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[Harry Baldman]

Still reading more deeply, but, from what I skimmed, the damage to the species of interest (Malaria) is a side-effect of a neutral mutation in a second species (Mosquitoes) that the species of interest happened to need in its transmission cycle.

It's interesting, and I laud the idea, but it's not monumentally useful for eradicating most invasive species. Great for killing things with parasitic development stages, but I'm not still not seeing how it could be used directly.

Indirect defense, by modifying the native species to make it more able to combat the invader, raises different moral questions.

That's actually not the one, the one that the Science Breakthrough of the Year guys were referring to was these guys for the first bit with malarial resistance, and then these dudes for the second bit with actual eradication. Still skimming this one, but it apparently only renders one of the sexes infertile - females. Males remain fertile, but still carry the relevant mutation plus the mutagenic chain reaction system to make it homozygous under a vast majority of circumstances.

[Draignean]

Still reading more deeply, but, from what I skimmed, the damage to the species of interest (Malaria) is a side-effect of a neutral mutation in a second species (Mosquitoes) that the species of interest happened to need in its transmission cycle.

It's interesting, and I laud the idea, but it's not monumentally useful for eradicating most invasive species. Great for killing things with parasitic development stages, but I'm not still not seeing how it could be used directly.

Indirect defense, by modifying the native species to make it more able to combat the invader, raises different moral questions.

That's actually not the one, the one that the Science Breakthrough of the Year guys were referring to was these guys for the first bit with malarial resistance, and then these dudes for the second bit with actual eradication. Still skimming this one, but it apparently only renders one of the sexes infertile - females. Males remain fertile, but still carry the relevant mutation plus the mutagenic chain reaction system to make it homozygous under a vast majority of circumstances.

Clever. So the fitness of the males isn't impeded, but the fitness of the female is literally reduced to 0. It might take a while to eliminate a population, but it would certainly give you massive reductions after a generation or ten.

EDIT: You borked the link, but I got it from the quote.

[Harry Baldman]

It probably helps that mosquito generations are pretty short. Although good luck getting the go-ahead on releasing a vector like this into the wild, nobody's gonna allow that in a million years.

And fixed the link as well.

[Folly]

It's probably fine to wipe out a species, as long as you have the technology to replace it with a new better species. Or at the very least, keep it's DNA on file somewhere in case some day you are feeling nostalgic and want to bring the mosquitoes back for a while.

[Draignean]

And nobody should for the second one.

The first one, reducing malarial transmission to humans, is a good idea as far as I can see. (Except for the fact it would lead to a population explosion that would hopefully be counteracted by money redirected from medical aid to civic development)

The second one, crippling an entire species, is like standing at the opening to the vast machine that is the eco-system and throwing a bag of wrenches inside.

Mosquitoes serve many important purposes, wholesale eradication is a bad idea.

It's probably fine to wipe out a species, as long as you have the technology to replace it with a new better species. Or at the very least, keep it's DNA on file somewhere in case some day you are feeling nostalgic and want to bring the mosquitoes back for a while.

Don't delete sub-programs when you're not exactly sure what uses them. New and better are very subjective terms, and the interactions between species are rarely simple enough to be modeled so easily.

[Harry Baldman]

It's probably fine to wipe out a species, as long as you have the technology to replace it with a new better species. Or at the very least, keep it's DNA on file somewhere in case some day you are feeling nostalgic and want to bring the mosquitoes back for a while.

That's not the issue at all. Screw species or diversity, it's horizontal gene transfer and shit like that people are concerned about. Viruses, for instance, are cheeky fuckers, they nab sequences and adapt at lightning speed purely by virtue of combining overwhelming numbers with poor genetic fidelity. If one accidentally makes off with your mutagenic chain reaction system and propagates (and it's a not insignificant possibility that one will), that's it, the whole thing's out there for good, kind of like antibiotic resistance but possibly even worse.

[Draignean]

It's probably fine to wipe out a species, as long as you have the technology to replace it with a new better species. Or at the very least, keep it's DNA on file somewhere in case some day you are feeling nostalgic and want to bring the mosquitoes back for a while.

That's not the issue at all. Screw species or diversity, it's horizontal gene transfer and shit like that people are concerned about. Viruses, for instance, are cheeky fuckers, they nab sequences and adapt at lightning speed purely by virtue of combining overwhelming numbers with poor genetic fidelity. If one accidentally makes off with your mutagenic chain reaction system and propagates (and it's a not insignificant possibility that one will), that's it, the whole thing's out there for good, kind of like antibiotic resistance but possibly even worse.

Ugh. I hate that angle.

We need genetic level copyright protection. Which isn't impossible, but adds a whole new level to the problem.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The real question is, is the possibility of that worth enduring the certain reality of millions of malaria deaths? I can't honestly say that it is, especially since it presupposes we have genetic modification technology to respond with.

[Harry Baldman]

The real question is, is the possibility of that worth enduring the certain reality of millions of malaria deaths? I can't honestly say that it is, especially since it presupposes we have genetic modification technology to respond with.

We have no idea what the actual possibility entails. Who really knows what a virus could achieve when provided a tool for genetic calibration calibrated for maximum efficiency by meticulous human effort, then allowed to mutate and play around with it for effectively infinite generations? The problem with viruses is that they're specifically evolved to take extreme advantage of outside chances.

By that same line of reasoning, the certainly real economic losses endured at the mouthparts of cane beetle larvae are a clear indication that we must seed Australia with cane toads to provide them with a natural predator. You can have the best intentions and use a seemingly sound method and still create a situation that is immeasurably worse simply because you did not foresee something that seemed highly improbable at the time.

[Draignean]

The real question is, is the possibility of that worth enduring the certain reality of millions of malaria deaths? I can't honestly say that it is, especially since it presupposes we have genetic modification technology to respond with.

It is absolutely worth enduring the certain reality of millions of malaria deaths.

The horizontal gene transfer HB is talking about would in effect turn whatever virus happened to get lucky during propagation into a retrovirus that could spit that back into whatever else it happened to infect.

No, viruses aren't as bad as bacteria about bumping into each other and swapping things around, BUT there are still weird interactions where viruses can swap DNA to other viruses.

It's a very, very outside chance, but if it goes wrong you run the risk of having a random virus running around with the ability to sterilize populations. (Or worse, mutate the gene you gave it it something new and terrifying.)

The original edit needs relatively primitive gene manipulation. If it got out of hand, responding via a similar approach would be rather difficult- since you're no longer editing a single species, you're trying to track down whatever virus happened to pick up your piece of gene-code and eradicate it, as well as trying and fix the rampant damage that's already been done.

I'll stand by the approach to give mosquitoes parasite resistance, but trying to sterilize them opens up a whole new can of worms.

Eloquently Ninja'd.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Aren't we talking about the resistance plan? I have no idea when this became mosquito extermination instead of malaria extermination.

That said, in the case of mosquito extermination, I have doubts that a mutation of a mosquito destroyer could successfully sterilize species dissimilar to mosquitoes.

[FantasticDorf]

'Humanists' would start popping up prompting to abandon our roots and re-embrace our humanity, regardless of what happens, with a gene editing future conclusion there will always be a small group of people who are just standard humans. Likely kept in isolated sociologically artificial structured areas of land much like wildlife preserves or small communities such as the first nations of america with legal protections . Actual humans otherwise might be sectioned for research and closely bred like cattle with links to their lineage, might even wear tags too in such a way that.

> Being non-genetically altered in society could be literally illegal, and you and your typical children/hybrid children could be deported to the communities for fear of spreading disease, good old genetic based -phobia discrimination, or being a demonised scourge on human progress. Families torn apart over genetic ties, as what such happens under laws in America with children of Native American heritage in a sense. Confiscated by social services to be part of their 'community' rather than their families.

> "I am a typio-human and i was born this way, i have the right over my own body to remain like this, i choose to die within my lifespan as a conscious choice" ad campaigns by pro-humanist groups that might end up being banned by the far right government born out of genetically enhanced 1 percent with godlike capabilities, able to commit coups and with absolute power are often detract and cold from others.

> Historic prescription of gene editing over drugs means that disease research is slashed and the information is preserved in a time capsule, if you are sick in this century where medical professions only deal with rare physical wounds then you will likely die, typio-humans suffer plagues in their communities, naturally and induced by scientists and specialists within a tightly kept field.

> Practically the Stanford prison experiment, as immortal genetically enhanced group of nearly untoppable scientists no less flawed than the average human despite their feats put in a position of power play god with much more 'inferior' humans and conduct testing with any number of scenarios, both malicious and strange.

Genetic engineering makes better humans, but it doesn't make better people, its all one big Aesop.

[Draignean]

Aren't we talking about the resistance plan? I have no idea when this became mosquito extermination instead of malaria extermination.

That said, in the case of mosquito extermination, I have doubts that a mutation of a mosquito destroyer could successfully sterilize species dissimilar to mosquitoes.

I should clarify my point. Resistance is a good idea IF my earlier oh-god-why of some form of copyright protection is in place.

Otherwise you have HB's point. If a virus gets a copy of the mechanism you used to initiate the drive gene's insertion, then it has an unbounded number of iterations to play with it.

It doesn't matter how long it takes, if it finds one bad combination of insertion protocol and insertion gene, whatever it hits is fucked.

Again, one wrong copy, and there's suddenly a retro-virus with an unknown payload running around.

[Harry Baldman]

It wouldn't really be a retrovirus, but rather the excision system meant to eliminate retroviruses and their like. The idea of CRISPR/Cas9 genetic editing is that it excises a selected sequence that is then replaced by homologous repair typically used by the cell to repair breaks in double-stranded DNA, taking as a template the other accessible allele.

You could make the rather reasonable counterargument that CRISPR is a bacterial system, so if a virus were to appropriate it for its own use, it would probably have done so already in the billions of years since its invention if this was at all possible. Or that it's probably too large and involved a system to carry in the capsid of any conventional virus as compared to the benefit it provides. On the other hand, I'm fairly certain that this particular combination of CRISPR and a nuclease, calibrated specifically to work in an invertebrate organism and seemingly not subject to any of a number of viral defense mechanisms that any genome worth its salt can trot out, might present something that evolution has not yet fully accounted for, yet might be very ready to exploit from an initial template released into the wild and exposed to uncountable potential transmission events as opposed to the mere millions of billions possible in the lab.

All in all, it's very difficult to say. It might be perfectly all right to even eradicate mosquitoes with it. Nothing at all might go wrong. But it's highly incorrect to say that millions of malaria deaths is the worst case scenario, or even among the worst case scenarios, at least not without some solid research done and effective failsafes made. And even that might not be good enough to convince your average ethics board or national government (just look at something as mostly harmless as Bt corn). They're very familiar with doomsday scenarios by training and extremely exacting as far as masters go.

[scrdest]

I doubt a virus would bother with CRISPR. I mean, what advantage does it have, from a virus' point of view? If they want to integrate, they just slap that shit in wherever, they don't care. They don't need a functional product, only their sequence propagated as much as possible. You could make the case retrotransposons are the ultimate evolutionary success of an integrating virus, they get a free ride so long as the progeny of the infectee is around.

The whole reason CRISPR is big in molecular bio is that it's both relatively easy to use and, crucially, accurate. We've had accurate tools before (ZFNs, TALENs), but they were a bit of an ass to handle. Viral CRISPR would just be limiting itself, like trying to cut down a tree with a scalpel instead of an axe.