BS: who is the biggest killer in the world?

Subject: RE: BS: who is the biggest killer in the world?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 25 Feb 16 - 06:27 AM

The densest population of mosquitoes I've ever met was at Yusufeli in north-east Turkey, where the population fed themselves by irrigated gardens. You needed absolutely impenetrable mosquito nets to sleep. But the other thing that kept you awake at night, until you got used to it, was a continuous roar like an industrial plant or airport runway. It was actually the croaking of thousands of frogs. Guess what the frogs were eating.

Exterminate anything and you take a lot more with it. Ecologically it would make a lot of sense to exterminate Americans, but think how many species of innocent house dust mites and pubic lice depend on them.

Subject: RE: BS: who is the biggest killer in the world?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 25 Feb 16 - 04:08 AM

Mosquitoes may be deadly (to humans) but they're not responsible for the 6th mass extinction event in the history of the world. In addition, mosquitoes probably don't even know that they're deadly ... unlike the creatures responsible for the 6th mass extinction!

Subject: RE: BS: who is the biggest killer in the world?
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 25 Feb 16 - 03:48 AM

Aye, those White Anglo Saxon Protestants. Don't worry, they'll get eaten by giant cockroaches.

The Zika solutions are being tested against the principle of merely getting a more hardy mutation of offending critters next year. Mind you, my greenhouse has had every chemical B&Q sell plastered on it over the last few years and all I get is more greenfly.

For us in the temperate UK, global warming will increase the risk of mozzies drifting north. Although we are getting white frosts this week, it's hardly cold and even up here, I doubt we have seen it go below -2 this winter. That alone affects this summer's buzzing fauna. (And flora. My daffodils are coming to an end, the croakarses bloomed last month yet my winter Iris decided to come out this month rather than last December. I intend to rename our Autumn Golds by a less seasonal name or accept an ironic garden.

Subject: RE: BS: who is the biggest killer in the world?
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 25 Feb 16 - 03:18 AM

If we exterminate the biggest killer, that will leave another species to be the biggest killer. So we exterminate that ... and the next, and the next ... until all we have left are WASPs.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: who is the biggest killer in the world?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 25 Feb 16 - 03:17 AM

Not my subject, but a little bit of reading suggests that this technology is in its very early stages, and there are already considerable worries about unintended consequences. In addition to which, attacking the pathogens rather than the vector is surely a better approach. So taking Donuel's last two lines, the last line is very true, and in my view beans that the answer to the question in the one above has to be "no", or at least "not yet".

Subject: RE: BS: who is the biggest killer in the world?
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 25 Feb 16 - 03:05 AM

If his physical dexterity is anything like his verbal, he couldn't even wipe out his own arse.

It gets a bit philosophical talking of extermination of species. There is a counter argument saying that if we do so, that in itself is evolution. Cause and effect seems to have been the order of the day well before we evolved to our present state.

Take Australia. We introduced cattle and the flies multiplied like buggery. So we introduced dung beetles and achieved an eco balance by intervention. Then some silly sod introduced rabbits in order to "frolic for the delight of the ladies."

Yin and yang, this tweaking of the Eco system.

As an ex miner, I was rather saddened to find out the other night that the breed used for pit ponies (galloways) died out and we forgot to save a breeding pair to keep them going. I've still got pictures from the 1920s of children, my mum amongst them, riding them at whitsuntide when they brought them up at our pit for a couple of days of sun and fresh air.

Add Eco criminal to the sins of Th*tcher eh?

Subject: RE: BS: who is the biggest killer in the world?
From: Greg F.
Date: 24 Feb 16 - 10:01 PM

Should we risk the "What If" when we don't know what the what ifs are ?

Check with Donald Trump. He's proposed wiping out all sorts of things.

Subject: RE: BS: who is the biggest killer in the world?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Feb 16 - 09:19 PM

It's a right bugger is that, Donuel. I wish there were no slugs eating my brassicas, no midges ruining my Scottish holidays, no adders to threaten my sandalled feet, no wasps building nests in my porch, no rats eating my bird food, no blue mould to spoil my bread. Every organism has its place in the ecosystem. It's perfectly legitimate to show any organism on the planet that we're boss. It should never be in our gift to seek to eliminate a species completely. It took three billion years to get life to where it is, with all its intricate and wonderful interrelationships and interactions. We don't understand one tenth of it as yet, and it behoves us to not blunder in and wipe species out for our advantage. Not yet, not by a country mile.

Subject: BS: who is the biggest killer in the world?
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Feb 16 - 09:03 PM

More deaths are attributed to this animal than mankind. Human pathogens and war combined do not surpass the lethal results of this nefarious animal.
This deadly animal is nature's flying syringe the mosquito.
If a mosquito were a gun, its ammunition is multiple pathogens.

Through mosquito bites

Zika virus is transmitted to people primarily through the bite of an infected Aedes species mosquito (A. aegypti and A. albopictus). These are the same mosquitoes that spread dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya viruses.


What we can do has never been done.

We can make this mosquito extinct. This is the one species that virtually lives only among people. We can now do this with CRISPR and a world wide distribution of altered mosquitos. The treated mosquito will spread their genes with progeny that will be unable to survive.

The attack of the altered baby mosquito killer genes is forever passed down until no unaltered parent is left alive.

There is another method that gene alterations only limits the mosquito from harboring some select virus.


What we do not know is a scenario in which this killing gene altering method can infect another species. A frog, a bird or a cat can get gene alterations via a virus carrier in small segments.

Should we risk the "What If"

when we don't know what the what ifs are ?