how mosquitoes are currently controlled. Maybe they don't have mosquito control where you live? When the mosquito-spray truck comes by, it doesn't just kill mosquitoes.
It kills all kinds of flying insects. That includes thousands of species which cause no harm to humans, but also provide pollination and food for birds, frogs, etc. Before you object to this plan, please realize that this plan is replacing a sledgehammer with a scapel. All the things you are worried about happening are already happening right now, but effecting many more species! If that's the status quo you want, by all means keep objecting, or come up with a better plan.
I should also note that samples of the eradicated species will be kept, so if it does turn out that it is a mistake, they can be re-introduced.
Hold up, another Floridian, these are only used when the mosquito populations sky rocket out of control. These are last resort measures when water control tactics failed. Typically after massive flooding occurred in an area.
This was the go to solution in the 90s. Yes. Totally. At least in both Hillsborough and Pasco county that I can personally attest to. But that changed in the 2000s when the casualties of it were apparent. Now, it's only when too many phone in and complain about mosquito bites and mosquito traps show populations are too high in an area.
Unless you're in a really backwater county...cough...Dixie county...cough... Then yea, I think some commissioners don't care and do what they want. But it does go against state guidelines to just truck-spray all the time. But I think part of the guidelines also state when a mosquito trap finds one infected mosquito, it's free game to go nuts with the trucks. If I also remember right, only a certain amount of truck sprays are covered by the state per year (the chemicals, lic and maintenance is expensive). After the county does a certain amount, they have to pay out of pocket. You might want to FOIA the department that handles mosquito control in your county.
Are mosquitos the only insects that breed in standing water? If not, then wouldn't water-control tactics also cause a decrease in the populations of beneficial insects?
I wasn't even aware this was a thing. I live in Phoenix. I thought you meant some sort of pest control, like a company coming out to a house to give a quote on an isolated problem.
Instead, a truck literally "comes by" and sprays the area, like a bug street-sweeper. Fascinating.
Sigh, I knew before clicking that the comments would all be low effort "ho ho - but unintended consequences!" snark. Yes, everyone knows about that risk.
At least two points are important: they're not eliminating all mosquitoes, just aedes aegypti, which are the disease carrying ones, and there's a huge opportunity cost in not doing something here. There's always the risk of unintended consequences, but you really have to have extremely severe ones in order to offset the known cost of this species of mosquitoes.
I'm actually very interested in hearing concrete ideas of what the unintended consequences could be and their cost, from actual experts.
>I'm actually very interested in hearing concrete ideas of what the unintended consequences could be and their cost, from actual experts.
Not all unintended consequences can be predicted let alone have a cost attached to them. In fact by definition unintended consequences are those we cannot forsee or prepare for in any meaningful way. Of course virtually any action has some unintended consequences but I think what the naysayers are saying in this case is that with something as complicated and untested as this, there is potential for massively negative unpredictable outcomes (maybe a new invasive species, maybe aedes aegypti perform some as yet unknown ecological function and their loss would be massively detrimental in ways we can't as yet predict etc), and there's some justification for that from human experience. This was the entire premise for movies like Jurassic park
But you're right. The moral of the story to Jurassic Park pretty much was "Just because you can science against nature, doesn't mean you should."
But to be fair to, ae. aegypti is technically invasive, to the entire USA. Ridding it TECHNICALLY is a good thing for the local ecosystems. However, I personally don't think the method they're going about it will be as effective as hoped plus it seems like a pandora's box of food chain chaos.
That's kind of where global warming would actually help. Due to the life span and mating cycle, along with egg hardiness, if they have a good drought for about 8-10 months. And then they do extensive hormone pupacide and larvacide treatment. They can nearly eradicate the entire nearby population in one year's time. However, a. aegypti have like an average 800m migration distance within their lifespan (if I remember that right). Thus, they can then do perimeter containment of certain areas to ensure no new migrations into their area. But instead, let's play god and engineer bacteria to fuck with reproductive systems.
> but I know that I'll be unlikely to get that from HN
This is super unfortunate, because it's why I came to HN in the first place. But unfortunately the site is becoming more twitter and less serious discussion.
I ended up editing that out since it was unnecessary. I've been here for 10 years and HN often has commenters with amazing domain expertise in tech things, but outside of tech it's hit or miss.
"Sigh" just indicates you couldn't care less about a contradicting opinion. Why should anyone discuss anything with you/care about what you have to say when your default mode is to disregard critique?
Expecting free consultings in a very delicate and complex environmental theme wouldn't be realistic. If they want a specialist they could just try to hire her/him.
We had explained here (many times) what type of unintended consequences we could expect. Superficially of course (Don't expect a free 40 pages report about basic autoecology of mosquitoes here, this is not the place for that). It seems that a lot of people just do not want to hear about it. There are entire books written about this theme.
This story sits side-by-side with the recent reporting by the NY Times that we're facing potential biosphere-level effects from an unprecedented die-off of insect life.
That struck me as well. However I have to wonder how many insects in the 'Armageddon' are just caught in the crossfire in our battle with a handful of harmful species like these mosquitos. For example, you can buy yard spray to eliminate mosquitos in your yard for a day or so, which people use all the time, but which also kill all the other insects in your yard.
So if we could target single species like this, maybe it would actually be beneficial for all the other species that are collateral damage in our current wars.
I've been hearing about this. What are the chances of resistance developing? In Australia, the introduction of myxomatosis almost wiped out rabbits, but sure enough they developed resistance and now it's just an endemic disease on par with smallpox.
If the mosquitoes are all raised in a lab environment, and they are not descended from mosquitoes from areas that have been subject to this control, I feel like the risk would be significantly mitigated.
What Google is doing now is to try the same scheme in California, on a much smaller scale, but with the hopeful option to go wide. The target is South-East Asia and Africa.
While Google (and Verily) are getting a lot of the credit here, the underlying technology was developed by entomological researchers at the University of Kentucky [0] and the resulting company, MosquitoMate [1] partnered with Verily [2] to automate and scale the breeding of the sterilized male mosquitoes.
As far as ecosystem impact goes, it seems Verily's approach can be easily controlled as they releasing roughly the same number of mosquitoes as they are eliminating from the fertile population. This contrasts with the gene drive approach, which has recently been shown to be successful at eliminating populations albeit in an experimental setting [1]. Given their theoretical ability to spread throughout an entire ecosystem within only a few generations, it seems like that is a potential panacea though with a much higher risk of unintended consequences.
Is it only me that did a double take: "Google" (Technically, it's Alphabet Inc)?
What is a tech company doing in the field of pest control? Are not the big pharmas, the big chemical companies a better fit?
The article states how Verily Life Sciences is a 'unit of Alphabet' and whose mission statement is:
"We are builders. We create tools that put health data into action." ~ https://verily.com/
I did not realise that Alphabet was into everything. No wonder they've been lobbying for military projects...Now I truly understand how distanced they are from their old Google roots.
The law of unintended consequences will prevail as it does with most attmempts of man intervening in complex eco systems. This will more than likely not be serendipitous, but more of a drawback.
We have caused famines messing with little things like this. Just my 2 cents. I think it is a noble idea, I find it hard to believe that alphabet Inc is in it for all the reasons they state, but I will have to take them at face value.
There are other ways, the reason you don't see them is because they more than likely require too much work, too much change or don't turn a profit.
There are many, many species of mosquitoes. Just a few of the species carry malaria. If you kill those species, they will quickly be replaced by the other species in the ecosystem. There would be no negative effect on the ecosystem and countless lives would be saved.
Interesting to see the first world perspective folks here. Probably all high privilege, fat and rich / well sheltered.
"Stupid idea" - you wouldn't be saying that if your kids were dying around you from something preventable because in some cases a non-native species of mosquito is spreading a deadly disease.
Mosquito abatement is not stupid, and targeting things narrowly here as they are proposing is even less stupid.
I'm serious - have you ever lived in a developing country, or even stayed for a few months? The cluelessness and heartlessness here of the entitled and privileged is kind of shocking.
> "Stupid idea" - you wouldn't be saying that if your kids were dying around you from something preventable because in some cases a non-native species of mosquito is spreading a deadly disease.
Should we always let people with dying kids make important decisions? I'm not saying you're wrong, but this is a strange argument to make.
We hear about these mosquito eradication plans a lot, but why haven't I seen much about developing new repellents? Perhaps we could come up with pills that make our sweat repulsive to them without having to use tons of gross, poisonous sprays.
I'm not convinced on your repellant idea, but generally agree with the approach. Vaccine research (eg. malaria) would be better than messing with the environment.
The Gates foundation alone has granted more than $2 Billion on Malaria vaccine, control, and protection research.
Vaccines, in general, make a lot more sense for diseases spread by human to human contact due to herd immunity. Since malaria isn't spread that way, vaccines in general would be much less effective. And the number of people you would need to vaccinate is massive (north of one billion), as well as any new children who are born (infants make up a significant number of Malaria deaths).
As I remember, there was not any mosquito in Dublin, Ireland and there is not any mosquito in Wellington, New Zealand. Move in these cities and you will have really nice dreams. ;)
Who gives anyone the right to try to wipe out a species? Generally speaking of course. I mean even something as annoying as mosquitoes, ticks, lice, fleas, bed bugs. I just can't fathom the idea of someone coming along, deciding for the whole world, that they need to do something like this, and the whole world can just accept it. As much as I hate mosquitoes, the diseases, etc, I can't make that call for the rest of the world to try to kill them all, or even a large portion of them.
Well, those few hundred thousands dead every effin' year give a lot of right for this. You are writing this on your computer, so you are among the privileged ones of this world and most probably not in any direct threat by malaria. You for sure have access to proper medicine in case you would get infected. The people worst hit by malaria don't have any of this luxury. You don't have to vouch for them, thats OK, I will do that for you, and so will others.
And of course, as many have mentioned here - this is not about wiping out every single species of mosquitoes on the planet. Just those few that transfer malaria, just in places they invaded recently. It is a good move.
Which ones? Are there any birds that have mosquitos as a major part of their diet? (and how does this compared to hundreds of thousands of human deaths caused by malaria?)
Before people go too far with not actually reading the article, here are the main points to actually understand:
1. This is Verily, not Google, owned by Alphabet.
2. They are releasing male mosquitoes (that don't bite) in the area, where the species is not native. They are attempting to remove the species only from their unnatural habitat.
3. The headline is clickbait, as Google is not involved and no one is trying to eliminate mosquitoes "around the world."
In all cases I've seen of countering mosquitoes in any way, all researchers are aware of risks and take them very seriously. The goals tend to be similar to this one or have to do with eliminating the spread of malaria and other mosquito-transmitted disease.
Alphabet was a corporate restructuring of Google, which also changed the name "Google Life Sciences" to "Verily." The search engine Google is not involved, but the company everyone knows as Google is involved.
That's as relevant as saying "everyone knows" that the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation has Microsoft involved.
In other words, not relevant at all. The money can originally have been generated by Google, and now it's invested in something completely different but that has the same ultimate owners.
People and investors can legitimately start new ventures with different missions that operate completely independently for all practical purposes. Nobody claims that The Boring Company is just Tesla, or that Tesla is just SpaceX, or that they're all just PayPal.
I don't get why people are so quick to jump on the assumption that because there are things they dislike about Google's business model or practices, the whole umbrella of Alphabet's hugely diverse set of businesses is somehow tainted by association.
However, they are different companies with different staff, mission statements, and overall goals now. Conflating them to suggest that an ad company is trying to eliminate mosquitos is misleading, at best.
"everyone"? I suspect of the non-echo-chamber populous that is not on this website, 99.9% of them would "know" the search engine Google as "the company" Google.
That's a minor distinction without a difference in the public's mind. Alphabet == Google unless you care an unusual amount about that corporation's org charts.
It's very different. They are literally different companies with different mission statements. Just because you don't want to take the time to understand, being content to become outraged whenever you read a specific six letters in sequence, doesn't mean everyone else should, or that you should contribute to FUD.
> And what business does an ad company have in getting into this?
Yes, instead of applauding the effort of solving a very difficult problem that could help people in real meaningful way, I am just going to go for cheap potshots to show how elite I am.
I'm 100% sure that such worldwide environmental changes will have no negative effects. There is no hubris involved here, future humans will look back with nothing but thanks.
Thank you search engine company! Silicon Valley / PHP engineers really will save the world!
Please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN. Even if you're right, this is just the sort of shallow dismissal the site guidelines ask you not to post, because it degrades discussion badly.
Instead of the sarcasm, please elaborate on the harmful effects of complete mosquito removal (those that carry diseases) from the ecosystem. These bugs cause an immense number of death and suffering every year, and eliminating them seems a good solution in that it removes the carrier of the diseases, eliminating the disease without having to worry about finding cures and expanding health care access in a lot of the impoverished places where these diseases strike the hardest.
Male mosquitoes pollinate many plants that keep ecosystems in balance. Plants that bees normally don't pollinate.
Plus they are a food source for many other animals, including birds.
In Florida, the state uses university researchers to try estimating populations of mosquitoes that can keep ecosystems mostly in balance, along with prevent too much outbreak in disease. Hell, a lot of the state workers are uni grads that deal with mosquito populations. Since the 90s, they've been doing pretty well with all the research gathered since the 1920s.
In this case, I bet we're going to get something similar to Mao's great ecological experiment with eradicating sparrows and whatever the other pests were. Not as severe. But, in a few years, "Yea, that was really stupid".
Humans have a very good history of fucking up ecosystems. We think "we know better" or "I have this great idea!" or even "I have this totally under control". No. We don't. We're morons when it comes to controlling ecosystems. I also find "I don't see how this can go wrong" to be a fault in logic. Just because YOU can't figure out how something can go wrong, doesn't mean it will not go wrong. Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth.
Changing the ecosystem can have ripple effects that we cannot foresee due to our limited knowledge. The so called butterfly effect. Throughout history there are plenty of cases of humans changing the ecosystem with disastrous consequences for local wildlife.
I don't know if exterminating mosquitoes will be good or bad for us. What I am saying is that we've got far bigger problems to solve first and in this case priorities do matter. What if exterminating mosquitoes will also exterminate various bird species? Well, some people might be willing to pay that price, but thinking of the butterfly effect, this being in the context of global warming and human driven mass extinction of animals, so can we really afford to exterminate animal species right now? And I think the answer to that question is no.
So eliminating mosquito might be a great idea, but I hope the people responsible for it will do their homework.
Fair enough, I will elaborate on this: we have no idea what the effects will be. It could be anything from "nothing bad happens" to apocalypse. Maybe we shouldn't do things that have such a wide range of possible outcomes. Maybe.
The real genius of the plan is in its' second phase - dragonflies who will have nothing to eat will be hired by Google to fly around people with nano billboards.
Sure thing. He didn't write an article and doesn't have a plan on how NOT to eliminate all the mosquitoes around the world. That makes him a bad person who doesn't think enough about things.
The fact that no one can remember a reason for why mosquitoes should not be exterminated is not a reason in favor of total extermination.
The Four Pests Campaign is thought to have contributed significantly for the death of around 30 million people in China.
And fish eat mosquito larvae. So there's that. Anyone observing larvae in a pond's surface will notice that they will shake and dive whenever a change in lighting occurs. That tells me that they probably have non-aquatic predators. I'm gessing dragonflies, although I suspect these insects only prey on adult mosquitos.
I'm not sure of this. And that is exactly the point, because Google must be completely sure of what is doing.
Floridian here. For all those people who are concerned about the environmental impact of eliminating these species, I suggest you take a closer look at how mosquitoes are currently controlled. Maybe they don't have mosquito control where you live? When the mosquito-spray truck comes by, it doesn't just kill mosquitoes. It kills all kinds of flying insects. That includes thousands of species which cause no harm to humans, but also provide pollination and food for birds, frogs, etc. Before you object to this plan, please realize that this plan is replacing a sledgehammer with a scapel. All the things you are worried about happening are already happening right now, but effecting many more species! If that's the status quo you want, by all means keep objecting, or come up with a better plan.
I should also note that samples of the eradicated species will be kept, so if it does turn out that it is a mistake, they can be re-introduced.
Hold up, another Floridian, these are only used when the mosquito populations sky rocket out of control. These are last resort measures when water control tactics failed. Typically after massive flooding occurred in an area.
This was the go to solution in the 90s. Yes. Totally. At least in both Hillsborough and Pasco county that I can personally attest to. But that changed in the 2000s when the casualties of it were apparent. Now, it's only when too many phone in and complain about mosquito bites and mosquito traps show populations are too high in an area.
Unless you're in a really backwater county...cough...Dixie county...cough... Then yea, I think some commissioners don't care and do what they want. But it does go against state guidelines to just truck-spray all the time. But I think part of the guidelines also state when a mosquito trap finds one infected mosquito, it's free game to go nuts with the trucks. If I also remember right, only a certain amount of truck sprays are covered by the state per year (the chemicals, lic and maintenance is expensive). After the county does a certain amount, they have to pay out of pocket. You might want to FOIA the department that handles mosquito control in your county.
> when water control tactics failed
Are mosquitos the only insects that breed in standing water? If not, then wouldn't water-control tactics also cause a decrease in the populations of beneficial insects?
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> mosquito-spray truck
I wasn't even aware this was a thing. I live in Phoenix. I thought you meant some sort of pest control, like a company coming out to a house to give a quote on an isolated problem.
Instead, a truck literally "comes by" and sprays the area, like a bug street-sweeper. Fascinating.
They even use planes in more rural areas - like the little planes that pull banners and whatnot.
Yep, happens in Brazil as well, where it’s called a “fumacê” [1] (roughly “smoke galore”), especially when Dengue fever cases are high.
Probably happens in other tropical, poor countries as well.
[1] http://g1.globo.com/sp/vale-do-paraiba-regiao/noticia/2013/0...
Yup, i remember this happening frequently in India in my town. Especially during monsoon.
There was an earlier trial done in cooperation with the CSIRO in Nth Queensland.
https://www.csiro.au/en/News/News-releases/2018/Trial-wipes-...
Florida is not 'the world', even though Florida might be a tiny part of 'the world'.
Sigh, I knew before clicking that the comments would all be low effort "ho ho - but unintended consequences!" snark. Yes, everyone knows about that risk.
At least two points are important: they're not eliminating all mosquitoes, just aedes aegypti, which are the disease carrying ones, and there's a huge opportunity cost in not doing something here. There's always the risk of unintended consequences, but you really have to have extremely severe ones in order to offset the known cost of this species of mosquitoes.
I'm actually very interested in hearing concrete ideas of what the unintended consequences could be and their cost, from actual experts.
>I'm actually very interested in hearing concrete ideas of what the unintended consequences could be and their cost, from actual experts.
Not all unintended consequences can be predicted let alone have a cost attached to them. In fact by definition unintended consequences are those we cannot forsee or prepare for in any meaningful way. Of course virtually any action has some unintended consequences but I think what the naysayers are saying in this case is that with something as complicated and untested as this, there is potential for massively negative unpredictable outcomes (maybe a new invasive species, maybe aedes aegypti perform some as yet unknown ecological function and their loss would be massively detrimental in ways we can't as yet predict etc), and there's some justification for that from human experience. This was the entire premise for movies like Jurassic park
You mean you can't foresee the unforeseen? No!
But you're right. The moral of the story to Jurassic Park pretty much was "Just because you can science against nature, doesn't mean you should."
But to be fair to, ae. aegypti is technically invasive, to the entire USA. Ridding it TECHNICALLY is a good thing for the local ecosystems. However, I personally don't think the method they're going about it will be as effective as hoped plus it seems like a pandora's box of food chain chaos.
That's kind of where global warming would actually help. Due to the life span and mating cycle, along with egg hardiness, if they have a good drought for about 8-10 months. And then they do extensive hormone pupacide and larvacide treatment. They can nearly eradicate the entire nearby population in one year's time. However, a. aegypti have like an average 800m migration distance within their lifespan (if I remember that right). Thus, they can then do perimeter containment of certain areas to ensure no new migrations into their area. But instead, let's play god and engineer bacteria to fuck with reproductive systems.
> but I know that I'll be unlikely to get that from HN
This is super unfortunate, because it's why I came to HN in the first place. But unfortunately the site is becoming more twitter and less serious discussion.
Just because people aren't discussing this the way you want them to doesn't make it Twitter.
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I ended up editing that out since it was unnecessary. I've been here for 10 years and HN often has commenters with amazing domain expertise in tech things, but outside of tech it's hit or miss.
"Sigh" just indicates you couldn't care less about a contradicting opinion. Why should anyone discuss anything with you/care about what you have to say when your default mode is to disregard critique?
> "Sigh" just indicates you couldn't care less about a contradicting opinion.
Sign, that is not true at all. Especially when followed with "I'm actually very interested in hearing..."
Furthermore, your comment doesn't contribute to the conversation at all, which is why it was downvoted.
Expecting free consultings in a very delicate and complex environmental theme wouldn't be realistic. If they want a specialist they could just try to hire her/him.
We had explained here (many times) what type of unintended consequences we could expect. Superficially of course (Don't expect a free 40 pages report about basic autoecology of mosquitoes here, this is not the place for that). It seems that a lot of people just do not want to hear about it. There are entire books written about this theme.
> There are entire books written about this theme.
Do you have a link?
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This story sits side-by-side with the recent reporting by the NY Times that we're facing potential biosphere-level effects from an unprecedented die-off of insect life.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalyps...
That struck me as well. However I have to wonder how many insects in the 'Armageddon' are just caught in the crossfire in our battle with a handful of harmful species like these mosquitos. For example, you can buy yard spray to eliminate mosquitos in your yard for a day or so, which people use all the time, but which also kill all the other insects in your yard.
So if we could target single species like this, maybe it would actually be beneficial for all the other species that are collateral damage in our current wars.
I've been hearing about this. What are the chances of resistance developing? In Australia, the introduction of myxomatosis almost wiped out rabbits, but sure enough they developed resistance and now it's just an endemic disease on par with smallpox.
If the mosquitoes are all raised in a lab environment, and they are not descended from mosquitoes from areas that have been subject to this control, I feel like the risk would be significantly mitigated.
Nonsense. These plans do exist for decades, and there already have been wide and successful field trials in Australia and Brazil.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3128286/ (2011 - Australia)
What Google is doing now is to try the same scheme in California, on a much smaller scale, but with the hopeful option to go wide. The target is South-East Asia and Africa.
While Google (and Verily) are getting a lot of the credit here, the underlying technology was developed by entomological researchers at the University of Kentucky [0] and the resulting company, MosquitoMate [1] partnered with Verily [2] to automate and scale the breeding of the sterilized male mosquitoes.
[0] - https://uknow.uky.edu/research/uk-research-spinoff-company-m...
[1] - https://mosquitomate.com/about-us/
[2] - https://blog.verily.com/2017/07/debug-fresno-our-first-us-fi...
As far as ecosystem impact goes, it seems Verily's approach can be easily controlled as they releasing roughly the same number of mosquitoes as they are eliminating from the fertile population. This contrasts with the gene drive approach, which has recently been shown to be successful at eliminating populations albeit in an experimental setting [1]. Given their theoretical ability to spread throughout an entire ecosystem within only a few generations, it seems like that is a potential panacea though with a much higher risk of unintended consequences.
[1] https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/study--gene-drive...
Is it only me that did a double take: "Google" (Technically, it's Alphabet Inc)?
What is a tech company doing in the field of pest control? Are not the big pharmas, the big chemical companies a better fit?
The article states how Verily Life Sciences is a 'unit of Alphabet' and whose mission statement is:
"We are builders. We create tools that put health data into action." ~ https://verily.com/
I did not realise that Alphabet was into everything. No wonder they've been lobbying for military projects...Now I truly understand how distanced they are from their old Google roots.
The law of unintended consequences will prevail as it does with most attmempts of man intervening in complex eco systems. This will more than likely not be serendipitous, but more of a drawback.
We have caused famines messing with little things like this. Just my 2 cents. I think it is a noble idea, I find it hard to believe that alphabet Inc is in it for all the reasons they state, but I will have to take them at face value.
There are other ways, the reason you don't see them is because they more than likely require too much work, too much change or don't turn a profit.
Stupid idea with massive impact, now that it's pretty obvious in they they are a utilized food for many organisms [0].
[0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2180055-mosquitoes-are-...
There are many, many species of mosquitoes. Just a few of the species carry malaria. If you kill those species, they will quickly be replaced by the other species in the ecosystem. There would be no negative effect on the ecosystem and countless lives would be saved.
Yup. Of the 3,500 species of mosquitoes, only ~200 suck human blood. And Google is only targeting a couple of species.
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Interesting to see the first world perspective folks here. Probably all high privilege, fat and rich / well sheltered.
"Stupid idea" - you wouldn't be saying that if your kids were dying around you from something preventable because in some cases a non-native species of mosquito is spreading a deadly disease.
Mosquito abatement is not stupid, and targeting things narrowly here as they are proposing is even less stupid.
I'm serious - have you ever lived in a developing country, or even stayed for a few months? The cluelessness and heartlessness here of the entitled and privileged is kind of shocking.
> "Stupid idea" - you wouldn't be saying that if your kids were dying around you from something preventable because in some cases a non-native species of mosquito is spreading a deadly disease.
Should we always let people with dying kids make important decisions? I'm not saying you're wrong, but this is a strange argument to make.
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They also act as pollinators.
http://www.mosquitoreviews.com/mosquitoes-niche-pollinate.ht...
Well, they already running trial by the government in Singapore…
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/nea-release-m...
Can a company win the Nobel Peace Prize, the Nobel for Economics, and for Medicine, simultaneously?
We hear about these mosquito eradication plans a lot, but why haven't I seen much about developing new repellents? Perhaps we could come up with pills that make our sweat repulsive to them without having to use tons of gross, poisonous sprays.
I'm not convinced on your repellant idea, but generally agree with the approach. Vaccine research (eg. malaria) would be better than messing with the environment.
The Gates foundation alone has granted more than $2 Billion on Malaria vaccine, control, and protection research.
Vaccines, in general, make a lot more sense for diseases spread by human to human contact due to herd immunity. Since malaria isn't spread that way, vaccines in general would be much less effective. And the number of people you would need to vaccinate is massive (north of one billion), as well as any new children who are born (infants make up a significant number of Malaria deaths).
As I remember, there was not any mosquito in Dublin, Ireland and there is not any mosquito in Wellington, New Zealand. Move in these cities and you will have really nice dreams. ;)
Aren't there sandflies around Wellington (I'm sure they are around Nelson)? Those buggers are worse than mosquitoes.
Who gives anyone the right to try to wipe out a species? Generally speaking of course. I mean even something as annoying as mosquitoes, ticks, lice, fleas, bed bugs. I just can't fathom the idea of someone coming along, deciding for the whole world, that they need to do something like this, and the whole world can just accept it. As much as I hate mosquitoes, the diseases, etc, I can't make that call for the rest of the world to try to kill them all, or even a large portion of them.
Well, those few hundred thousands dead every effin' year give a lot of right for this. You are writing this on your computer, so you are among the privileged ones of this world and most probably not in any direct threat by malaria. You for sure have access to proper medicine in case you would get infected. The people worst hit by malaria don't have any of this luxury. You don't have to vouch for them, thats OK, I will do that for you, and so will others.
And of course, as many have mentioned here - this is not about wiping out every single species of mosquitoes on the planet. Just those few that transfer malaria, just in places they invaded recently. It is a good move.
The same thing that gives anyone the right to pollute and bring down rain forests and destroy sea life. Might makes right.
State and federal governments around the world allow species to be hunted for public safety and preventing disease transmission.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunting_license#Purposes
This plan seems like a rebrand of Rachel Carson's, Silent Spring.
Start feeling sad for the birds that eat them.
Which ones? Are there any birds that have mosquitos as a major part of their diet? (and how does this compared to hundreds of thousands of human deaths caused by malaria?)
Technology is a force multiplier.
We killed so much already, pls let us kill Mosquitoes on purpose.
Not that i hate them but they like me way more than lots of other people :|
Am i selfish about this? Fuck yeah! I hate them.
Wasps and hornets too, please, while we're at it.
Before people go too far with not actually reading the article, here are the main points to actually understand:
1. This is Verily, not Google, owned by Alphabet.
2. They are releasing male mosquitoes (that don't bite) in the area, where the species is not native. They are attempting to remove the species only from their unnatural habitat.
3. The headline is clickbait, as Google is not involved and no one is trying to eliminate mosquitoes "around the world."
In all cases I've seen of countering mosquitoes in any way, all researchers are aware of risks and take them very seriously. The goals tend to be similar to this one or have to do with eliminating the spread of malaria and other mosquito-transmitted disease.
Alphabet was a corporate restructuring of Google, which also changed the name "Google Life Sciences" to "Verily." The search engine Google is not involved, but the company everyone knows as Google is involved.
That's as relevant as saying "everyone knows" that the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation has Microsoft involved.
In other words, not relevant at all. The money can originally have been generated by Google, and now it's invested in something completely different but that has the same ultimate owners.
People and investors can legitimately start new ventures with different missions that operate completely independently for all practical purposes. Nobody claims that The Boring Company is just Tesla, or that Tesla is just SpaceX, or that they're all just PayPal.
I don't get why people are so quick to jump on the assumption that because there are things they dislike about Google's business model or practices, the whole umbrella of Alphabet's hugely diverse set of businesses is somehow tainted by association.
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Yep - that's true.
However, they are different companies with different staff, mission statements, and overall goals now. Conflating them to suggest that an ad company is trying to eliminate mosquitos is misleading, at best.
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"everyone"? I suspect of the non-echo-chamber populous that is not on this website, 99.9% of them would "know" the search engine Google as "the company" Google.
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> This is Verily, not Google, owned by Alphabet.
That's a minor distinction without a difference in the public's mind. Alphabet == Google unless you care an unusual amount about that corporation's org charts.
It's very different. They are literally different companies with different mission statements. Just because you don't want to take the time to understand, being content to become outraged whenever you read a specific six letters in sequence, doesn't mean everyone else should, or that you should contribute to FUD.
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Also we're talking about the one type of mosquito that carries malaria to people. The rest are tickety-boo and can continue to make your figs happen.
How is this new from solutions that others have already proposed? And what business does an ad company have in getting into this?
Alphabet is not only Google Anymore, it's a conglomarate with a portfolio of a very diverse range of industries.
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Again, this is Verily [0], not an ad company.
[0] https://verily.com/
> And what business does an ad company have in getting into this?
Yes, instead of applauding the effort of solving a very difficult problem that could help people in real meaningful way, I am just going to go for cheap potshots to show how elite I am.
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If it works, they can sell it to governments I assume.
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Google is the mosquito and should be the one eliminated.
How about a modest goal first: eliminate the vast amounts of crap from the search engine results.
This isn't helping. Could you please follow the site guidelines instead of blatantly breaking them?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I'm 100% sure that such worldwide environmental changes will have no negative effects. There is no hubris involved here, future humans will look back with nothing but thanks.
Thank you search engine company! Silicon Valley / PHP engineers really will save the world!
Please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN. Even if you're right, this is just the sort of shallow dismissal the site guidelines ask you not to post, because it degrades discussion badly.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Instead of the sarcasm, please elaborate on the harmful effects of complete mosquito removal (those that carry diseases) from the ecosystem. These bugs cause an immense number of death and suffering every year, and eliminating them seems a good solution in that it removes the carrier of the diseases, eliminating the disease without having to worry about finding cures and expanding health care access in a lot of the impoverished places where these diseases strike the hardest.
Male mosquitoes pollinate many plants that keep ecosystems in balance. Plants that bees normally don't pollinate.
Plus they are a food source for many other animals, including birds.
In Florida, the state uses university researchers to try estimating populations of mosquitoes that can keep ecosystems mostly in balance, along with prevent too much outbreak in disease. Hell, a lot of the state workers are uni grads that deal with mosquito populations. Since the 90s, they've been doing pretty well with all the research gathered since the 1920s.
In this case, I bet we're going to get something similar to Mao's great ecological experiment with eradicating sparrows and whatever the other pests were. Not as severe. But, in a few years, "Yea, that was really stupid".
Humans have a very good history of fucking up ecosystems. We think "we know better" or "I have this great idea!" or even "I have this totally under control". No. We don't. We're morons when it comes to controlling ecosystems. I also find "I don't see how this can go wrong" to be a fault in logic. Just because YOU can't figure out how something can go wrong, doesn't mean it will not go wrong. Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth.
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It would have disastrous consequences for the food chain - the bird population in particular being hit hard.
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Changing the ecosystem can have ripple effects that we cannot foresee due to our limited knowledge. The so called butterfly effect. Throughout history there are plenty of cases of humans changing the ecosystem with disastrous consequences for local wildlife.
Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia
I don't know if exterminating mosquitoes will be good or bad for us. What I am saying is that we've got far bigger problems to solve first and in this case priorities do matter. What if exterminating mosquitoes will also exterminate various bird species? Well, some people might be willing to pay that price, but thinking of the butterfly effect, this being in the context of global warming and human driven mass extinction of animals, so can we really afford to exterminate animal species right now? And I think the answer to that question is no.
So eliminating mosquito might be a great idea, but I hope the people responsible for it will do their homework.
Fair enough, I will elaborate on this: we have no idea what the effects will be. It could be anything from "nothing bad happens" to apocalypse. Maybe we shouldn't do things that have such a wide range of possible outcomes. Maybe.
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You want someone to elaborate on the unintended consequences?
To explain what we don’t know?
Can you prove there will be no negative consequences?
Insects get eaten by all kinds of other animals as food. In Germany insecticide contributes to a decline in the song bird population.
The real genius of the plan is in its' second phase - dragonflies who will have nothing to eat will be hired by Google to fly around people with nano billboards.
No, only two things would come of this
They would be used somehow for better google maps data.
They carry p2p mesh network to deliver internet everywhere.
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Nope, Google have to drop dragonfly too.
You actually sound like you've put much less thought into it than they have.
Sure thing. He didn't write an article and doesn't have a plan on how NOT to eliminate all the mosquitoes around the world. That makes him a bad person who doesn't think enough about things.
Species go extinct all the time, and always have since the beginning of life.
You can accuse Google/Alphabet of many things, but using PHP is not one of them.
(Not that there's anything wrong with using PHP, I tell myself, while I author more PHP code)
I think you mean C++, Objective-C, Java, Python, R, and Go engineers
Have humans ever had a positive effect on the environment? I feel like it's just a negative outlook that believes humans can only do wrong.
The fact that no one can remember a reason for why mosquitoes should not be exterminated is not a reason in favor of total extermination.
The Four Pests Campaign is thought to have contributed significantly for the death of around 30 million people in China.
And fish eat mosquito larvae. So there's that. Anyone observing larvae in a pond's surface will notice that they will shake and dive whenever a change in lighting occurs. That tells me that they probably have non-aquatic predators. I'm gessing dragonflies, although I suspect these insects only prey on adult mosquitos.
I'm not sure of this. And that is exactly the point, because Google must be completely sure of what is doing.