Tomas, you may have forgot the human parameter: in order to release the modified moskitoes in the nature, "somebody" has to sign and decide. At the end, if it happens to be a mistake and if it makes more deads than without doing it, this guy may have to "pay" for his error (jail, etc.): the point is that nobody wants to be this guy... We see it in many other domains (easing any kind of rule in aviation domain, or equivalent) where constraints remain only because no one want to be the one that would be on the photo if something bad happens...
Thanks for explaining gene drive and comparing it to sterilization. Very helpful, and your polemic deserves support. People often enjoy sneering at international outfits like WHO, either because of an ideological opposition to public enterprises and their bureaucracies, or, in the case of those like Elon Musk, because of the idea that anything that raises the number of brown babies threatens Western Civilization. The latter is immoral and the former mistaken. Institutions like WHO can be clumsy and slow and they can make bad mistakes (tho so can profit-making corporations) but to imagine a world without broad public health leadership is to imagine, for example, ten times as many Covid deaths as we saw, and god knows how many millions from smallpox. Let's work together to get rid of malaria.
I'm all for eliminating dangerous mosquitos in sensible programs and appreciate the detail your elaborating re why and how. Hope your readership is wide and effective in spreading the education you're providing.
"Malaria control programs in Africa rely on external funding to maintain and support personnel, infrastructure, and general operations. The 2024 WHO World Malaria Report states that $4 billion was spent on malaria control and elimination in 2023. Gene drive developers have been questioned about the long-term financial incentives and support that will follow if gene drive technology is applied and successfully leads to malaria elimination. How will this affect the millions of dollars allocated to existing malaria control programs? Will some of this money remain available for ongoing surveillance, infrastructure, and operations? "
It sounds like a big problem is that the people who would give permission in Africa are people who earn cushy salaries from anti-malaria programs. Eradicating malaria would eradicate their jobs.
Another excellent article! This country is so mired in bureaucratic and special interest crap. Granted, we need to be mindful of lessons like Mao and the sparrows but mosquito elimination is a no brainer.
I think you're missing an important issue: The gene-drive discussed in the nature article (or even combinations of several genome areas) are not fool-proof. Sure, they are self-propagating and can 100% eradicate populations in a small enough isolated environment. I would assume, even on a country, continent sized scale. But.. If not done worldwide at a rapid pace at the same time, evolution will certainly produce weird un expected mutations, that are immune to the method. 10 in 100.000.000.000 billion mosquitos are enough.. They would have a natural selection advantage and eventually take over. I don't think that the method is bad at all - but I think it needs continues adaption to what mosquito evolution does. Aka: a permanent worldwide (or at least in the mosquito prone areas) monitoring program that checks on the effectiveness, and that adds different/alternative CRIPRed gene-drives in the future. And you're right to assume, that we don't even need a global consensus on this. A few (big) countries coordinating this program would be enough. The measures would cross borders.. I am heavily banking on AI for the CRISPr part and on micro+nano robotics for the surveillance part. I think it will eventually get done
WHat you say is true for one site modified, but not several. It's virtually impossible that several spots change exactly right in the same mosquito. Scientists study this and can come up with calculations like "There's one chance in a trillion that this doesn't work."
Unfortunately one in a trillion might not be enough, as there might be roughly 00–1,000 trillion mosquitoes alive at any given moment in time. I don't want to be the pedantic german (I am German + I am quite pedantic and totally get the irony of what I just said, lol), but I want to stimulate a discussion, that might lead to a real breakthrough. I assume, that "people in the field" will eventually read your article and hopefully also the comment section.
Really interesting and hopeful. Thanks! Another possible reason this hasn't been pursued yet, it seems to me, is racism among the wealthy donors. And if the current US administration hadn't been so ham-handed/cruel/ignorant/focused on tax cuts for the wealthy (choose one or all, depending on your politics) with DOGE, someone might have realized there were ways to make USAID more effective instead of just eliminating the agency instead of the mosquitos.
Tomas, you may have forgot the human parameter: in order to release the modified moskitoes in the nature, "somebody" has to sign and decide. At the end, if it happens to be a mistake and if it makes more deads than without doing it, this guy may have to "pay" for his error (jail, etc.): the point is that nobody wants to be this guy... We see it in many other domains (easing any kind of rule in aviation domain, or equivalent) where constraints remain only because no one want to be the one that would be on the photo if something bad happens...
When has a politician paid with jail for signing off on a policy?
Does WHO, the World Health Organization, do anything good? Enough to justify its bad effect on covid and now malaria?
They do plenty of things well, but both Covid and malaria are indeed shocking
Thanks for explaining gene drive and comparing it to sterilization. Very helpful, and your polemic deserves support. People often enjoy sneering at international outfits like WHO, either because of an ideological opposition to public enterprises and their bureaucracies, or, in the case of those like Elon Musk, because of the idea that anything that raises the number of brown babies threatens Western Civilization. The latter is immoral and the former mistaken. Institutions like WHO can be clumsy and slow and they can make bad mistakes (tho so can profit-making corporations) but to imagine a world without broad public health leadership is to imagine, for example, ten times as many Covid deaths as we saw, and god knows how many millions from smallpox. Let's work together to get rid of malaria.
Agreed!
I'm all for eliminating dangerous mosquitos in sensible programs and appreciate the detail your elaborating re why and how. Hope your readership is wide and effective in spreading the education you're providing.
Thanks! Help the readership by sharing the article!
From the cited article on bureaucratic barriersL
"Malaria control programs in Africa rely on external funding to maintain and support personnel, infrastructure, and general operations. The 2024 WHO World Malaria Report states that $4 billion was spent on malaria control and elimination in 2023. Gene drive developers have been questioned about the long-term financial incentives and support that will follow if gene drive technology is applied and successfully leads to malaria elimination. How will this affect the millions of dollars allocated to existing malaria control programs? Will some of this money remain available for ongoing surveillance, infrastructure, and operations? "
It sounds like a big problem is that the people who would give permission in Africa are people who earn cushy salaries from anti-malaria programs. Eradicating malaria would eradicate their jobs.
Indeed. I saw that. Don’t want to add it to a very long article already, also because I assume not all think like that. But many might…
Another excellent article! This country is so mired in bureaucratic and special interest crap. Granted, we need to be mindful of lessons like Mao and the sparrows but mosquito elimination is a no brainer.
Mosquitos are a scourge of humanity.
Yet I wonder what the consequences of eliminating a portion of the natural world?
We should do a isolated area as a test run.
Human have not got the best reputation in modifying our environment.
More than human lives are at stake.
Great article.
Yes! That’s exactly the proposal: a test in an isolated island
I think you're missing an important issue: The gene-drive discussed in the nature article (or even combinations of several genome areas) are not fool-proof. Sure, they are self-propagating and can 100% eradicate populations in a small enough isolated environment. I would assume, even on a country, continent sized scale. But.. If not done worldwide at a rapid pace at the same time, evolution will certainly produce weird un expected mutations, that are immune to the method. 10 in 100.000.000.000 billion mosquitos are enough.. They would have a natural selection advantage and eventually take over. I don't think that the method is bad at all - but I think it needs continues adaption to what mosquito evolution does. Aka: a permanent worldwide (or at least in the mosquito prone areas) monitoring program that checks on the effectiveness, and that adds different/alternative CRIPRed gene-drives in the future. And you're right to assume, that we don't even need a global consensus on this. A few (big) countries coordinating this program would be enough. The measures would cross borders.. I am heavily banking on AI for the CRISPr part and on micro+nano robotics for the surveillance part. I think it will eventually get done
WHat you say is true for one site modified, but not several. It's virtually impossible that several spots change exactly right in the same mosquito. Scientists study this and can come up with calculations like "There's one chance in a trillion that this doesn't work."
A single country could do this.
(In fact, a single lab could do it)
Unfortunately one in a trillion might not be enough, as there might be roughly 00–1,000 trillion mosquitoes alive at any given moment in time. I don't want to be the pedantic german (I am German + I am quite pedantic and totally get the irony of what I just said, lol), but I want to stimulate a discussion, that might lead to a real breakthrough. I assume, that "people in the field" will eventually read your article and hopefully also the comment section.
Really interesting and hopeful. Thanks! Another possible reason this hasn't been pursued yet, it seems to me, is racism among the wealthy donors. And if the current US administration hadn't been so ham-handed/cruel/ignorant/focused on tax cuts for the wealthy (choose one or all, depending on your politics) with DOGE, someone might have realized there were ways to make USAID more effective instead of just eliminating the agency instead of the mosquitos.
I’m not sure. The donors can’t be said to be racist, as they are the ones spending the money to save mostly black African children