Maggie's Farm

Here's the thing - you wipe out one species of mosquito another is going to fill that slot - get rid of that one and another...and so on and so on. It is the way nature works - and it's not nice to mess with Mother Nature.

And what about the Lorenz's "Butterfly Effect" where a small change at one place in a nonlinear system can result in large differences to a later state (the butterfly in China flaps its wings starting air to move resulting in a hurricane in Florida). What end result would wiping a species out intentionally have?

It seems to me that this is a ecological disaster just waiting to happen. Lots of birds, fish, reptiles and other such critters use insects as a staple of their regular diet - in particular mosquitoes (do you spell mosquitoes with an e? My spell checker says so - I honestly don't know).

Let's assume that this works - mosquitoes wiped out. What's next? What disease vector are we going to eliminate next? Flies? Fleas? What - where does all this lead us? I'm not an ecological nazi by any stretch - progress is progress, but there is a point where progress is counter productive and with this technology, we may be reaching the point where we sow the seeds of our own destruction leaving the world for the ants and cockroaches - assuming that we haven't eliminated them too.

I don't disagree. This isn't an unintended consequence like silver/big head carp or the accidental introduction of the Northern Snakehead into an ecosystem.

This is a human attempt to modify the surrounding ecosystem by eradicating a complete species.

I don't care how you want to justify it, there are real and, yes, unintended consequences to actions like this. And there are very real moral and ethical questions not to mention is this a way to eradicate a disease vector or is it just getting grid of a pest?

Now if you designed a system like this to eliminate the Northern Snakehead or the Burmese Python in the Florida Everglades - go for it. That would be a valid use of this technology.

Eliminating a native species that exists, disease vector or not, should take more consideration.

Well somebody had to be.

You are both right of course - my point being that messing around with extant ecosystems ON PURPOSE isn't a smart idea and I honestly don't care how valuable it might be in terms of reducing disease.

There must be other ways to control these outbreaks that doesn't include mosquito genocide. :>)