That’s great. If we can drive disease carrying ones to extinction why do we need to keep buying this?
Re:Good News Against Dengue
by mattmaroon on Monday April 15, 2024 @06:39PM
(#40046507)
You probably can't drive them to extinction this way. The introduced mosquitoes only help within a small range (~400m I think) of where they put the little devices they come from, because that particular mosquito doesn't travel far from where it's born. And even within that range, a 95% reduction is great, but the year you stop, that 5% will just start doing whatever they did before and a couple years later you'll be back to where you were beforehand.Insect populations grow exponentially.
I’ve been following this for years just out of curiosity. It’s a brilliant solution and a brilliant business model. Because the genetic alteration kills the mosquitoes, you have to keep buying them from the company. It both makes it so that there’s seemingly little risk to the environment and subscription revenue.