Engineering the extinction of this kind of hugely prolific and adaptive species looks to me like a mind-bogglingly hard problem, which the smart people linked to in the post are not directly working on (they're doing local control with superfancy lasers and possibly poisonous bait, so will probably only be offering sexy alternatives to mosquito nets and sprays). A possible approach would be to introduce mosquitoes that have a big competitive advantage over their peers initially but are ultimately (a few generations down) fucked, but to date I think humans have only figured out how to do that kind of thing with investment banks. (A hematologist friend once told me of another possible approach he thought might well work, but I was a bit drunk and he was speaking Greek, and in any case Gates said no.) A promising alternative that would render moot concerns about the eco-dangers of wiping out the mosquito would be to genetically engineer mosquitoes incapable of transmitting the parasite. That's apparently been done, but without the new safe mosquito having the survival advantage needed to dominate the species. See following, with footnote link to original paper: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100715172002.ht...
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Engineering the extinction of this kind of hugely prolific and adaptive species looks to me like a mind-bogglingly hard problem, which the smart people linked to in the post are not directly working on (they're doing local control with superfancy lasers and possibly poisonous bait, so will probably only be offering sexy alternatives to mosquito nets and sprays). A possible approach would be to introduce mosquitoes that have a big competitive advantage over their peers initially but are ultimately (a few generations down) fucked, but to date I think humans have only figured out how to do that kind of thing with investment banks. (A hematologist friend once told me of another possible approach he thought might well work, but I was a bit drunk and he was speaking Greek, and in any case Gates said no.) A promising alternative that would render moot concerns about the eco-dangers of wiping out the mosquito would be to genetically engineer mosquitoes incapable of transmitting the parasite. That's apparently been done, but without the new safe mosquito having the survival advantage needed to dominate the species. See following, with footnote link to original paper: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100715172002.ht...