[HN Gopher] Dengue rates plunged after release of lab-altered mo...
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Dengue rates plunged after release of lab-altered mosquitoes
Author : cxrlosfx
Score : 176 points
Date : 2023-11-05 16:24 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dw.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dw.com)
| gcatalfamo wrote:
| Starfield companions would've frown upon this solution.
|
| More seriously though: 10 years is a long time, this is super
| interesting but one would wonder if in such time other limiting
| dengue factors might've arose.
| rekttrader wrote:
| These are dangerous experiments as we've seen with the accidental
| release of covid.
|
| But it's fair to say America has funded these types of
| experiments for almost 70 years.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Big_Buzz
| henearkr wrote:
| Wolbachia is "healthy gut microbiota" but for mosquitoes.
|
| It prevents their infection by many viruses.
| smt88 wrote:
| It seems that it shortens their lives, so it's not healthy for
| them.
| gehwartzen wrote:
| long life riddled with parasites or somewhat shorter life
| sans parasites. I feel like they would be cool with it
| smt88 wrote:
| Mosquitoes aren't affected by dengue. It's a human disease.
|
| Even if they were affected by it, they don't feel pain or
| have emotions, so they'd "choose" to live longer.
| firewolf34 wrote:
| This Wolbachia bacteria is really something else. It seems to
| have a massive set of effects on a variety of organisms, directly
| impacting the way they reproduce, or even the way which sex they
| develop into. Remarkable.
|
| As some sort of bonus it also prevents the host from developing
| other viral diseases in the case of mosquitos, I guess because
| it's a parasite, so it's advantageous for it to do so? Wild
| little thing. Does a lot.
|
| >"Computational models predict that introducing Wolbachia strains
| into natural populations will reduce pathogen transmission and
| reduce overall disease burden.[64] An example includes a life-
| shortening Wolbachia that can be used to control dengue virus and
| malaria by eliminating the older insects that contain more
| parasites. Promoting the survival and reproduction of younger
| insects lessens selection pressure for evolution of
| resistance.[65][66]"
|
| >"In addition, some Wolbachia strains are able to directly reduce
| viral replication inside the insect. For dengue they include
| wAllbB and wMelPop with Aedes aegypti, wMel with Aedes
| albopictus.[67] and Aedes aegypti.[68]"
|
| [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolbachia]
| indigo0086 wrote:
| So all benefits, no negatives?
| vGPU wrote:
| I can't help but feel like I've heard this before.
| bradleybuda wrote:
| The great thing about technology is that it's possible to
| have new things or ways of life that are strictly better than
| the ones they replace! We can move beyond the efficient
| frontier; progress is non-zero-sum. * Golden
| Rice * Unleaded gas * HCFCs (over CFCs) *
| etc
| dan-robertson wrote:
| How often do you hear about the downsides of malaria
| eradication in the United States (probably spraying most of
| Florida with DDT would be one...)? What about screwworm fly
| elimination in the United States and parts of Central
| America? That program is much more similar to the thing
| described in this article than spraying every puddle with
| insecticide.
| toast0 wrote:
| Afaik, DDT continues to be accepted for malarial mosquito
| control; DDT as an agricultural pesticide is what got a
| worldwide ban.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I find these sort of things somewhat odd. Dengue is extremely
| unpleasant, but as the article mentions it has a 99.98% survival
| rate in spite of being predominantly spread in some of the most
| impoverished areas in the world. Wiki [1] gives even better
| figures than the article which yield a 99.99% survival rate, and
| a total hospitalization rate of 0.13%.
|
| Unforeseen consequences are a thing, and nature can evolve in
| difficult to predict ways. For instance one of the big early
| arguments for GMO crops is that it'd enable us to reduce our
| overall usage of herbicides. The main modification was glyphosate
| resistance, and since glyphosate was otherwise highly toxic to
| all plants, it was thought that just a bit of it would be enough
| to take care of what used to require much more herbicide.
|
| And it lived up to this promise at first. But nature responded by
| naturally evolving glyphosate resistant weeds, and farmers
| responded by just spraying more of it, and more regularly, and
| we're now using more herbicide/acre than ever before. In 1991
| (just prior to GMO crops starting to really kick off), we were
| using a rate of 1.18 units of herbicide per acre. By 2000 that
| had declined to 1.06. "Now" (2014) we're up to 2.02 and rapidly
| increasing. [2]
|
| So many things (related to interacting with nature in various
| forms) seem to be being done under the assumption of a stationary
| target, when nature is anything but.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengue_fever
|
| [2] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5044953/
| foota wrote:
| I believe conditions like this cause impact to people's
| livelihood by putting them out of action.
|
| Caring for the sick also has economic costs.
| c_o_n_v_e_x wrote:
| Presumably, the 99% survival rate is for the first infection.
| Follow on infections of dengue are increasingly dangerous.
| Izkata wrote:
| Dengue is the poster child for antibody dependent enhancement:
| The first infection is typically pretty mild, but there's 4
| Dengue strains and a second infection with one of the other 3
| is much more severe.
|
| The original vaccines for these had to be scrapped because they
| had the same effect, though current ones work against all 4
| strains.
| bedobi wrote:
| This is hardly the place for this kind of discussion but I can't
| help but comment on this.
|
| Countless species are already going extinct all the time, both
| known to us and completely unknown to us, and both "naturally"
| and from human impact, and no one really cares.
|
| Here's a rare case of a species that there is very good reason to
| deliberately get rid of, and suddenly people care and object, a
| lot!?
|
| Of course there's justifiable skepticism and a long, sorry
| history of unintended consequences of introducing, eradicating or
| in any way modifying a species or its behavior, but seriously,
| read up on it, this is not one of those species, pretty much
| everyone who knows anything about it (including otherwise very
| environmentally minded people who as a rule would never, ever
| agree with deliberately eradicating anything) agrees it can be
| eradicated with no meaningful impact on the ecosystem. (and yes,
| that includes even the armchair criticism from cynical
| misanthropes who consider human deaths resulting from this
| species a good thing "because humans are bad for the environment"
| - while these mosquitoes do cause a lot of human deaths, the
| environmental "benefit" of those deaths are completely
| meaningless in the grand scheme of things)
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| > yes, that includes even the armchair criticism from cynical
| misanthropes who consider human deaths resulting from this
| species a good thing
|
| If ever there was a species under no threat whatsoever it's
| those guys. I'm all for eradicate and move on, nature will be
| bound to throw something else at humanity so go for the small
| wins and to heck with it.
| somenameforme wrote:
| It's the means. If people wanted to look for ways to help
| reduce stagnant water, as a means of reducing mosquito
| populations, I suspect exactly 0 people would object. But
| releasing billions of mosquitos with a bacteria and hoping
| there's no natural evolution to it, and everything continues to
| work as planned indefinitely...? There's more than sufficient
| reason for skepticism there.
|
| Beyond this, I would also consider the arrogance of the
| present. When you look back at stupid decisions made in times
| past, it's not like they just blindly rushed into them (well
| not always at least). They certainly assessed them using the
| latest knowledge available at the time, and then moved forward
| after it was deemed safe and effective. It just turns out that
| we're quite frequently wrong on such assessments, and so things
| that fail in 'obvious' ways only look obvious with the benefit
| of hindsight. It's like how NASA can lose a half a billion
| dollar probe in modern times because nobody bothered to ensure
| that all systems were using the same unit systems. [1]
|
| Take yourself a decade in the future and imagine reading about
| these mosquitoes gaining, at the minimum, a resistance to the
| bacteria being used. Would it really surprise you? Or would you
| be thinking something more along the lines of, 'Wow, how could
| they not see that coming?'
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
| epistasis wrote:
| Are these the concerns of people who study ecosystems deeply,
| and dedicate their lives to environmental protection through
| understanding it deeply?
|
| Or are they the concerns of people who don't know much,
| though they care deeply? I find these folks often pursue
| actions with great passion that are effectively neutral or
| sometimes even detrimental to the environment.
|
| You say that most mistakes of the past have been made after
| careful consideration, but I do not believe that is the case
| at all. Most disasters, like the dumping of chemicals from
| semiconducting manufacturing in Silicon Valley that created
| so many superfund sites, was just carelessness and complete
| lack of concern or study.
| mullingitover wrote:
| I don't think OP is talking about the bacteria-inoculated
| mosquitoes, they're taking about eradicating the species
| completely with something like a CRISPR gene drive.
|
| I am _passionately_ in favor of this.
| erredois wrote:
| On this case of the Aedes Aegypti in the Americas, should not
| even be a big consideration whether to exterminate or not,
| since it's an invasive species from Asia.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I think part of this is that the idea can be unfamiliar and so
| people try to come to random conclusions or raise concerns that
| have already been considered (or they just disagree with the
| prevailing view). The search term for this kind of thing is
| 'planned extinction' and it perhaps won't surprise you to hear
| that A. aegypti is the most common candidate. Another case is
| the (new world) screwworm fly which has been eliminated from
| North America and most of Central America by the United States
| (it being easier to try to control spread through Panama than
| from Mexico). There was a New Yorker article posted here a
| while ago about the elimination efforts. I'm not sure farmers
| in Colombia or the rest of South America would mind much if the
| species were totally eradicated.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Los Angeles is doing something similar with fruit flies. [1]
| They're releasing infertile males, in the hopes that they
| outcompete males of a non-native species that could threaten the
| agricultural industry.
|
| 1: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/millions-of-
| steril...
| e63f67dd-065b wrote:
| This is great news. Dengue was a constant problem in my home
| country of Malaysia, and remains a problem to this day. I still
| remember all the public education campaigns about it that I saw
| when I was young (random ads on TV about making sure there's no
| stagnant water, seeking medical help if you notice <symptoms>,
| etc), I'm very glad that there are easily implementable solutions
| to these problems.
|
| As a side note, I wonder why this kind of research is not more
| popular in university labs of tropical countries. Malaysia,
| Singapore, India, etc are home to plenty of university labs that
| should have the expertise and motivation to do this kind of
| thing, but they're really dropping the ball if they're not
| working on it right now. Every time I read about new mosquito
| fighting innovations it's out of an American or European lab, far
| away from where it's most impactful.
|
| Is it a problem of funding? Somehow the Malaysian government
| funds less mosquito disease research than the US? Political will?
| I would hope that the health ministries of tropical countries are
| willing to throw some money at the problem. Institutional
| knowledge? Plenty of the professors are educated in
| Australia/UK/US, so that can't be it. Coverage? Western media
| covers western labs, and don't notice when labs elsewhere do the
| same thing?
| melagonster wrote:
| Malaysia, Singapore and Australia did experiment in field,
| there are not many countries accomplished this. so they did it.
| tim333 wrote:
| Maybe it's easier to be releasing them somewhere else? Oxford
| based Oxitec also have mosquitos to counter Dengue but
| genetically modified rather than with Wolbachia.
| https://www.wired.com/story/genetically-engineered-mosquitoe...
| sohkamyung wrote:
| Here are some links to research on using Wolbachia in Malaysia
| and Singapore:
|
| [1] Wolbachia Malaysia [ https://imr.nih.gov.my/wolbachia/ ]
|
| [2] Singapore NEA Wolbachia info [
| https://www.nea.gov.sg/corporate-functions/resources/researc...
| ]
|
| [3] A 2021 news article on Wolbachia in Malaysia [
| https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/malaysia-fight-dengue-m...
| ]
| hzay wrote:
| Currently down with dengue. Wish they'd put these good mosquitos
| where I live!
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