<story><title>Toxic Nectar Kills 90% of Mosquito Populations</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/health/27mosquito.html?_r=1&amp;ref=global-home</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>0x12</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Makes a good case for why eradicating mosquitoes will not be problematic.&lt;p&gt;But every time there is a large scale intervention like this the side effects only become apparent decades after the fact. You mess with ecosystems at this scale at your peril. Even if we can&apos;t see any downside to this today that doesn&apos;t mean there isn&apos;t a downside.&lt;p&gt;DDT looked pretty good once upon a time.&lt;p&gt;Another problem is that we simply have not mapped all the interactions between species within an ecosystem and eradicating one species might upset the balance in a hard to predict way.&lt;p&gt;Introduction of a new species can be problematic:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.animalcontrol.com.au/rabbit.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.animalcontrol.com.au/rabbit.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have some solid proof for that. Maybe 40 years from now we will know why eradicating something as obviously harmful as a mosquito can be problematic too.&lt;p&gt;That&apos;s the only way to learn, it would be nice if this research was proven correct.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>velocicopter</author><text>There seems to be an assumption here that ecosystems are friendly places but they really aren&apos;t. Nature does not know best. The vast majority all species in history have been wiped out by their natural environments, many by their &lt;i&gt;own genes&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;All&lt;/i&gt; actions that we take to try to fix problems go on to create new problems. It&apos;s expected.&lt;p&gt;And, of course, this doesn&apos;t mean we shouldn&apos;t act, unless we have a good explanation &lt;i&gt;now&lt;/i&gt; as to why the harm of a proposed course of action outweighs the benefits.&lt;p&gt;The alternative is to follow some kind of &apos;Precautionary Principle&apos;, which, as David Deutsch has pointed out, can only damage our ability to handle threats which we do not foresee.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, people&apos;s lives are in known peril from malaria.</text></comment>
<story><title>Toxic Nectar Kills 90% of Mosquito Populations</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/health/27mosquito.html?_r=1&amp;ref=global-home</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>0x12</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Makes a good case for why eradicating mosquitoes will not be problematic.&lt;p&gt;But every time there is a large scale intervention like this the side effects only become apparent decades after the fact. You mess with ecosystems at this scale at your peril. Even if we can&apos;t see any downside to this today that doesn&apos;t mean there isn&apos;t a downside.&lt;p&gt;DDT looked pretty good once upon a time.&lt;p&gt;Another problem is that we simply have not mapped all the interactions between species within an ecosystem and eradicating one species might upset the balance in a hard to predict way.&lt;p&gt;Introduction of a new species can be problematic:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.animalcontrol.com.au/rabbit.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.animalcontrol.com.au/rabbit.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have some solid proof for that. Maybe 40 years from now we will know why eradicating something as obviously harmful as a mosquito can be problematic too.&lt;p&gt;That&apos;s the only way to learn, it would be nice if this research was proven correct.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gerggerg</author><text>I think the major difference between this attempt at species destruction and other previous attempts is the massive amount of human disease and death already perpetrated by the clumsy little biters.&lt;p&gt;It comes down to determining whats better: not messing with the environment and continuing to allow hundreds of thousands of human deaths a year. or trying to kill off mosquitoes.&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia claims that malaria alone causes 2.23% of yearly human death world wide.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Thats a pretty ridiculous number if you think about it.</text></comment>