Should we perhaps not focus our efforts on eradicating blood suckers like mosquitoes? Extinction please! Caveat: Mosquitoes may have important functions like pollination.
What would be the environmental impact of a successful eradication? I bet, there would be few attempts to reintroduce these bloodsuckers once they are extinct.
"The sprawling Wolbito do Brasil facility in Curitiba is abuzz with innovation—and the drone of millions of mosquitoes.
It is the world’s largest “mosquito factory”—producing 100 million eggs of a modified Aedes aegypti mosquito each week in scaled-up efforts to combat dengue and Zika.
The modified mosquitoes, dubbed “wolbitos,” are infected with Wolbachia, a bacterium that blocks virus transmission and is passed to offspring.
Operational hurdles: The facility has had to overcome a range of logistical challenges: fine-tuning climate control, switching blood sourcing, ensuring some insecticide resistance, and cultivating community buy-in in the face of misinformation.
Taking flight: The factory released its first wolbitos last month in Santa Catarina and plans to release more soon in Brasilia."
"... The wolbito strategy, which is being spearheaded by the non-profit World Mosquito Program (WMP), has already shown success in Colombia, Indonesia and at home: in the Brazilian city of Niterói in the southeast, dengue cases dropped by 69% in areas where Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes were released, compared with areas where they weren’t1. Brazil’s federal government has adopted the approach to fight dengue infections — which surged to a record 6.5 million confirmed cases in the country last year — alongside other preventive measures such as vaccines. ..."
This is the world’s largest ‘mosquito factory’: its goal is to stop dengue "Raising millions upon millions of disease-fighting mosquitoes per week is no easy task, Nature learnt during its visit to the facility."
Who needs bloodsuckers?
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