Bats in the US are dying from a fungal disease. I suspect something similar is happening in Australia.

> White-nose syndrome (WNS) is a fungal disease killing hibernating bats in North America. The fungus, named Pseudogymnoascus destructans (or Pd for short) likely originated in Europe or Asia. Sometime in the early 2000's Pd arrived in North America and attacked vulnerable bat species, resulting in unusual and large die-offs of bats first observed in New York in 2006. Since then, the disease has spread to most US states and Canadian provinces, leaving millions of dead bats in its path. WNS causes high death rates and fast population declines in the species affected by it.

https://www.nps.gov/articles/what-is-white-nose-syndrome.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-nose_syndrome

Aedes aegypti aren't native to anywhere outside of Africa. Native mosquito species in most other continents don't spread the same diseases that infect humans. Aedes aegypti mostly breed around where humans live since they lay their eggs in containers of stagnant water, other mosquito species live primarily in wetlands and areas that stay moist due to thick vegetation or soil conditions. The native species of mosquitos are a much larger food source than Aedes aegypti for that reason.

Why is Bill Gates a red flag? I am under the impression that he's done a lot of good for the world, especially around AIDs research.

I'd say paranoid-by-default folks are a huge red flag on any agenda. Something about disservice to the cause and all that.

Anyway since they kill north of half a million folks yearly and infect couple of hundred millions as official minimums, I am more than happy with some other species of small insects take their empty spot. Of course not everybody cares much about poor folks dying quietly half around the world, but some do. One of very few benefits of global warming is the migration of these bastards more north so rich folks in US and Europe will have more personal stake in this topic rather than usual 'oh that's so horrible, next'.

Some minor re-adjustement of ecosystem is more than fine, anyway we do it constantly for rather pathetic reasons if any. I would add ticks, all forms, to the effort.

Aedes aegypti are container breeders, you can totally eliminate them from an environment through diligent removal of standing water left in buckets, tires, pots, etc. This has been done before but the effort wasn't properly sustained so they've made a major comeback in disease prone areas. Killing a lot of them does have a substantial effect because they don't easily travel long distances by themselves so if the remaining resistant population is small enough it might just as easily end up dying out due to its breeding cycle being interrupted through other means. The part that should be criticized here is that any eradication campaign should also involve efforts to eliminate their breeding environments by removing junk and unattended containers that collect water.

Sterile insect releases are a tool for suppressing populations and have been used for about a century. This is not really a new suppression technique but a novel way of producing the sterile insects.

It has been used to suppress screw worm in the United States for decades until the administration cut the funding.

These are almost always a temporary solution that need constant funding and seasonal releases to work. The populations will surge back as soon as it's stopped.

The idea is to hit the population with a cataclysm so sudden that it goes extinct before it can adapt. We can calculate mutation rates and reproduction dynamics, so we know how to predict whether this is likely or not.

If it's one-and-done, everywhere on Earth (eg smallpox), it can work. If it drags on for decades or isn't rolled out globally (eg malaria) then it won't work.

There is nothing about gene drives in the article, just lethal gene and wolbachia. These would necessitate continued release to some extent.

>Sustained releases cut a wild Aedes aegypti population in the Cayman Islands by 80 percent, and in a field trial in Juazeiro, Brazil by about 95 percent.

The gene gives a sizable advantage to mosquitoes that don't carry disease. Those mosquitoes will then take over the niche making it very difficult for disease carrying mosquitoes to come back.

That may very well mean the eradication of the population. Also we can do the gene drive repeatedly reintroducing the gene. Or modified genes.

Depends how fast the gene drive works. Natural Selection is slow.

I think you’re right. I’d want to pair this approach with introducing a replacement species that can hopefully out compete the one we’re eliminating. No idea what that looks like, though.

there are latches in designspace

I can imagine a scenario where the testing takes 15 years, and a scenario where the testing is done in 1 year. I think it's probably wrong to look at it purely as "we should wait X years". The author describes the 15 years as "regulatory limbo" implying that it was known as safe before that, but I have no idea whether that's the case.

In general, you have to weigh the irreversible cost of unintended consequences with the irreversible cost of known human death from mosquitoes.

From what I understood, they didn't spend 15 years collecting data on the efficacy and risks of the product. Much of it was spent just waiting for regulators to respond.

The bacterial solution was the one that was fast tracked, while the safer genetic modification was delayed more.

It's a choice to wipe them out or let them continue to exist. We were on our way to doing that using DDT until the unfortunate side-effects of that chemical were understood.

I agree. The precautionary principle applies to novel actions we take, not to leaving the status quo in place.

We are choosing to not undo the harm we caused by spreading Aedes aegypti all over the world in the first place.

If we are "choosing" to live with mosquitoes, then we also are "choosing" to let people starve, die of cancer, etc.

We could in one stroke take half of what multi-billionaires and quasi-trillionaires have hoarded. If they didn't have personal accountants, they wouldn't even notice it, as they have far more money than what they manage to burn through - and we would have the means to "choose" to solve real problems affecting hundreds of millions of people.

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The Wolbachia bacteria already infect a majority of insect species and are widespread. They are not "mutated" in the sense that they are lab created, but occur naturally. Birds eat infected insects every day, and so do you probably every now and then by accident...