I wouldn't want to be one of the people who advocates for it, and then it turns out to be a giant disaster. The potential risk seems huge and could affect generations. Although I it would be pretty easy to hedge against that risk by keeping some mosquitos/eggs alive in a lab, and if the experiment goes wrong, re-populate the mosquitos.
From an economic perspective, how does the cost of all this research compare to mass producing malaria medicine?
The purpose of this is to stop the current giant disaster of 1000+ people a day dying from malaria.
I can't help thinking that if this was affecting American middle class neighborhoods where environmentalists live, the mosquitos would be wiped out quicker than plastic straws.
As for bears, we have them back home in eastern europe, in fact vastly overpopulated given the area available and their territoriality. Practically no attacks on cyclists, hikers etc (yes like 1 every year or two something minor, more people die from ticks and tripping over stones and roots). If you make any noise while in the forest, they will notice you from far and avoid you.
That said, we don't have grizzly or polar bears, those are a bit different and majestic beasts.
As for general discussion, your point doesn't make much sense. We could wipe out just types of mosquitoes responsible for super-deadly diseases like malaria and dengue (and few others) and keep the annoying but otherwise harmless suckers still around. In my subjective opinion we wouldn't even notice the transition (at least not in the bad sense).
My impression is that malaria was wiped out in the rich world by methods that we now deny to Africa, like DDT.
I also believe malaria is a human only disease, so if you cure all sick humans fast enough, the disease dies out, and you're left with mosquitos that only suck blood and are annoying.
I suspect the problem with malaria drugs is not producing them at a factory, but getting them reliably into all sick patients in places where there aren't even doctors or roads.
Anyway, you claim this is a real solution: Is anyone actually ready to do this for real? If not, it's not a real alternative to the gene drive.
So no, unfortunately, curing all the humans will not wipe out malaria. The only real solution is to drive the mosquito vector to extinction, everything else is a temporary half-measure.
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/ma...
Guess what the result was: it exacerbated the Great Chinese Famine, in which 15–45 million people died of starvation. Because with no sparrows to eat the insects, locust populations ballooned, swarming the country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign
Don't eradicate a species, before you're really sure it's not going to cause much larger problems.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/01/6987087...
That goes for wanting humans to suffer too: even the most "evil" among us are doing the best they know how, for some value of "best" that their brains arrive at as a result of the genetic lottery and the "programming" that they've had as a result of their lifetime of experiences. That certainly doesn't mean that we shouldn't vigorously oppose some of the things that such folks try to do. But at least an effort at compassion should be the default response. (As a certain Middle Eastern sage is reputed to have said circa 2,000 years ago: Love your enemies.)
That Middle Eastern sage also reputed to have talked about those who would not listen to him being cast into outer darkness where there was weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth, and the worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.
This is so infuriating. Many people will die during this extended hemming and hawing.
Humans have driven countless important species to extinction with no thought, but we have to vacillate over a species that is responsible for more deaths than all the wars in human history combined?
My only reservation about driving the mosquitoes to extinction with a gene drive is that we can't guarantee that the mosquitoes will suffer.