Eradicating mosquitoes: The ethically tricky solution to ending deadly diseases like malaria

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The deadliest animal on Earth isn't a snake or a shark, or even human. 9News

Wiping out disease-carrying mosquitoes is now a major project of the Imperial College in London and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

"The idea was you would release these male mosquitoes, and when they mate with wild female mosquitoes, they are no longer able to produce viable offspring," CSIRO senior principal research scientist Paul De Barro told 9News. "If you're a predator of mosquitoes, and you are relying on the Aedes Aegypti as food, you are going to be very hungry most of the time."There is a certain bacteria which prevents the female mosquito from spreading viruses.

And researchers at Imperial College London last year announced they had developed a genetic modification to make the mosquitoes infertile.The breakthrough in laboratory conditions produced mosquitoes that did not bite or lay eggs. "One problem they both face is that both allegations could have similarly been made against our choice to eradicate the variola virus responsible for smallpox in the 1970s, through an extensive vaccination program.The broader question is not whether it is wrong to eradicate a harmful species, but of the implication it will have on the wider ecosystem.

 

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I know mozzies can kill but humans are still more deadly as they kill millions of animals globally each year

DDT used to be used to kiill mosquitos now banned aas wes a organophosphate. DDT was very effective as insecticide They spray our food tomatoes with chlorpyriphos or Lorsban another organophosphate. Wheres the logic in that

Eradicate, eradicate, eradicate

Actually it is human. Humans have taken more lives, animal and human than mozzies have.

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