Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Cells, Microbes & Viruses => Topic started by: thedoc on 11/08/2011 17:42:08
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The development of spermless male Anopheles mosquitoes could prove a valuable weapon in the fight against malaria, according to a paper published this week in PNAS...
Read the whole story on our website by clicking here (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/news/news/2335/)
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There have been a number of such wild solutions to malaria. Some scientists just love the idea of breeding mosquitoes to death. This has never worked and is not likely to work.
And there are obvious ways to reduce malaria exposure that are much cheaper: bed nets and social support that will allow people to, temporarily or permanently, change their behaviors so that they can avoid the particular mosquitoes.
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I wonder what would happen if they speciated mosquitos; release dozens and dozens of apparently compatible, but actually genetically-modified, incompatible males. That way you could breed them up in species batches and then just mix them up and release them.
The females would be unable to know them apart, so the population would take a huge nose dive; 90+% of matings leading to death would not be sustainable.
Eventually they would evolve some way to tell, like a pattern on them or a smell or something but it could take quite a while, and if that happened, you could capture them, and do it again.
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I recall this idea being bandied around several years ago.
The one big problem I have with all these remedies is that Man does not seem to be able to adapt to the new situation. Are we prepared for the 1m people who die annually from malaria to remain alive?
If malaria, and other such disease, can be eradicated, we MUST reeducate the people to have fewer children, or the world will be over run with hungry humans in no time at all.