How do you solve a problem like malaria?
How do you catch a bug and pin it down?

Does malaria eventually kill its mosquito hostess?

Google helps not.

This kind of genetic tampering NEVER ends poorly!

FTFA: "had no effect on mosquito fitness under laboratory conditions..."

What an awesome mental image. The treadmill would be so cool.

How about we make humans toxic to mosquitoes instead?

I missed the part where we were breeding the mosquitoes that kill people and we just made them wrong.

28 days later.......

Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: How do you solve a problem like malaria?
How do you catch a bug and pin it down?

The hills are alive with the sound of biting?

HA HA! Malarious!

How do you make them out-compete the original mosquitoes? If I understand correctly, they need to do better than normal mosquitoes, not just not do worse.

Sgeo: How do you make them out-compete the original mosquitoes? If I understand correctly, they need to do better than normal mosquitoes, not just not do worse.

Well, they won't have malaria.

Happy Hours: Or maybe make humans immune to malaria?



"Why can't they make humans out of malaria?"

\and what's the deal with mosquito food?

FTA: At left is a normal mosquito from the wild. The three mosquitoes to the right, with glowing eyes, are from three strains genetically engineered to better kill the malaria parasites in their guts.

Why do the genetically engineered mosquitoes have glowing eyes!?

Because shooting them down with lasers beams is a lot more fun and very cool.

Sgeo: How do you make them out-compete the original mosquitoes? If I understand correctly, they need to do better than normal mosquitoes, not just not do worse.

Just apply a little 'artificial selection' aka DDT.

Yotto: [www.newswise.com image 320x224]

FTA: At left is a normal mosquito from the wild. The three mosquitoes to the right, with glowing eyes, are from three strains genetically engineered to better kill the malaria parasites in their guts.

Why do the genetically engineered mosquitoes have glowing eyes!?

Think about it. These things are INVARIABLY gonna star in a SYFY made-for-TV movie. The glowing eyes are for dramatic effect.

Thank God for that, I thought we about to run out of Asians.

Yotto: [www.newswise.com image 320x224]

FTA: At left is a normal mosquito from the wild. The three mosquitoes to the right, with glowing eyes, are from three strains genetically engineered to better kill the malaria parasites in their guts.

Why do the genetically engineered mosquitoes have glowing eyes!?

They probably just marked the engineered mosquitoes to better identify them during testing

Subby got it all wrong, the mosquitoes ARE immune to the malaria-carrying parasites, that's part of the problem. The scientists want to make the gut of the mosquitoes toxic to the parasites. In essence, the parasites were immune to the mosquitoes, and the scientists are trying to change THAT.

Yotto: FTA: At left is a normal mosquito from the wild. The three mosquitoes to the right, with glowing eyes, are from three strains genetically engineered to better kill the malaria parasites in their guts.

Why do the genetically engineered mosquitoes have glowing eyes!?

Because is fark'n cool!

You're not a scientist, are you? This is how we think.

Gough: Subby got it all wrong, the mosquitoes ARE immune to the malaria-carrying parasites, that's part of the problem. The scientists want to make the gut of the mosquitoes toxic to the parasites. In essence, the parasites were immune to the mosquitoes, and the scientists are trying to change THAT.

Mosquito Guts would be a pretty cool band name.

/dave barry

Thanks for answering my question, though, about whether malaria infection was fatal to mosquitos, as bubonic plague is to rats. Increasing the total number of mosquitos by making them more fit seemed like...choosing poorly.

/grail knight

Codenamechaz: Wait...

So instead of killing off an entire species and ruining a spectrum of the natural order, we make them immune to the disease that they've been spreading like a horrific plague?

BRILLIANT!
[file.walagata.com image 351x343]

+1

netweavr: They probably just marked the engineered mosquitoes to better identify them during testing

Sure beats paying the intern to catch and paint each baby mosquito.

Until the Malaria virus adapts and use more efficient methods of movement? How many years until the zombie invasion begins? I ain't gettin any younger!

Someone, quick! Make a movie!

Uuummmm.....because even if they are immune they could still spread it?

/ didn't rtfa

First off malaria is a parasite not a virus. Second the mosquito genome is much less complicated than humans. It makes more sense this way. Malaria is passed through the salivary glands of the Anopholes mosquito, if you remove the ability for the mosquito to become the vector then you remove the most important aspect of the malaria life cycle. It's actually pretty damn smart.

TheOther: Does malaria eventually kill its mosquito hostess?

Google helps not.

No, it has no affect on Mosquitos whatsoever. They are just the vector in the life cycle. If it killed the host organism then it would have no need to infect humans thus further continuing it's life cycle

You also can't remove mosquitos from the world, there are too many other species on this planet that depend on them for food sources, fish, amphibians, birds and bats for a few. It would be like removing ants. They play vert fundamental roles in enviornmental biology

gadian: This idea had to come out of one of those "brainstorming" sessions everyone here hates.

Also:
Happy Hours: Or just kill the little bastards off. I read something not too long ago that suggested this shouldn't really cause any problems as they're not essential in the food chain - anything that eats mosquitoes doesn't rely enough upon them for their disappearance to matter. Of course they could be wrong.

Mosquitoes are the primary pollinators in some areas. No pollination, no plants, no anything after a while.


On the other hand... It's typically only certain types of mosquitoes that carry specific diseases and there are many types of mosquitoes. Just don't kill off all the other ones too.

farking Christ, they're just saving more in the way people whose shiat ends up in a river. Mother Nature keeps trying to help us out, like a forest fire, burn out all the dead wood, but we won't let her. Flu shots, vaccinations, Christ, just stop farking!!!

Link (new window)

gadian: This idea had to come out of one of those "brainstorming" sessions everyone here hates.

Also:
Happy Hours: Or just kill the little bastards off. I read something not too long ago that suggested this shouldn't really cause any problems as they're not essential in the food chain - anything that eats mosquitoes doesn't rely enough upon them for their disappearance to matter. Of course they could be wrong.

Mosquitoes are the primary pollinators in some areas. No pollination, no plants, no anything after a while.

That seems to be a heavily-debated issue in entomological circles. I know of several who specialize is mosquitoes, and they're pretty strongly convinced that the contribution of mosquitoes to pollination is, at most, trivial.

First thing that came to mind:

What if you mix the mayonnaise in the can, WITH the tunafish? Or... hold it! Chuck! I got it! Take LIVE tuna fish, and FEED 'em mayonnaise! Oh this is great

mentallo69: First off malaria is a parasite not a virus. Second the mosquito genome is much less complicated than humans. It makes more sense this way. Malaria is passed through the salivary glands of the Anopholes mosquito, if you remove the ability for the mosquito to become the vector then you remove the most important aspect of the malaria life cycle. It's actually pretty damn smart.

so how do you remove the mosquitoes that you didn't create

Avery614: farking Christ, they're just saving more in the way people whose shiat ends up in a river. Mother Nature keeps trying to help us out, like a forest fire, burn out all the dead wood, but we won't let her. Flu shots, vaccinations, Christ, just stop farking!!!

Link (new window)

apparently suffering is bad, comfort is good, people want to stop the former and make more of the latter
i dunno dude you can fight the tide, try some torture or something

Now if only we could make WASPS immune to affluenza...

OK, just to play devils advocate here, What happens after we eliminate malaria? It's one of the top killer diseases on the planet currently. If it's gone, the population most affected by it is going to skyrocket, and waddaya know, another top killer disease is gonna pop up and just continue where malaria left off

And if it doesn't, what's to keep the human population of just crazily exploding out of all proportion and just monumentally farking up the place anyway?

OK, bastard reasoning over with. Sounds like an awesome idea!

FuryOfFirestorm: Now if only we could make WASPS immune to affluenza...

You sound communist.

Smoking GNU: OK, just to play devils advocate here, What happens after we eliminate malaria? It's one of the top killer diseases on the planet currently. If it's gone, the population most affected by it is going to skyrocket, and waddaya know, another top killer disease is gonna pop up and just continue where malaria left off

And if it doesn't, what's to keep the human population of just crazily exploding out of all proportion and just monumentally farking up the place anyway?

OK, bastard reasoning over with. Sounds like an awesome idea!

More cheap labor too.

Smoking GNU: OK, just to play devils advocate here, What happens after we eliminate malaria? It's one of the top killer diseases on the planet currently. If it's gone, the population most affected by it is going to skyrocket, and waddaya know, another top killer disease is gonna pop up and just continue where malaria left off

And if it doesn't, what's to keep the human population of just crazily exploding out of all proportion and just monumentally farking up the place anyway?

OK, bastard reasoning over with. Sounds like an awesome idea!

The unintended consequences of this should be interesting. For everything we fix, something else breaks. That is the cycle that makes life interesting and worth living. We will never fix everything and there will always be new and terrible illness and disease for every cure. In the end it is the tragedy that drives us to keep going. Nature keeps us eternally busy.