Color me skeptical. The article is correct; other species would rise to fill the niche emptied by mosquitoes, and the world would achieve a stable equilibrium, but the same could be said for eliminating eagles or horseshoe crabs or wheat. Just because we'd be less itchy and never catch malaria doesn't mean our lives wouldn't be negatively impacted in unforeseen ways.
Hell, for all we know, polio is the cure to HIV and HIV is the cure for cancer. I'm not saying "Oh god save the mosquitoes," I'm saying there could be negative impacts beyond the consideration of the scientists performing the study.
The End Times are why True Believers are not only Pro-Life but also Pro-’liferation (of nukes). At least, according to that Maher movie, and the Left Behind series.
Malaria kills 1-3 million people a year, most of them children. Unless you think the lack of mosquitoes is going to kill millions of children every year, you should heavily favor exterminating mosquitos.
No. That's only part of the analysis. Mosquitoes may benefit, as well as harm, humans. For example, they may be keeping more dangerous animals or diseases in check in extremely subtle ways.
We can always keep some mosquitoes in a cage in the CDC in the unlikely event that they do turn out to be useful. Of course, I would be very interested to know what kind of benefits mosquitos provide to humans. Remember that while malaria's death toll is 1-3 million, there are 350–500 million infections per year. The cost of these infections is immense, both economically and in terms of human suffering.
"We can always keep some mosquitoes in a cage in the CDC in the unlikely event that they do turn out to be useful."
Say we kill all mosquitoes in the wild, and then discover that they were in fact protecting us from some Awful Thing. By the time we become aware of this, it may be too late to eliminate the problem by simply reintroducing caged mosquitoes to the wild, because some irreversible critical mass or adaptation may have happened in the meantime. (This is a Black Swan argument; it's a vaguely-defined scenario that seems very unlikely but potentially catastrophic.)
"The cost of these infections is immense, both economically and in terms of human suffering."
No doubt. But what we want is a cost-benefit analysis of removing mosquitoes from the ecosystem. Pointing to one large and obvious benefit does not help us calculate the costs.
Scientists did the cost-benefit analysis and came down hard on the side of mosquito extinction.
I have described the immense harm caused by mosquitos. I have looked equally hard for mosquito benefits and found none that can't be provided by other species. To stand on the side of keeping mosquitos, you must find a benefit that outweighs trillions of dollars of lost economic output, millions of man-months of suffering, and several million deaths per year.
And the less likely your proposed benefit of mosquitos is, the better it must be to win in the expected value calculation.
I think you overestimate how well we can predict the effects of a sudden extinction. From the Nature article:
"Views differ on what would happen if that biomass [of mosquitoes in the Arctic tundra] vanished. Bruce Harrison... estimates that the number of migratory birds that nest in the tundra could drop by more than 50% without mosquitoes to eat. Other researchers disagree...."
We're seeing disagreement on a hypothetical mosquito extinction's effect on the number of nesting birds in a certain area. If the experts are unsure of this, then it's fair to say that the total, detailed ecological impact is not precisely understood.
Also from the Nature article:
"Without mosquitoes, thousands of plant species would lose a group of pollinators. Yet McAllister says that their pollination isn't crucial for crops on which humans depend. 'If there was a benefit to having them around, we would have found a way to exploit them,' she says."
So if mosquitoes disappeared, thousands of plant species could be threatened. The researcher says that's probably okay, because if humans aren't directly using those plants, they're probably not important to us. But what about indirect benefits of those plants? Would the effects on those plant species have significant ripple effects on other species? I don't know. The Nature article doesn't talk about that.
Does this seem like the rigor necessary to justify a sudden ecological change in an extremely complex system on which billions of human lives depend? I don't think you can call this a sure thing.
>I would be very interested to know what kind of benefits mosquitos provide to humans.
As ab9 said, they could be outcompeting other pests that host far, far worse parasites. If mosquitoes were to disappear, these other pests would multiply to take over the niche and we would have something worse than malaria on our hands.
Of course, I'm not sure if there's anything like this. There certainly are other parasites, but I haven't heard of any where the hosts compete directly with mosquitoes. Then again, with something as huge as nature, there is always something waiting to be discovered. For example, we have been in contact with the host species for ebola for millions of years. Yet, ebola first appeared as late as 1976.
Something feels very wrong here. I can imagine a creature that promotes small amounts of blood sharing between different humans or creatures has positive as well as negative effects - and by definition we don't know what unknown benefits it has.
So let's kill malaria instead. How can we do that?
Comments
Color me skeptical. The article is correct; other species would rise to fill the niche emptied by mosquitoes, and the world would achieve a stable equilibrium, but the same could be said for eliminating eagles or horseshoe crabs or wheat. Just because we'd be less itchy and never catch malaria doesn't mean our lives wouldn't be negatively impacted in unforeseen ways.
Why not extend that logic to malaria itself? Or cholera, HIV, or any other pathogen? Perhaps start selling "Save the plague!" bumper stickers?
Hell, for all we know, polio is the cure to HIV and HIV is the cure for cancer. I'm not saying "Oh god save the mosquitoes," I'm saying there could be negative impacts beyond the consideration of the scientists performing the study.
If we exterminate the plague, how will we know when the end times are upon us?
The End Times are why True Believers are not only Pro-Life but also Pro-’liferation (of nukes). At least, according to that Maher movie, and the Left Behind series.
Don't forget the christian organizations that pay to send Jews to Israel since that's also a pre-requisite for the End Times...
as the Italian comedian Corrado Guzzanti pointed out, True Believers are not only Pro-Life but also Pro-After-Life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg5pSwsHni0
Malaria kills 1-3 million people a year, most of them children. Unless you think the lack of mosquitoes is going to kill millions of children every year, you should heavily favor exterminating mosquitos.
No. That's only part of the analysis. Mosquitoes may benefit, as well as harm, humans. For example, they may be keeping more dangerous animals or diseases in check in extremely subtle ways.
We can always keep some mosquitoes in a cage in the CDC in the unlikely event that they do turn out to be useful. Of course, I would be very interested to know what kind of benefits mosquitos provide to humans. Remember that while malaria's death toll is 1-3 million, there are 350–500 million infections per year. The cost of these infections is immense, both economically and in terms of human suffering.
"We can always keep some mosquitoes in a cage in the CDC in the unlikely event that they do turn out to be useful."
Say we kill all mosquitoes in the wild, and then discover that they were in fact protecting us from some Awful Thing. By the time we become aware of this, it may be too late to eliminate the problem by simply reintroducing caged mosquitoes to the wild, because some irreversible critical mass or adaptation may have happened in the meantime. (This is a Black Swan argument; it's a vaguely-defined scenario that seems very unlikely but potentially catastrophic.)
"The cost of these infections is immense, both economically and in terms of human suffering."
No doubt. But what we want is a cost-benefit analysis of removing mosquitoes from the ecosystem. Pointing to one large and obvious benefit does not help us calculate the costs.
Scientists did the cost-benefit analysis and came down hard on the side of mosquito extinction.
I have described the immense harm caused by mosquitos. I have looked equally hard for mosquito benefits and found none that can't be provided by other species. To stand on the side of keeping mosquitos, you must find a benefit that outweighs trillions of dollars of lost economic output, millions of man-months of suffering, and several million deaths per year.
And the less likely your proposed benefit of mosquitos is, the better it must be to win in the expected value calculation.
I think you overestimate how well we can predict the effects of a sudden extinction. From the Nature article:
"Views differ on what would happen if that biomass [of mosquitoes in the Arctic tundra] vanished. Bruce Harrison... estimates that the number of migratory birds that nest in the tundra could drop by more than 50% without mosquitoes to eat. Other researchers disagree...."
We're seeing disagreement on a hypothetical mosquito extinction's effect on the number of nesting birds in a certain area. If the experts are unsure of this, then it's fair to say that the total, detailed ecological impact is not precisely understood.
Also from the Nature article:
"Without mosquitoes, thousands of plant species would lose a group of pollinators. Yet McAllister says that their pollination isn't crucial for crops on which humans depend. 'If there was a benefit to having them around, we would have found a way to exploit them,' she says."
So if mosquitoes disappeared, thousands of plant species could be threatened. The researcher says that's probably okay, because if humans aren't directly using those plants, they're probably not important to us. But what about indirect benefits of those plants? Would the effects on those plant species have significant ripple effects on other species? I don't know. The Nature article doesn't talk about that.
Does this seem like the rigor necessary to justify a sudden ecological change in an extremely complex system on which billions of human lives depend? I don't think you can call this a sure thing.
>I would be very interested to know what kind of benefits mosquitos provide to humans.
As ab9 said, they could be outcompeting other pests that host far, far worse parasites. If mosquitoes were to disappear, these other pests would multiply to take over the niche and we would have something worse than malaria on our hands.
Of course, I'm not sure if there's anything like this. There certainly are other parasites, but I haven't heard of any where the hosts compete directly with mosquitoes. Then again, with something as huge as nature, there is always something waiting to be discovered. For example, we have been in contact with the host species for ebola for millions of years. Yet, ebola first appeared as late as 1976.
But what if the more dangerous things that Mosquitos are keeping in check would rid us of even more dangerous things, if there were more of them?
"Moquitoes don't kill people, Malaria does"
Something feels very wrong here. I can imagine a creature that promotes small amounts of blood sharing between different humans or creatures has positive as well as negative effects - and by definition we don't know what unknown benefits it has.
So let's kill malaria instead. How can we do that?