GM mosquito immune to malaria

Is this an appropriate place for Scrooge jokes about decreasing the surplus population?

Scrooge? o-o As in Christmas Carol character? Or Scrooge Mc Duck? ._. How is that related to anything?

If I said something with Unfortunate Implications then I apologize, I'm rather depressed and cynical currently...

edited 25th Oct '11 10:33:47 AM by SpookyMask

Christmas Carol, he's justifying why he won't give to charity.

Oh, okay.

As in the Charles Dickens character.

Anyways, Malaria has historically been a major cause of death in the world (perhaps even more people have died from Malaria in all of history than from all of history's wars combined); and was one of the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire. More people have died from malaria than from any other disease. To eradicate it now would be a true achievement.

edited 25th Oct '11 10:37:56 AM by ATC

I'm in rather cynical mood, and I never considered getting world rid of all diseases that good thing.(well, except flu) Unless humanity has reached to the point where population doesn't grow so fast that.

I make a similar argument usually but the difference between mine and yours is that "It's called domestication people" is not true and you don't really have anything else in there other than that bad use of Personal Dictionary.

See, what I say is that direct manipulation of the genome has no effects beyond the ultimate expression of that genome which is to say the oversized fruit, the thick insect resistant leaves and the like. The genome is so fundamental that nothing happens in the organism unless we wish it, every chemical's existence is directed by it so the only thing to think about are the interactions of these ultimate expressions with the surrounding environment. These things can have adverse and unpredictable effects just as new breeds in new environments lead to sometimes disastrous effects. However we have a history of those and an understanding of them and with our greater genome control a greater ability to overcome those issues with innovation.

Another problem with GM is patents. Once Upon a Time we watched a documentary on GM at school. A company doing GM for agriculture (think it was Monsanto, but this was 2 years back so I'm not 100 % sure) found a gene which affects the growth of pigs and got a patent for the gene. Now guess what happened to the people in Germany who had the same gene in their pigs naturally. Hint: pig farmers up against the biggest corp in the field.

Now, that is a good point. This GM mosquito will only rid the world of malaria if the company that owns it will allow it to be released in sufficient numbers in malaria-ridden areas.

How much are they going to charge for it and can the nations afford it?

edited 25th Oct '11 5:49:00 PM by LoniJay

We can set up another thread for GM in general. My specific whinge is that the GM Mosquito has glowing eyes, a clsssical emblem of evil.

last I hear the case got throw out of court on the unusually common sense grounds that the corporation didn't invented the gene only discover it.

I actually read an article in TIME Magazine that said that eliminating malaria in Africa would go a huge way in helping them to move forward and out of the quicksand they find themselves in.

I'll try and find that one...

Yeah, that is funny

This is the kind of thing where GM could be a really good thing, if only the people in charge did it to get rid of Malaria instead of some secondary gain like money.

hey if their eyes glow how can they see?