Comment by goda90
8 years ago
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).