August 9, 2016 • 44 mins
In humanity's ongoing war against mosquito borne illness, some of the most innovative offense comes in the form mosquito breeding programs. Yes, these "mosquito factories" are all about manipulating the enemy rather than simply killing them. Join Robert and Christian as they explore the world of GMO mosquitoes, Wolbachia bacteria and the possible wages of mosquito eradication
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I am
Christian Seger. Hey. The other night, I went outside to
bring my dogs in before we went to bed covered
(00:23):
in mosquito. B It's it's that season, it is. I
was just and I can't do anything, like even if
I get out there and I start putting the spray on,
they get to me before then. Yeah. We uh, we
have we have a company that comes in sprays the
yard with some sort of biologically friendly stuff. It's not
friendly to the mosquitoes obviously, or I think to the
bees either, but it allows us to actually go out
(00:45):
in our yard and not have to worry as much
about the mosquitoes. But yeah, this is a terrible time
for mosquitoes just in general. Uh. And on top of that,
we have all the added concerns about the zekov right,
especially because like as we're recording this, there's just been
announced that it's zico virus has been found in Florida, right,
which we are in Georgia. That's not that far away. Uh,
(01:07):
And I suspect highly that there are a lot of people,
especially pregnant women, who are very concerned about that. Yeah.
I mean I have a couple of friends who are
currently pregnant and they have been, uh, very very mindful
of the scenario. So we thought it would be a
good opportunity to talk a little bit, a little bit
about mosquitoes in general, the pressure on what this organism is,
(01:28):
why they're so successful, but more importantly getting into one
of the more unique strategies out there to combat the mosquitoes,
that is the mosquito factory. Yeah, and you covered this
for How Stuff Works now was it last week? So
if if you you guys are interested in hearing more
about this and diving a little deeper. Robert both wrote
(01:49):
an article about it, and uh did a short video
that's about three minutes long. And I imagine that we'll
be able to post that to our social media fairly
soon too. Yeah, and that'll contain a link to our
podcast probably in the podcast landing page will definitely have
links back to the blue. We can combine them all,
so like, depending on how deep you want to dive
into mosquito land, you know, it's all right there in
one suite for you. But but the video is really
(02:11):
cool because you talk about this new innovation in China,
which is a big part of what we're gonna talk
about today, using Walbakia bacteria in mosquitoes to try to
basically kill off the population of mosquitoes that spread dengae
fever and zica. Yeah, to kill off, but also to
manage and redefine. Really so it's it's pretty interesting because
(02:33):
it goes it's we'll discuss it goes beyond merely wiping
out your enemy but also manipulating your enemy, and there's
there's you know, potential consequences to rewards like that as well.
We're gonna talk about all of that today on the episode.
But to start off, we're gonna we're gonna discuss the
enemy itself, the mosquito. And the mosquito is a weird
(02:53):
creature to to discuss because it it's unlike most of
the creatures that you're able you're generally going to encounter
in your daily life. It is most certainly the enemy. Yeah,
it's true, right, Like nobody feels sorry for mosquitoes, even like,
like I'm a as as people know from listening to
this show, we talk about this sometimes, I'm a vegetarian,
and yet like if I'm getting bitten by mosquito, my
(03:16):
automatic reaction is like smack that thing, you know, get
it or get it away from me as fast as possible,
you know. Even uh geez, Like even cockroaches sometimes I'll
be like a little nicer to and like try to
scoop them up and get them out of the house
or something. But a mosquito, I'm just like, no, I
don't want to deal with this. Yeah, there's just there's
absolutely no remorse, and it's it's been weird raising a child.
(03:38):
My son is now four, and we've been really trying
to emphasize that you need to be compassionate. And you know,
we don't just sqush bugs because they're there. We we
take an interest in them. We give them the distance
they need, and when we find something the house, we
light it out, you know. But the mosquito, that's the
the only creature where we've taught him. Oh, if you
see one of those who snack it um, and if
(04:00):
you see it on someone else, you can even smack it,
you know, whatever the costs. This is our enemy and
we must defeated, no matter no matter what. Yeah. Yeah, well,
especially like I don't know if your son is like this,
but I remember growing up, like my mom used to
always say like, oh, they love your ears, because I
would get just mosquitoes would go right behind my ears always,
and maybe that was just like the best source of
(04:22):
blood or something like that. They're they're drawn to him, um,
and he he seems to have more of a reaction
to him. And he's the kids, so he scratched him
more so. So even on days where I'm not wearing sprays,
like we're just spraying all sorts of stuff on him
and the injury's covered up. Otherwise, they just eat him
a lot. Yeah. Yeah, And it's uh, We've we talked
about this a little bit on our vampire episode when
(04:44):
we when we were talking about the science of vampires
drinking blood, right, and we sort of compared it to
the mosquito and the science of that. If you're interested
in that, you go back and check out that episode.
But this made me think of that, right because of
the like the sort of idea of if you just
let mosquitoes drink you constantly, it would still take them
(05:04):
like months to drain a body. And yet like they're
such a constant annoying pest because they don't drink you
all at once. They just get a little sip here,
a little sip here exactly from this guy, a little
from this gal. And I think if I remember from
the Vampire episode that was sort of the proposal for
the functional vampire was that's how they should operate as well, right,
all right, So let's talk about this, uh, this most
(05:26):
perfect organism, the mosquito. The world is currently home to
roughly thirty five hundred named species of mosquitoes, though only
about two hundred or so directly bother humans. Um. And
you can't really blame him, right because, I mean, just
look at us, like the mosquito. We thrive with these
throughout most of the world. We also offer large expanses
(05:48):
of relatively hairless skin, all of it coursing with delicious blood.
And we have we tend to be distracted by stuff.
You know. It's like my son walks outside, he's just
doing his thing. Yeah, I'm working on the porch, and
then everybody else in the neighborhood is playing Pokemon Go,
just just just sitting there waiting to be sucked dry
by the mosquito. Somebody should do a study on the
(06:09):
effect of pokemon go on on mosquito population. Probably it's
probably done a lot for him. We also have to
remember two of those species, though it's only the females
that are drinking blood. Yeah, that's that's one of the
important factors here. The females drink the blood because they
have to use the blood to UH as part of
(06:30):
their reproductive cycle to actually develop the eggs. The males
they do not drink the blood. And we'll and we'll
get back to the difference between the males and the
females in a minute. Um. Mosquitoes in general, though they're
accomplished flyers, as you know very well from your attempts
to kill them. Their skills at infiltrating human habitats. They can,
they hitch c spanning rides. They invade new continents, as
(06:53):
we see with the invasive yellow fever carrying aidis agypty
in South America. They also benefit from an inc readibly
fast reproductive cycle. All they need is the tiniest bit
of standing water to deposit their eggs in, which developed
into their aquatic wriggling larva. UH. Abandoned swimming pools and
bird baths are great, but they can also make do
with a pet bow, candy rapp or even like just
(07:16):
small puddles and cracks in the earth. So one of
the things that I read for this that didn't make
it into the notes was that in Brazil, where they're
very you know, we're gonna talk about that later, and
I'm very concerned about this. Uh, they actually sent military
out home to home to make sure that there weren't
tires in the yards filled with water. Yeah, because that
big of a problem they need to, like, uh, their
(07:37):
primary concern is managing these these stale water sources are sorry,
stagnant water sources. But but you know, it's one of
those things where, yeah, you can go to homes, you
can sweep the area, and you can turn over old
old kiddy swimming pools and old tires, but they're all
those little things, I mean, just a candy wrap. You know.
They're just wonderful infiltrators. And they have four stages that
(07:59):
there's the adult, there's the water surface eggs, and then
there's the sub surface larva. They breathe through snorkels of
sort a little breathing tracheal tubes that poke up through
the surface of the water and then when those developed,
then the mosquito comes up up to the surface, flies off,
and they're ready to go. Yeah, they're vicious, and then
they like it's so incredibly quick. And that's part of
(08:22):
the difficulty of trying to manage their populations too, is
how fast they breed and their cycle of life is.
Now they've been with us a while. They've been around
roughly one hundred million years, according to the sources I
was looking at, And according to Dark Banquet author Bill
Shoot we mentioned on the vampire episode because that's an
(08:43):
excellent book about blood drinkers in general, with an emphasis
on bats, but also some of the discussion of mosquitoes.
He points out that the oldest evidence for blood feeding
actually comes from a fossil proto mosquito from the Triassic
period two hundred twenty million years ago. Now, this is
the time when there were no flowering plants, so the
elongated probiscus on this creature is thought to have functioned
(09:05):
more or less like the modern mosquitoes. I'm imagining that
they were bigger, though everything was bigger. Yeah, it's it's
like the one that Homer Simpson kills. Yeah, exactly. It
travels back in time. Now you'll find mosquitoes and every
continent except Antarctica, they thrive, and even our most exhaustive
steps to eradicate them often only serves to do them
(09:26):
in for a short period of time. Uh, there's a
there's an article in Technology Review that came out recently
looking at some of the efforts were discussing here, and
they pointed out that Brazilian officials declared invasive yellow fever
carrying a Us a Gypti mosquitoes eradicated in night following
some rather intense efforts. Is kind of door to door
kind of thing we're talking about here, only to experience
(09:47):
reinvasion in the decades to follow, and then you're right
back where you were to begin with. Yeah, it's uh,
that was that was a time where they were they
were using a lot of sprays as well as like
sort of like you know, like you said, door to
doorm management, trying to make sure everyone was following sort
of best practices, and yet here they are it's back
worse than ever. Now, this is interesting. We've we've mentioned
(10:08):
the difference between males and females, even though the females
are the only ones doing the blood drinking both sexes
of the of mosquito take advantage of plant nectar for nourishment, right, Yeah,
that's one of the big concerns along the lines of
eradicating them is what would it do to the plant
population that's pollinating. Yeah, yeah, we'll and and we'll we'll
get into that and the like I think the final
(10:30):
portion of the podcast. But yeah, people often don't realize
that that in addition to drinking blood, they're also visiting
these different plants um and the female blood drinking. If
nothing else, that really knocks the already shaky science foundation
out from under. The two thousand five sci fi original
picture Man Squito, in which a half man, half mosquito
(10:52):
hybrid sucks blood and seeks out a female mate. If
you've seen this, I've not seen it. I'm I've heard
of it, and I gosh, I can't remember off the
top of my head, but I just feel like there
are a lot of sort of giant mosquito or or
where mosquito type things in like some pretty trashy science fiction. Actually,
(11:12):
you know what's a good one. In that China Mieville
boss Log universe, there's a species I think they're called
the anopolies or something like that. Uh, and their mosquito
women that like zip around on wings and like attack
people and drain them dry. Well he got the sex
right at Yeah he did. Well, you know Meavil does
(11:32):
his research. Now. I don't want to hate on Manskitot
too much because the director uh Pbore Takas. He actually
gave us the super fun Night seven film The Gate.
I yeah, I like the Gate I saw that recently,
and and to follow up the Night ninety Nines the
gate To, both of which were yeah, tremendous fun. Yeah.
I think a young what's his name, the villain from
(11:54):
the first Blade movie was in Oh, yeah, you're right, God,
what is his name? Stephen Dorff? That's the one. Okay, yeah,
young Stephen Dorff demon summoning wishes granted and then wishes
turning into poop after the fact that it's a pretty
fair that's like back when they made horror movies for
little kids, and I guess we have goose bumps nowadays. Well,
(12:14):
you know, maybe we'll get back into that. I feel
like that's one of the strengths of the recent Netflix
hit Stranger Things, so it catch into that that childhood
adventure scenario exactly. Um, certainly, even though I don't think
there are any direct references to the Gate in that show,
that's a little bit of the Gates DNA. Yeah, alright,
So anyway, the females do feed on the blood, and
(12:36):
they feed on it a lot, and they feed by
dipping into an organism's blood and then another organism's blood
and then another, making them an ideal disease factor. Yeah.
So this is where the real problem comes about, and
especially with this atis a Gyp dy uh species, because
they're the ones that really are carrying so many of
these diseases that are problematic for the human population. Of course,
(13:00):
one of the big ones, the most famous one perhaps
even malaria, and according to some estimate estimations, mosquito born
malaria kills one human being every twelve seconds. That's how
pervasive a problem this is. Well, they're also responsible for
dog heartworm, also dengay fever, which we're gonna be talking
about a lot today. You mentioned yellow fever already. There's
(13:22):
also estern equine and sephalitis. St. Louis encephalitis, lacrosse and scephalitis,
Western equine and sephalitis all is there a plural for encephalitis.
I think we just sephalitis is just created, and then
West Nile virus, and now of course zekra, which everybody
(13:42):
is very concerned about. Now, I just wanted to give
us like a very tiny primer. Obviously there's a lot
of out there about ZEKEI right now, but you know, frankly,
like I wasn't quite aware of like the actual symptoms
of it. For most people, it just causes a mild rash.
The real concern here is the link to four thousand
Brazilian children that were born with microcephaly or what's sometimes
(14:04):
called shrunken heads um. But we currently don't have a
vaccine for ZEKA, and developing a vaccine could take years,
so that there's a lot of concern about it. Also,
I believe it is sexually transmittable as well. Yeah, see
I did not know that. So it's it's we're continuing
to learn exactly how it works and the problems and
(14:26):
trying to fight it, which often comes back around to
fighting mosquitoes, fighting the the the vectors that are spreading
it from one person to the next, And in the
past we've depended on powerful and secticides like DDT to
curb mosquito populations, but we've been forced to try different
approaches in recent years, including the use of of a
natural occurring soil bacterium called Bacillus the ginus that actually
(14:51):
kills the insect larva. And then of course there are
there are more advanced techniques, and that's really what we're
going to talk about today. Some of these these really
really intriguing ideas that go far beyond nearly gassing the countryside. Yeah,
so let's take a quick break and then when we
come back, we're going to talk to you about the
mosquito factory, in particular one that's in China and another
(15:14):
in Australia. So, yes, the first couple of mosquito factories
as they're called because they are we should just go
and get this out of the way. They are basically
endeavors to breed mosquitoes and pump them out to essentially
(15:34):
math produced mosquitoes, pump them out into the population in
an attempt to control the shape of that population. So
this is one of the limitations of the podcast medium. Uh.
And but what we'll be able to add some of
this to the landing page. The Atlantic did a great
article photojournalism article that we used as a resource for
(15:55):
this to learn more about it. And it was a
series of I want to say, like what twenty photos
of the inside factories and man alive it. It made
me itchy just looking at them. Uh. It's it's photos
of what the inside of these labs look like, how
they've they've got like it shows people just these jars
filled the mosquitoes, or they've got racks where they've got
(16:17):
mosquito larvae and they're like manually picking out the males
from the females. And it's just until you see it,
it really doesn't I don't know ring home just how
how literal the term mosquito factory is. Yeah, and the
these particular efforts we're gonna talk about first here. First
of all, the there's one in Guando, China, and that's
(16:39):
what the photos referred to. And there's another one in
Australia as well. Yeah, and these are both utilizing a
technique that involves the use of walt Bacchia bacteria. Yeah.
So while Baccia its full name is I believe wal
Baccia pipientis, which sounds cute, pipientis, it's like a hobbit
(16:59):
uh uh Walbakia is a bacterium and it inhibits Zeka
and other viruses by preventing the fertilization of mosquito eggs.
So when you reapply it over time to multiple generations,
it can kill off an entire species of mosquito. The
percentage of mosquitoes carrying it subsequently increases, and outbreaks can
(17:20):
then be contained and reduced. Wal Baccia. Now, if some
of you out there are immediately you know, worried, Oh
my god, we're just putting this thing out into the world.
What is it, Well, don't worry just yet about walbaccia.
It already occurs naturally in some mosquito species, but not
in the adis a gypty that we're we've been talking
about already that's responsible for spreading all these diseases, right,
(17:40):
and it also does not pass on to humans, right
it like can't. My understanding is it cannot physically fit
through the probiscus. It's actually present and up to six
of all different species of insects that exists around us already,
and it's reportedly, like as you just said, safe for
humans animals in the environment. Uh, they've actually conducted two
(18:03):
independent risk assessments on wall Bacia and they found that
it has negligible risk rating when it's released in mosquitoes.
So that brings us to Guang Joe, China, which is
where they're actually doing this now. Yeah, and uh and
as well discussed they've they've been reporting some promising results.
(18:23):
They're rearing and releasing these mosquitoes that are infected with wallbaccia.
Uh and and really you've already touched on this, but
the two key ideas here is that first, it renders
the mosquitoes incapable of carrying a wide range of dangerous pathonges,
including including zaga. And this is a quirk that mosquitoes
pass on to their offspring. So the parents have wallbakia,
they'll pass that on. But of course this also again
(18:45):
plays into the overall population because when a male walbaci
infected mosquito mates with an uninfected female, the resulting eggs
don't hatch. It's only when both mates carry Wallbachia that
the union results in a viable egg, and then that
offspring has wallbakia. Is well. So it's it seems really
almost kind of perfect, right because it's it's it's it's
(19:06):
it's making the creature unable to carry the illness that
is the problem, and it eliminates those the that that
do not carry this disease inhibiting agent. Yeah, it's it's
it seems almost too perfect. Um, which is you know,
I mean my spider sense immediately, no pun intended, immediately
(19:29):
goes off when I hear stuff like this, because I'm like,
really like for messing with nature on this level where
the repercussion is going to be Um, it's essentially mosquito eugenics. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um.
The factory in particular that we're talking about, quote unquote
factory in China, it's based out of the sun Yat
Sen University collaboration with Michigan State University. They have a
(19:51):
joint Center of Vector Control for Tropical Diseases there and
basically what they're doing is they're releasing this infected population
of mosquitoes on a place called shaw Zi Island and
they claim they've had a nine suppression rate of the
population of the species ADUs albo pictus there. Otherwise, that
(20:13):
one is known as the Asian tiger mosquito. That's the
one that carries Zeka in China. My question is, and
I didn't have time to look into this, and I
didn't get a sense of it from the Atlantic article.
But I'm wondering who lives on Shahzai Island, and in particular,
like what's their risk both of Zeka and from these
altered mosquitoes. Right, So there are a lot of pictures
(20:34):
in the Atlantic article showing families like kind of hiding
under mosquito nets and like dealing with their everyday life
just staying away from mosquitoes as much as possible. But
why is that the perfect place other than other than
that's an island, right. I look around for an answer
to this as well, and I didn't really get a
good sense of it. I have been to Guangzhou and
I have visited Shaman Island, which is um a little
(20:58):
bit up river, I believe, from it, and I was
looking at the map and trying to figure out how
closely word of each other. But I guess the important
thing to to keep in mind here is that, uh,
both of these islands in particular are on the Jojang River,
the Pearl River, which cuts through the gateway city, the
Chinese gateway city of Guangzhoe, which has a population of
(21:21):
thirteen point zero eight million people, So you compare that
to the eight point fifty five million people in New
York City, right, Yeah, that's and that's a veritable feeding
ground for mosquitoes. Yeah, I mean it's a it's a
staggering metropolis, quite a blood behink from mosquitoes, and you
have this major waterway and all these additional waterways just
(21:41):
running like veins through the whole thing. So it's a very, um,
very wet city. Yeahs you could say. So that's kind
of perfect for for what we're talking about, both for
breeding the mosquitoes to battle these diseases, but also just
for mosquitoes naturally. Um. The other thing that I was
wondering by looking at this photo essay was that they
show the lab text like I mentioned earlier, separating the
(22:04):
male larva from the female larva. Wondering how you do that, like, um,
not how to use sex mosquito larva? Yeah exactly, Yeah
not not, I don't mean like how like you know,
what are your tweezer size whatever? Yeah? Yeah, that was
interesting to me as well. So if there's anybody out
there listeners who know a little bit more about this,
(22:25):
uh and or you've been to this particular area in China.
Let us know, because I'd love to know more about
it and maybe we can catch up on it like
a listener mail episode. Yeah, I I I spent several
days there and it it was a very very hot month.
I remember a lot of staggering through parks to get
bit by mosquitoes. Did not I didn't. I don't remember
(22:45):
having any problem with mosquitoes while I was there, But
this was several years ago, so maybe the problem has
been more pervasive in recent years. Well. One of the
things that I found interesting, and it connects the Chinese
experiment to the Australian one we're going to talk about,
is that they're both supported by the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation. They may be part of the same project,
(23:07):
but one stat I saw said that the Wallbakier research
in China was given forty million dollars by the Gates Foundation,
whereas the research UH in Australia I think was like
something like sixty maybe. Um, so maybe it's a combined
effort over time, but so this is something that they're
very interested in helping out with, right and and stressing
(23:28):
again like both of these efforts are not only about
tackling a regional problem, but also developing techniques that could
be utilized elsewhere across the world. So the Australian project
that I mentioned, that's happening in a place called Townsville,
which is within Queensland, and that project is part of
a global initiative. Now China wasn't included in this list,
(23:49):
but it's also happening in Colombia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Brazil.
Brazil will be talking about later. And the basic idea
here is they want to test whether they can slow
the spread of these disease is with wallbaccia. Like we
were talking about the same process. They injected hundreds of
thousands of adis at Gypti mosquito eggs with walbaccia. Uh
(24:10):
and so far it seems like it's being somewhat successful, right, Yeah,
you already mentioned the suppression rate um in Guangzhou, and
then we I've I've also read and this was this
is from Eliminate DNA dot Com that has a lot
of material on on the efforts, with of course an
emphasis on eliminating DNA fever. But they point out that
(24:32):
research has shown that walbaccia can sustain itself in mosquito
populations without continual reapplication. So in other words, you know,
it's talking about how it gets passed on, and you
need the male and the female that both have waalbaki
in order to create walbakia infected offspring. Well, if all
you have, all we have to do, and not to
(24:52):
make it sound super easy, but you just have to
reach that that appropriate threshold of infection to where there's
essentially no coming from the mosquitoes. Mosquitoes now in this region,
in this area, on this continent in particular, are all
going to have lall bacia. On that note, we were
going to look at another mosquito factory option, that of
(25:13):
genetically modified mosquitoes. Let's talk about this. Uh, they're genetically
modified mosquitoes, specifically Brazil is where they're being tested at.
You seem to have coined an amazing title here. Uh,
and if it hasn't yet, it's surely going to be
a science fiction horror movie in the next twenty years.
(25:34):
What is it? Gmosquito? Yeah, Gmo Squito. I love it.
Um it works better textually, I think, But yeah, it
might be the name of the next man Squito s right,
Maybe it's a sequel to Mosquito. Um. So there's a
company called ox a Tech and it's a UK company
(25:54):
and they specialize in this genetic modification of mosquitoes. They
changed the d nay of the mosquitoes so that they
can only live for four days and so that their
offspring won't get past the larval stage. They call these
the friendly eighties, I think, referring to that species title
that we've been using earlier. Now. Oxy Tech is owned
(26:17):
by Intrexon. I love these names and X in there.
Why does the house of works? But we should start
spelling it with works, like with an X at the
end of it. Oxy Tech is owned by in trucks On.
That's a US conglomerate and that owns This was a
weird phrase, but I felt like we had to mention it.
Quote a portfolio of transgenic organisms. Oh yeah, because if
(26:38):
you have the recipe, you exactly the dish. Yeah. And
so my understanding was that I was like, everything from
fish to plants. They they have a lot of transgenic organisms. Uh,
and now they have these mosquitoes as well. Yeah. And
I think we've touched on this before on the show.
But transgenic organisms are not. It's not all necessarily related
(26:58):
to like here's a here's an new taken a wild
animal going to release this. There's a lot of it's
experimental and a lot of it is industrial in nature
and not necessarily something with a with a backbone and
a and uh in a brain. You know. There's a
lot of transgenic bacteria and whatnot. Yeah, exactly. So this
pilot program is taking place in Pira Chicaba, Brazil, and
(27:22):
basically the idea here is they want to design something
that will create a cost effective method for cities across
the world to stop mosquito spread disease. They started in April. Now,
this is the same year that there was a huge
epidemic of Dengey fever there that caused more than one
point five million cases in Brazil. Now, the actual breeding
(27:44):
factory for the similar to the one that we talked
about in China and the other one that's in Australia,
is in Campinas, Brazil. They produced two million mosquitoes a week.
Basically what they do, same process. They made the mosquitoes
and they divide them by sex. The workers actually use
these little electrified tennis rackets to protect themselves. Oh yeah,
These are the kinds you can buy at your local Walmart. Exactly. Yeah,
(28:08):
they show them in the lab. They felt one hand,
you know, I don't know, separating out the larva, and
the other hand is on this tennis racket just you know,
ready to whack mosquitoes around. Both zeka and dengue, as
we've previously mentioned, are spread by this ATIS mosquito, So
that's why they're studying it there. Brazil in particular, as
we mentioned, has this long history of mosquito problems. Uh so,
(28:31):
yet another reason. They declared that the Atis was eradicated,
but they were not. Uh So, how much is this
actually working? How much are they changing? Um oxy tech.
They first came up with the idea in two thousand twelve.
They released sterile males to compete for mates out in
the out in the wild. They engineered their mosquitoes so
(28:53):
that they would overproduce a protein that will kill them
unless they are fed an antibiotic called tetrapsyche lean. Without it,
the mails and then subsequently their offspring just die off.
It's a little different than what's going on with the
wall Baccia, but the same premise essentially. Yeah, and actually
this is a similar strategy. That's that's rolled out with
a number of different transgenic organisms to prevent them from
(29:16):
from thriving in the wild and make them depend on
something that I can't want to get in the lap. Yeah.
In fact, I was actually talking to Joe about this
before we jumped in the studio, our co host and
stuff to Blow your Mind, and Joe told me that
on his other podcast, Forward Thinking, they've talked about this before,
in particular using crisper to gene edit, and it's referred
to as a gene drive. Uh. And they've talked about
(29:38):
that sort of broader implication not just mosquitoes but other
species as well. Um, so another part of the genetic
modification process. This is interesting. They make the larvae glow
with the fluorescence that only shows up when they're exposed
to a special light. So this allows them to sort of,
you know, they find breeding grounds. They hover this light
sort of like the strain. That's what I'm thinking. You know,
(30:00):
they've got these ultra violet lights. They hover it over
and they can see which ones are are there, gmosquitoes
or not. So there's very much like the not the
notched ear on a feral cat. That has been spared. Yeah. Yeah,
so they're looking to see, you know, how successful their
efforts are with that. There's also work being done in
other u S labs in California and Virginia, and they're
(30:22):
using crisper to cause the gene drive that I mentioned,
same premise here. This would be used to drive adis
a gypty into extinction. They weave the insects DNA differently
than the given genes, spreads to all of the mosquitoes offspring,
and this is a process that is referred to as
super inheritance. Uh. This leads to a population replacement by
(30:42):
spreading the gene, and it makes mosquitoes unsuitable hosts for
certain pathogens like Zeka danae, all these things that we're
worried about. Basically, it makes all the offsering mail so
they they're just going to eventually die off. Now, this
is hotly debated, and we've we've hinted at this already,
but there's a lot of concerns about how this would
affect the ecosystem, especially as you noted, whenever you bring
(31:04):
up the terms GMO about anything, people people's tackles get raised. Uh.
So there's some fear out there, that the DNA could
change and might jump to other insects, or that if
something went wrong, these scientists wouldn't be able to recall it. Uh,
And what if there was a biological niche that these
mosquitoes were feeling that you know, we need and we
(31:25):
get rid of it. And we'll talk a little bit
about that at the end of the episode. But you know,
there's some concerns there, rightfully. So, I mean when I
hear stuff like this, I immediately think of, like again
sci fi movies, Like I think of something like Children
of Men, Like you know, Children of Men begins, and
like there's you can no longer breed children. And they
I don't think they ever really like give any kind
of like science e reason as to why. But you know,
(31:48):
if you wanted to conspiracy theorist, wise you could extrapolate
from this something like that. Right. Well, it's funny that
you mentioned conspiracy theories, but because of course there has
been a specific conspiracy theory that has proven rather difficult
to eradicate in Brazil based on these activities. Yeah. In fact,
the conspiracy theory is is that because of the genetic
(32:10):
modification that they're doing, they think that this caused zica.
I mean, it doesn't make scientific sense, but it makes
no but but it makes conspiracy theories sense because you
have here, you have this mosquito you're toying with. It's
a its ability to create healthy offspring. And then we
look at some of the ramifications of of zica, particularly
(32:30):
on on pregnant humans, and you can see how that
feeds into this, uh, this conspiracy narrative. Yeah. Absolutely, So
you know a lot of debate about that. We're going
to talk about sort of the good and and and
you know, risky aspects of this a little bit later.
The question is is this successful? Does this work? You know,
same as the wall Baccia. Well, after ten months of
(32:52):
testing it in two small neighborhoods in Brazil, they say
that the number of Dengee cases there went from a
hundred and thirty three to one per year. They also
say that the program has decreased wild mosquitoes by more
than eighty percent in the neighborhoods that they treated. Now,
this is just two neighborhoods. For it to really work
on a large scale, they're gonna have to release massive
(33:15):
numbers of these mosquitoes and continuously to protect all of
the pyre at Chicaba City. It's gonna take three billion
bugs a year. That would cost seven dollars in fifty
cents per person per year, which means that the city
would have to spend around two point seven million dollars
a year. Now here's the rub that's almost exactly the
(33:37):
same amount of money that they currently spend on sprays,
larva sides and all of their sick leave costs related
to these mosquito spread disease. So city officials are looking
forward to making this switch. They kind of see it
as like a one for one swap. Uh, But there's
a problem. Brazil barely has the money to pay for
(33:58):
something like this right now. Mean, certainly this is a
Brazil's money problem, so that this has been an important
news story of late. Yeah, I mean we hear about
it in relation to the Olympics. But like you know,
think about your city manager and you're trying to deal
with a problem like this, Uh, do you have the
two point seven million dollars a year to spend on
(34:19):
this experimental gmo mosquito that you're gonna release. And they're
already conspiracy theories about gaining traction with the populace. What
do you do? And here's the thing, Brazil's bio safety
agency has actually approved them, but they still can't be
sold commercially because they actually require this is oxy tech
here requires certification from Brazil's medical regulator. Now, despite this,
(34:43):
the city has already entered into an agreement to spend
eight hundred thousand dollars over two years to protect something
around sixty people using this method. Now, the actual gene
editing that that would eradicate mosquitoes, that's a couple of
years away from actual use here. And then that leads
to the conspiracy theory that you mentioned earlier, which is
(35:04):
that these GM mosquitoes are causing ZEKA, that they're part
of the problem. And you know, I can only imagine
where it goes next from there, you know, there, I
don't know, we're gonna start turning into Oh, maybe that's
the origin story for man squito is the GM mosquito
comes and stings you and then you give birth to
a man squito. Okay, it still doesn't explain why why
(35:25):
man squito is sucking blood. But yeah, now for this
last portion of the podcast episode, I'm I'm going to
discuss some of the arguments for keeping mosquitoes. But before
we do that, go ahead and just hit us with
all the bad mosquito talking points you can whip out. Well. So, yeah,
I looked at an article justifying why we should just
(35:47):
annihilate mosquitoes. Basically, uh, and this isn't me speaking, this
is the article, but the source mainly comes from Walter
Reed Army Institute of Research, which is based in Silver Spring, Maryland.
They study mosquitoes. They're uh. In fact that the stories
about how they study the mosquitoes they are absolutely insane.
Like they feed them ground up fish food and then
(36:08):
they offer them bellies of unconscious mice to drain the
blood out of. And they said that the mosquitoes drain
the blood out of twenty four mice a month. Um,
so I'm assuming that they actually kill these mice, but
they knock them out first. Now, even these scientists who
spend all day interacting with these mosquitoes and studying them,
(36:29):
when they were asked about this, we're like, oh, yeah,
we'd be much better off about them kill them. Uh.
Malarious bread by mosquitoes infects two hundred and forty seven
million people per year and it kills one million people
per year, not to mention all those other diseases we've
already mentioned. So the question here really is would mosquitoes
be missed in the ecological system if we just utterly
(36:51):
exterminated them. Well, we know they're everywhere, right, so they
probably have a lot of role in the cyst them
And that's true. It could leave a predator without a prey,
or it could leave a plant without a pollinator. Yeah,
I mean these are both really important factors because mosquitoes,
first of all, they make up a fairly huge slice
of the biomass on our planet. They serve as food
(37:13):
for various invertebrate and vertebrate species. We're talking beetles, fish, birds, bats, dragonflies,
et cetera. The larva are especially uh an important gobbled
up in aquatic environments. And you can also look at
it this way. They're providing an important uh benefit here
to aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems by converting pyramisium and other
(37:35):
first level consumers into high quality insect proteins. Oh yeah,
that is a good point. I Uh. I mentioned Bill
shoots uh excellent book Dark Banquet earlier in that he
rolls out some various estimates for how many mosquitoes bats eat,
and the the upper estimate, and this is one that
that he actually has some problems with, but just to
give you an idea, the upper estimate is as many
(37:56):
as six hundred mosquitoes per hour. So even IF's if
it's less than that, bats eat a lot of mosquito.
So if you remove that, what are they going to eat? Well,
that's interesting because one of the things that I read
said that bats are the perfect model to look at
how some predators would move to other insects because when
they have the option, that's prefer to eat moths and
(38:18):
they have a much smaller percentage of mosquitoes in their
bellies when they're opened up. Okay, So so the bats
might be okay, maybe we don't know. Um. Also, just
a quick note on the pollination issue. We already mentioned
about how both both sexes of mosquitoes visit flowers and
are involved in pollination. Uh, they're particularly involved in various
(38:42):
orchids species. So if you if you value a beautiful
orchid like like a lot of people, bear in mind
that mosquitoes may play an important role in and in
carrying on that species through pollination. So there's here's a
really weird repercussion that I have never thought of, but
it goes to show you sort of that circle of
(39:03):
life thing that just like there's a or a butterfly
effect that we could never predict. Uh. So, apparently mosquitoes
highly affect caribou herds and what their migratory patterns are
because if there's clouds of mosquitoes along a certain way,
the caribous sense that they swerve out of the way
and it changes their directional patterns. I've seen, Yeah, I've
(39:25):
seen this featured on documentaries before concerning cariboo and perhaps
maybe misremembering here, but perhaps reindeer as well, where the
the the airborne parasites become just such a problem that
they'll they'll go to higher altitudes where they're not bothered
by but of course there they don't have is as
as good in access to food exactly. So, So how
(39:46):
does all of that change if we just utterly get
rid of mosquitoes, you know, uh, what does that do
to cariboo and then subsequently what does that do to
the human population. Yeah, this is interesting because basically with
the cariboo, the mosquitoes are an obstacle and the pattern
of their life revolves around circumventing those obstacles, and we
(40:08):
see that in human history as well. UH science writer
David Quaman proposed this several years back, and I believe
Robert Kroulwitch talked about this in a blog post that
also picked up additional attraction in recent years. But uh
Kuaman proposed that the ravages of mosquito born illnesses in
many equatorial rainforest at forest areas actually staved off the
(40:31):
advance of human exploitation until the twenty one century. I
remember seeing this as well, that they're sort of like
the guardians of the rainforest. Yeah, they're the swamp thing
that evil here because just of the the pervasive nature
of mosquito born malaria and other illnesses just keeping us
from from just completely tearing it down and exploriting it. Well.
(40:54):
And then the other argument in favor of destroying mosquitoes is,
let's face it, if we eradicated them, there would be
more people, right, Like mosquitoes spread, These diseases killed millions
of people every year, and in a sense they are
managing our population exactly. So do the costs of an
(41:14):
increased human population outweigh the benefits of a healthier human population. Yeah,
that's because you can't. That is not something you can
argue in a political environment, or you can barely argue
with just in in human conversation and say, hey, sure
malaria related deaths are horrible, but they're keeping our numbers down,
(41:34):
so we should you know, you just can't argue that
we should, that we should keep an illness around, right
if we can fight it. Yeah, So, I mean it's
it's a tough one and scientists on both sides of
it are they're arguing about it, but they're also kind
of at a loss, like do we do this? I mean, now,
keep in mind, like the stuff that we talked about
today of the walbakia and the genetically modified thing, this
(41:55):
is restricted to one species of mosquito. They're not they're
not destroying all mosquitoes. But because again, only like two
hundred out of dred are actually a past to us,
So we wouldn't be taking out all the mosquitoes. But certainly,
as we've discussed, just focusing on a few taking them
on entirely, are we pulling the biological jinga block out
(42:17):
too too close to the bottom that who knows. Only
time will tell, but it it definitely sounds like the
origin story for some kind of science fiction horror masterpiece, so,
you know, or a utopian dream it might be in
which you don't have to worry about going. Maybe this
will fix everything. Maybe this is the answer to wicked problems.
Just kill all the mosquitoes. Well, I'm sure some of
(42:39):
you out there listening and are like, I have an
opinion on this. Well, you want to share that opinion
with us. There's lots of ways to do so. You
can reach out to us on social media. We're on Facebook,
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If you search for Blow the Mind, you'll find us.
Look look for the little head with the exploding symbol.
(43:00):
Although our logo might be changing soon. That's exciting, true. Yeah, uh.
And then you can always go to stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. That's not just where the podcasts live.
We've got all kinds of stuff there. We've got the
videos that we do, we've got articles that we write.
Robert's blog posts about electronic music that we mentioned in
the last episode about a musea. So there's lots of
stuff going on in the Stuff to blow your mind,
(43:23):
eCos system that you might be missing out on that
aren't just podcasts, and maybe their pokemon there. I don't
know if there could be there everywhere. Yeah, they could
be in I bet that's where mew two lives. Which
that's like the super powerful one. That's crazy rare. That's
actually Pikachus, a super powerful one. Pika choose the protagonist man.
But mew two is like the it's genetically modified. Actually,
(43:46):
wait are they all? So they're heroes and villains among
the Pokemon. It's more along the lines of that they're
all the neutral depending on who catches them and what
they do with them. But mewtwo was genetically modified and
evolved into like a super sentience psychic Pokemon that wanted
to take over in destroy the world. Okay, well, hopefully
Mosquito Factories won't go in that direct. Yes, and as always,
(44:08):
if you want to reach out to us the old
fashioned way, the email address is blow the Mind and
how stuff works dot com. For more on this than
thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works dot
com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I am
Christian Seger. Hey. The other night, I went outside to
bring my dogs in before we went to bed covered
(00:23):
in mosquito. B It's it's that season, it is. I
was just and I can't do anything, like even if
I get out there and I start putting the spray on,
they get to me before then. Yeah. We uh, we
have we have a company that comes in sprays the
yard with some sort of biologically friendly stuff. It's not
friendly to the mosquitoes obviously, or I think to the
bees either, but it allows us to actually go out
(00:45):
in our yard and not have to worry as much
about the mosquitoes. But yeah, this is a terrible time
for mosquitoes just in general. Uh. And on top of that,
we have all the added concerns about the zekov right,
especially because like as we're recording this, there's just been
announced that it's zico virus has been found in Florida, right,
which we are in Georgia. That's not that far away. Uh,
(01:07):
And I suspect highly that there are a lot of people,
especially pregnant women, who are very concerned about that. Yeah.
I mean I have a couple of friends who are
currently pregnant and they have been, uh, very very mindful
of the scenario. So we thought it would be a
good opportunity to talk a little bit, a little bit
about mosquitoes in general, the pressure on what this organism is,
(01:28):
why they're so successful, but more importantly getting into one
of the more unique strategies out there to combat the mosquitoes,
that is the mosquito factory. Yeah, and you covered this
for How Stuff Works now was it last week? So
if if you you guys are interested in hearing more
about this and diving a little deeper. Robert both wrote
(01:49):
an article about it, and uh did a short video
that's about three minutes long. And I imagine that we'll
be able to post that to our social media fairly
soon too. Yeah, and that'll contain a link to our
podcast probably in the podcast landing page will definitely have
links back to the blue. We can combine them all,
so like, depending on how deep you want to dive
into mosquito land, you know, it's all right there in
one suite for you. But but the video is really
(02:11):
cool because you talk about this new innovation in China,
which is a big part of what we're gonna talk
about today, using Walbakia bacteria in mosquitoes to try to
basically kill off the population of mosquitoes that spread dengae
fever and zica. Yeah, to kill off, but also to
manage and redefine. Really so it's it's pretty interesting because
(02:33):
it goes it's we'll discuss it goes beyond merely wiping
out your enemy but also manipulating your enemy, and there's
there's you know, potential consequences to rewards like that as well.
We're gonna talk about all of that today on the episode.
But to start off, we're gonna we're gonna discuss the
enemy itself, the mosquito. And the mosquito is a weird
(02:53):
creature to to discuss because it it's unlike most of
the creatures that you're able you're generally going to encounter
in your daily life. It is most certainly the enemy. Yeah,
it's true, right, Like nobody feels sorry for mosquitoes, even like,
like I'm a as as people know from listening to
this show, we talk about this sometimes, I'm a vegetarian,
and yet like if I'm getting bitten by mosquito, my
(03:16):
automatic reaction is like smack that thing, you know, get
it or get it away from me as fast as possible,
you know. Even uh geez, Like even cockroaches sometimes I'll
be like a little nicer to and like try to
scoop them up and get them out of the house
or something. But a mosquito, I'm just like, no, I
don't want to deal with this. Yeah, there's just there's
absolutely no remorse, and it's it's been weird raising a child.
(03:38):
My son is now four, and we've been really trying
to emphasize that you need to be compassionate. And you know,
we don't just sqush bugs because they're there. We we
take an interest in them. We give them the distance
they need, and when we find something the house, we
light it out, you know. But the mosquito, that's the
the only creature where we've taught him. Oh, if you
see one of those who snack it um, and if
(04:00):
you see it on someone else, you can even smack it,
you know, whatever the costs. This is our enemy and
we must defeated, no matter no matter what. Yeah. Yeah, well,
especially like I don't know if your son is like this,
but I remember growing up, like my mom used to
always say like, oh, they love your ears, because I
would get just mosquitoes would go right behind my ears always,
and maybe that was just like the best source of
(04:22):
blood or something like that. They're they're drawn to him, um,
and he he seems to have more of a reaction
to him. And he's the kids, so he scratched him
more so. So even on days where I'm not wearing sprays,
like we're just spraying all sorts of stuff on him
and the injury's covered up. Otherwise, they just eat him
a lot. Yeah. Yeah, And it's uh, We've we talked
about this a little bit on our vampire episode when
(04:44):
we when we were talking about the science of vampires
drinking blood, right, and we sort of compared it to
the mosquito and the science of that. If you're interested
in that, you go back and check out that episode.
But this made me think of that, right because of
the like the sort of idea of if you just
let mosquitoes drink you constantly, it would still take them
(05:04):
like months to drain a body. And yet like they're
such a constant annoying pest because they don't drink you
all at once. They just get a little sip here,
a little sip here exactly from this guy, a little
from this gal. And I think if I remember from
the Vampire episode that was sort of the proposal for
the functional vampire was that's how they should operate as well, right,
all right, So let's talk about this, uh, this most
(05:26):
perfect organism, the mosquito. The world is currently home to
roughly thirty five hundred named species of mosquitoes, though only
about two hundred or so directly bother humans. Um. And
you can't really blame him, right because, I mean, just
look at us, like the mosquito. We thrive with these
throughout most of the world. We also offer large expanses
(05:48):
of relatively hairless skin, all of it coursing with delicious blood.
And we have we tend to be distracted by stuff.
You know. It's like my son walks outside, he's just
doing his thing. Yeah, I'm working on the porch, and
then everybody else in the neighborhood is playing Pokemon Go,
just just just sitting there waiting to be sucked dry
by the mosquito. Somebody should do a study on the
(06:09):
effect of pokemon go on on mosquito population. Probably it's
probably done a lot for him. We also have to
remember two of those species, though it's only the females
that are drinking blood. Yeah, that's that's one of the
important factors here. The females drink the blood because they
have to use the blood to UH as part of
(06:30):
their reproductive cycle to actually develop the eggs. The males
they do not drink the blood. And we'll and we'll
get back to the difference between the males and the
females in a minute. Um. Mosquitoes in general, though they're
accomplished flyers, as you know very well from your attempts
to kill them. Their skills at infiltrating human habitats. They can,
they hitch c spanning rides. They invade new continents, as
(06:53):
we see with the invasive yellow fever carrying aidis agypty
in South America. They also benefit from an inc readibly
fast reproductive cycle. All they need is the tiniest bit
of standing water to deposit their eggs in, which developed
into their aquatic wriggling larva. UH. Abandoned swimming pools and
bird baths are great, but they can also make do
with a pet bow, candy rapp or even like just
(07:16):
small puddles and cracks in the earth. So one of
the things that I read for this that didn't make
it into the notes was that in Brazil, where they're
very you know, we're gonna talk about that later, and
I'm very concerned about this. Uh, they actually sent military
out home to home to make sure that there weren't
tires in the yards filled with water. Yeah, because that
big of a problem they need to, like, uh, their
(07:37):
primary concern is managing these these stale water sources are sorry,
stagnant water sources. But but you know, it's one of
those things where, yeah, you can go to homes, you
can sweep the area, and you can turn over old
old kiddy swimming pools and old tires, but they're all
those little things, I mean, just a candy wrap. You know.
They're just wonderful infiltrators. And they have four stages that
(07:59):
there's the adult, there's the water surface eggs, and then
there's the sub surface larva. They breathe through snorkels of
sort a little breathing tracheal tubes that poke up through
the surface of the water and then when those developed,
then the mosquito comes up up to the surface, flies off,
and they're ready to go. Yeah, they're vicious, and then
they like it's so incredibly quick. And that's part of
(08:22):
the difficulty of trying to manage their populations too, is
how fast they breed and their cycle of life is.
Now they've been with us a while. They've been around
roughly one hundred million years, according to the sources I
was looking at, And according to Dark Banquet author Bill
Shoot we mentioned on the vampire episode because that's an
(08:43):
excellent book about blood drinkers in general, with an emphasis
on bats, but also some of the discussion of mosquitoes.
He points out that the oldest evidence for blood feeding
actually comes from a fossil proto mosquito from the Triassic
period two hundred twenty million years ago. Now, this is
the time when there were no flowering plants, so the
elongated probiscus on this creature is thought to have functioned
(09:05):
more or less like the modern mosquitoes. I'm imagining that
they were bigger, though everything was bigger. Yeah, it's it's
like the one that Homer Simpson kills. Yeah, exactly. It
travels back in time. Now you'll find mosquitoes and every
continent except Antarctica, they thrive, and even our most exhaustive
steps to eradicate them often only serves to do them
(09:26):
in for a short period of time. Uh, there's a
there's an article in Technology Review that came out recently
looking at some of the efforts were discussing here, and
they pointed out that Brazilian officials declared invasive yellow fever
carrying a Us a Gypti mosquitoes eradicated in night following
some rather intense efforts. Is kind of door to door
kind of thing we're talking about here, only to experience
(09:47):
reinvasion in the decades to follow, and then you're right
back where you were to begin with. Yeah, it's uh,
that was that was a time where they were they
were using a lot of sprays as well as like
sort of like you know, like you said, door to
doorm management, trying to make sure everyone was following sort
of best practices, and yet here they are it's back
worse than ever. Now, this is interesting. We've we've mentioned
(10:08):
the difference between males and females, even though the females
are the only ones doing the blood drinking both sexes
of the of mosquito take advantage of plant nectar for nourishment, right, Yeah,
that's one of the big concerns along the lines of
eradicating them is what would it do to the plant
population that's pollinating. Yeah, yeah, we'll and and we'll we'll
get into that and the like I think the final
(10:30):
portion of the podcast. But yeah, people often don't realize
that that in addition to drinking blood, they're also visiting
these different plants um and the female blood drinking. If
nothing else, that really knocks the already shaky science foundation
out from under. The two thousand five sci fi original
picture Man Squito, in which a half man, half mosquito
(10:52):
hybrid sucks blood and seeks out a female mate. If
you've seen this, I've not seen it. I'm I've heard
of it, and I gosh, I can't remember off the
top of my head, but I just feel like there
are a lot of sort of giant mosquito or or
where mosquito type things in like some pretty trashy science fiction. Actually,
(11:12):
you know what's a good one. In that China Mieville
boss Log universe, there's a species I think they're called
the anopolies or something like that. Uh, and their mosquito
women that like zip around on wings and like attack
people and drain them dry. Well he got the sex
right at Yeah he did. Well, you know Meavil does
(11:32):
his research. Now. I don't want to hate on Manskitot
too much because the director uh Pbore Takas. He actually
gave us the super fun Night seven film The Gate.
I yeah, I like the Gate I saw that recently,
and and to follow up the Night ninety Nines the
gate To, both of which were yeah, tremendous fun. Yeah.
I think a young what's his name, the villain from
(11:54):
the first Blade movie was in Oh, yeah, you're right, God,
what is his name? Stephen Dorff? That's the one. Okay, yeah,
young Stephen Dorff demon summoning wishes granted and then wishes
turning into poop after the fact that it's a pretty
fair that's like back when they made horror movies for
little kids, and I guess we have goose bumps nowadays. Well,
(12:14):
you know, maybe we'll get back into that. I feel
like that's one of the strengths of the recent Netflix
hit Stranger Things, so it catch into that that childhood
adventure scenario exactly. Um, certainly, even though I don't think
there are any direct references to the Gate in that show,
that's a little bit of the Gates DNA. Yeah, alright,
So anyway, the females do feed on the blood, and
(12:36):
they feed on it a lot, and they feed by
dipping into an organism's blood and then another organism's blood
and then another, making them an ideal disease factor. Yeah.
So this is where the real problem comes about, and
especially with this atis a Gyp dy uh species, because
they're the ones that really are carrying so many of
these diseases that are problematic for the human population. Of course,
(13:00):
one of the big ones, the most famous one perhaps
even malaria, and according to some estimate estimations, mosquito born
malaria kills one human being every twelve seconds. That's how
pervasive a problem this is. Well, they're also responsible for
dog heartworm, also dengay fever, which we're gonna be talking
about a lot today. You mentioned yellow fever already. There's
(13:22):
also estern equine and sephalitis. St. Louis encephalitis, lacrosse and scephalitis,
Western equine and sephalitis all is there a plural for encephalitis.
I think we just sephalitis is just created, and then
West Nile virus, and now of course zekra, which everybody
(13:42):
is very concerned about. Now, I just wanted to give
us like a very tiny primer. Obviously there's a lot
of out there about ZEKEI right now, but you know, frankly,
like I wasn't quite aware of like the actual symptoms
of it. For most people, it just causes a mild rash.
The real concern here is the link to four thousand
Brazilian children that were born with microcephaly or what's sometimes
(14:04):
called shrunken heads um. But we currently don't have a
vaccine for ZEKA, and developing a vaccine could take years,
so that there's a lot of concern about it. Also,
I believe it is sexually transmittable as well. Yeah, see
I did not know that. So it's it's we're continuing
to learn exactly how it works and the problems and
(14:26):
trying to fight it, which often comes back around to
fighting mosquitoes, fighting the the the vectors that are spreading
it from one person to the next, And in the
past we've depended on powerful and secticides like DDT to
curb mosquito populations, but we've been forced to try different
approaches in recent years, including the use of of a
natural occurring soil bacterium called Bacillus the ginus that actually
(14:51):
kills the insect larva. And then of course there are
there are more advanced techniques, and that's really what we're
going to talk about today. Some of these these really
really intriguing ideas that go far beyond nearly gassing the countryside. Yeah,
so let's take a quick break and then when we
come back, we're going to talk to you about the
mosquito factory, in particular one that's in China and another
(15:14):
in Australia. So, yes, the first couple of mosquito factories
as they're called because they are we should just go
and get this out of the way. They are basically
endeavors to breed mosquitoes and pump them out to essentially
(15:34):
math produced mosquitoes, pump them out into the population in
an attempt to control the shape of that population. So
this is one of the limitations of the podcast medium. Uh.
And but what we'll be able to add some of
this to the landing page. The Atlantic did a great
article photojournalism article that we used as a resource for
(15:55):
this to learn more about it. And it was a
series of I want to say, like what twenty photos
of the inside factories and man alive it. It made
me itchy just looking at them. Uh. It's it's photos
of what the inside of these labs look like, how
they've they've got like it shows people just these jars
filled the mosquitoes, or they've got racks where they've got
(16:17):
mosquito larvae and they're like manually picking out the males
from the females. And it's just until you see it,
it really doesn't I don't know ring home just how
how literal the term mosquito factory is. Yeah, and the
these particular efforts we're gonna talk about first here. First
of all, the there's one in Guando, China, and that's
(16:39):
what the photos referred to. And there's another one in
Australia as well. Yeah, and these are both utilizing a
technique that involves the use of walt Bacchia bacteria. Yeah.
So while Baccia its full name is I believe wal
Baccia pipientis, which sounds cute, pipientis, it's like a hobbit
(16:59):
uh uh Walbakia is a bacterium and it inhibits Zeka
and other viruses by preventing the fertilization of mosquito eggs.
So when you reapply it over time to multiple generations,
it can kill off an entire species of mosquito. The
percentage of mosquitoes carrying it subsequently increases, and outbreaks can
(17:20):
then be contained and reduced. Wal Baccia. Now, if some
of you out there are immediately you know, worried, Oh
my god, we're just putting this thing out into the world.
What is it, Well, don't worry just yet about walbaccia.
It already occurs naturally in some mosquito species, but not
in the adis a gypty that we're we've been talking
about already that's responsible for spreading all these diseases, right,
(17:40):
and it also does not pass on to humans, right
it like can't. My understanding is it cannot physically fit
through the probiscus. It's actually present and up to six
of all different species of insects that exists around us already,
and it's reportedly, like as you just said, safe for
humans animals in the environment. Uh, they've actually conducted two
(18:03):
independent risk assessments on wall Bacia and they found that
it has negligible risk rating when it's released in mosquitoes.
So that brings us to Guang Joe, China, which is
where they're actually doing this now. Yeah, and uh and
as well discussed they've they've been reporting some promising results.
(18:23):
They're rearing and releasing these mosquitoes that are infected with wallbaccia.
Uh and and really you've already touched on this, but
the two key ideas here is that first, it renders
the mosquitoes incapable of carrying a wide range of dangerous pathonges,
including including zaga. And this is a quirk that mosquitoes
pass on to their offspring. So the parents have wallbakia,
they'll pass that on. But of course this also again
(18:45):
plays into the overall population because when a male walbaci
infected mosquito mates with an uninfected female, the resulting eggs
don't hatch. It's only when both mates carry Wallbachia that
the union results in a viable egg, and then that
offspring has wallbakia. Is well. So it's it seems really
almost kind of perfect, right because it's it's it's it's
(19:06):
it's making the creature unable to carry the illness that
is the problem, and it eliminates those the that that
do not carry this disease inhibiting agent. Yeah, it's it's
it seems almost too perfect. Um, which is you know,
I mean my spider sense immediately, no pun intended, immediately
(19:29):
goes off when I hear stuff like this, because I'm like,
really like for messing with nature on this level where
the repercussion is going to be Um, it's essentially mosquito eugenics. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um.
The factory in particular that we're talking about, quote unquote
factory in China, it's based out of the sun Yat
Sen University collaboration with Michigan State University. They have a
(19:51):
joint Center of Vector Control for Tropical Diseases there and
basically what they're doing is they're releasing this infected population
of mosquitoes on a place called shaw Zi Island and
they claim they've had a nine suppression rate of the
population of the species ADUs albo pictus there. Otherwise, that
(20:13):
one is known as the Asian tiger mosquito. That's the
one that carries Zeka in China. My question is, and
I didn't have time to look into this, and I
didn't get a sense of it from the Atlantic article.
But I'm wondering who lives on Shahzai Island, and in particular,
like what's their risk both of Zeka and from these
altered mosquitoes. Right, So there are a lot of pictures
(20:34):
in the Atlantic article showing families like kind of hiding
under mosquito nets and like dealing with their everyday life
just staying away from mosquitoes as much as possible. But
why is that the perfect place other than other than
that's an island, right. I look around for an answer
to this as well, and I didn't really get a
good sense of it. I have been to Guangzhou and
I have visited Shaman Island, which is um a little
(20:58):
bit up river, I believe, from it, and I was
looking at the map and trying to figure out how
closely word of each other. But I guess the important
thing to to keep in mind here is that, uh,
both of these islands in particular are on the Jojang River,
the Pearl River, which cuts through the gateway city, the
Chinese gateway city of Guangzhoe, which has a population of
(21:21):
thirteen point zero eight million people, So you compare that
to the eight point fifty five million people in New
York City, right, Yeah, that's and that's a veritable feeding
ground for mosquitoes. Yeah, I mean it's a it's a
staggering metropolis, quite a blood behink from mosquitoes, and you
have this major waterway and all these additional waterways just
(21:41):
running like veins through the whole thing. So it's a very, um,
very wet city. Yeahs you could say. So that's kind
of perfect for for what we're talking about, both for
breeding the mosquitoes to battle these diseases, but also just
for mosquitoes naturally. Um. The other thing that I was
wondering by looking at this photo essay was that they
show the lab text like I mentioned earlier, separating the
(22:04):
male larva from the female larva. Wondering how you do that, like, um,
not how to use sex mosquito larva? Yeah exactly, Yeah
not not, I don't mean like how like you know,
what are your tweezer size whatever? Yeah? Yeah, that was
interesting to me as well. So if there's anybody out
there listeners who know a little bit more about this,
(22:25):
uh and or you've been to this particular area in China.
Let us know, because I'd love to know more about
it and maybe we can catch up on it like
a listener mail episode. Yeah, I I I spent several
days there and it it was a very very hot month.
I remember a lot of staggering through parks to get
bit by mosquitoes. Did not I didn't. I don't remember
(22:45):
having any problem with mosquitoes while I was there, But
this was several years ago, so maybe the problem has
been more pervasive in recent years. Well. One of the
things that I found interesting, and it connects the Chinese
experiment to the Australian one we're going to talk about,
is that they're both supported by the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation. They may be part of the same project,
(23:07):
but one stat I saw said that the Wallbakier research
in China was given forty million dollars by the Gates Foundation,
whereas the research UH in Australia I think was like
something like sixty maybe. Um, so maybe it's a combined
effort over time, but so this is something that they're
very interested in helping out with, right and and stressing
(23:28):
again like both of these efforts are not only about
tackling a regional problem, but also developing techniques that could
be utilized elsewhere across the world. So the Australian project
that I mentioned, that's happening in a place called Townsville,
which is within Queensland, and that project is part of
a global initiative. Now China wasn't included in this list,
(23:49):
but it's also happening in Colombia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Brazil.
Brazil will be talking about later. And the basic idea
here is they want to test whether they can slow
the spread of these disease is with wallbaccia. Like we
were talking about the same process. They injected hundreds of
thousands of adis at Gypti mosquito eggs with walbaccia. Uh
(24:10):
and so far it seems like it's being somewhat successful, right, Yeah,
you already mentioned the suppression rate um in Guangzhou, and
then we I've I've also read and this was this
is from Eliminate DNA dot Com that has a lot
of material on on the efforts, with of course an
emphasis on eliminating DNA fever. But they point out that
(24:32):
research has shown that walbaccia can sustain itself in mosquito
populations without continual reapplication. So in other words, you know,
it's talking about how it gets passed on, and you
need the male and the female that both have waalbaki
in order to create walbakia infected offspring. Well, if all
you have, all we have to do, and not to
(24:52):
make it sound super easy, but you just have to
reach that that appropriate threshold of infection to where there's
essentially no coming from the mosquitoes. Mosquitoes now in this region,
in this area, on this continent in particular, are all
going to have lall bacia. On that note, we were
going to look at another mosquito factory option, that of
(25:13):
genetically modified mosquitoes. Let's talk about this. Uh, they're genetically
modified mosquitoes, specifically Brazil is where they're being tested at.
You seem to have coined an amazing title here. Uh,
and if it hasn't yet, it's surely going to be
a science fiction horror movie in the next twenty years.
(25:34):
What is it? Gmosquito? Yeah, Gmo Squito. I love it.
Um it works better textually, I think, But yeah, it
might be the name of the next man Squito s right,
Maybe it's a sequel to Mosquito. Um. So there's a
company called ox a Tech and it's a UK company
(25:54):
and they specialize in this genetic modification of mosquitoes. They
changed the d nay of the mosquitoes so that they
can only live for four days and so that their
offspring won't get past the larval stage. They call these
the friendly eighties, I think, referring to that species title
that we've been using earlier. Now. Oxy Tech is owned
(26:17):
by Intrexon. I love these names and X in there.
Why does the house of works? But we should start
spelling it with works, like with an X at the
end of it. Oxy Tech is owned by in trucks On.
That's a US conglomerate and that owns This was a
weird phrase, but I felt like we had to mention it.
Quote a portfolio of transgenic organisms. Oh yeah, because if
(26:38):
you have the recipe, you exactly the dish. Yeah. And
so my understanding was that I was like, everything from
fish to plants. They they have a lot of transgenic organisms. Uh,
and now they have these mosquitoes as well. Yeah. And
I think we've touched on this before on the show.
But transgenic organisms are not. It's not all necessarily related
(26:58):
to like here's a here's an new taken a wild
animal going to release this. There's a lot of it's
experimental and a lot of it is industrial in nature
and not necessarily something with a with a backbone and
a and uh in a brain. You know. There's a
lot of transgenic bacteria and whatnot. Yeah, exactly. So this
pilot program is taking place in Pira Chicaba, Brazil, and
(27:22):
basically the idea here is they want to design something
that will create a cost effective method for cities across
the world to stop mosquito spread disease. They started in April. Now,
this is the same year that there was a huge
epidemic of Dengey fever there that caused more than one
point five million cases in Brazil. Now, the actual breeding
(27:44):
factory for the similar to the one that we talked
about in China and the other one that's in Australia,
is in Campinas, Brazil. They produced two million mosquitoes a week.
Basically what they do, same process. They made the mosquitoes
and they divide them by sex. The workers actually use
these little electrified tennis rackets to protect themselves. Oh yeah,
These are the kinds you can buy at your local Walmart. Exactly. Yeah,
(28:08):
they show them in the lab. They felt one hand,
you know, I don't know, separating out the larva, and
the other hand is on this tennis racket just you know,
ready to whack mosquitoes around. Both zeka and dengue, as
we've previously mentioned, are spread by this ATIS mosquito, So
that's why they're studying it there. Brazil in particular, as
we mentioned, has this long history of mosquito problems. Uh so,
(28:31):
yet another reason. They declared that the Atis was eradicated,
but they were not. Uh So, how much is this
actually working? How much are they changing? Um oxy tech.
They first came up with the idea in two thousand twelve.
They released sterile males to compete for mates out in
the out in the wild. They engineered their mosquitoes so
(28:53):
that they would overproduce a protein that will kill them
unless they are fed an antibiotic called tetrapsyche lean. Without it,
the mails and then subsequently their offspring just die off.
It's a little different than what's going on with the
wall Baccia, but the same premise essentially. Yeah, and actually
this is a similar strategy. That's that's rolled out with
a number of different transgenic organisms to prevent them from
(29:16):
from thriving in the wild and make them depend on
something that I can't want to get in the lap. Yeah.
In fact, I was actually talking to Joe about this
before we jumped in the studio, our co host and
stuff to Blow your Mind, and Joe told me that
on his other podcast, Forward Thinking, they've talked about this before,
in particular using crisper to gene edit, and it's referred
to as a gene drive. Uh. And they've talked about
(29:38):
that sort of broader implication not just mosquitoes but other
species as well. Um, so another part of the genetic
modification process. This is interesting. They make the larvae glow
with the fluorescence that only shows up when they're exposed
to a special light. So this allows them to sort of,
you know, they find breeding grounds. They hover this light
sort of like the strain. That's what I'm thinking. You know,
(30:00):
they've got these ultra violet lights. They hover it over
and they can see which ones are are there, gmosquitoes
or not. So there's very much like the not the
notched ear on a feral cat. That has been spared. Yeah. Yeah,
so they're looking to see, you know, how successful their
efforts are with that. There's also work being done in
other u S labs in California and Virginia, and they're
(30:22):
using crisper to cause the gene drive that I mentioned,
same premise here. This would be used to drive adis
a gypty into extinction. They weave the insects DNA differently
than the given genes, spreads to all of the mosquitoes offspring,
and this is a process that is referred to as
super inheritance. Uh. This leads to a population replacement by
(30:42):
spreading the gene, and it makes mosquitoes unsuitable hosts for
certain pathogens like Zeka danae, all these things that we're
worried about. Basically, it makes all the offsering mail so
they they're just going to eventually die off. Now, this
is hotly debated, and we've we've hinted at this already,
but there's a lot of concerns about how this would
affect the ecosystem, especially as you noted, whenever you bring
(31:04):
up the terms GMO about anything, people people's tackles get raised. Uh.
So there's some fear out there, that the DNA could
change and might jump to other insects, or that if
something went wrong, these scientists wouldn't be able to recall it. Uh,
And what if there was a biological niche that these
mosquitoes were feeling that you know, we need and we
(31:25):
get rid of it. And we'll talk a little bit
about that at the end of the episode. But you know,
there's some concerns there, rightfully. So, I mean when I
hear stuff like this, I immediately think of, like again
sci fi movies, Like I think of something like Children
of Men, Like you know, Children of Men begins, and
like there's you can no longer breed children. And they
I don't think they ever really like give any kind
of like science e reason as to why. But you know,
(31:48):
if you wanted to conspiracy theorist, wise you could extrapolate
from this something like that. Right. Well, it's funny that
you mentioned conspiracy theories, but because of course there has
been a specific conspiracy theory that has proven rather difficult
to eradicate in Brazil based on these activities. Yeah. In fact,
the conspiracy theory is is that because of the genetic
(32:10):
modification that they're doing, they think that this caused zica.
I mean, it doesn't make scientific sense, but it makes
no but but it makes conspiracy theories sense because you
have here, you have this mosquito you're toying with. It's
a its ability to create healthy offspring. And then we
look at some of the ramifications of of zica, particularly
(32:30):
on on pregnant humans, and you can see how that
feeds into this, uh, this conspiracy narrative. Yeah. Absolutely, So
you know a lot of debate about that. We're going
to talk about sort of the good and and and
you know, risky aspects of this a little bit later.
The question is is this successful? Does this work? You know,
same as the wall Baccia. Well, after ten months of
(32:52):
testing it in two small neighborhoods in Brazil, they say
that the number of Dengee cases there went from a
hundred and thirty three to one per year. They also
say that the program has decreased wild mosquitoes by more
than eighty percent in the neighborhoods that they treated. Now,
this is just two neighborhoods. For it to really work
on a large scale, they're gonna have to release massive
(33:15):
numbers of these mosquitoes and continuously to protect all of
the pyre at Chicaba City. It's gonna take three billion
bugs a year. That would cost seven dollars in fifty
cents per person per year, which means that the city
would have to spend around two point seven million dollars
a year. Now here's the rub that's almost exactly the
(33:37):
same amount of money that they currently spend on sprays,
larva sides and all of their sick leave costs related
to these mosquito spread disease. So city officials are looking
forward to making this switch. They kind of see it
as like a one for one swap. Uh, But there's
a problem. Brazil barely has the money to pay for
(33:58):
something like this right now. Mean, certainly this is a
Brazil's money problem, so that this has been an important
news story of late. Yeah, I mean we hear about
it in relation to the Olympics. But like you know,
think about your city manager and you're trying to deal
with a problem like this, Uh, do you have the
two point seven million dollars a year to spend on
(34:19):
this experimental gmo mosquito that you're gonna release. And they're
already conspiracy theories about gaining traction with the populace. What
do you do? And here's the thing, Brazil's bio safety
agency has actually approved them, but they still can't be
sold commercially because they actually require this is oxy tech
here requires certification from Brazil's medical regulator. Now, despite this,
(34:43):
the city has already entered into an agreement to spend
eight hundred thousand dollars over two years to protect something
around sixty people using this method. Now, the actual gene
editing that that would eradicate mosquitoes, that's a couple of
years away from actual use here. And then that leads
to the conspiracy theory that you mentioned earlier, which is
(35:04):
that these GM mosquitoes are causing ZEKA, that they're part
of the problem. And you know, I can only imagine
where it goes next from there, you know, there, I
don't know, we're gonna start turning into Oh, maybe that's
the origin story for man squito is the GM mosquito
comes and stings you and then you give birth to
a man squito. Okay, it still doesn't explain why why
(35:25):
man squito is sucking blood. But yeah, now for this
last portion of the podcast episode, I'm I'm going to
discuss some of the arguments for keeping mosquitoes. But before
we do that, go ahead and just hit us with
all the bad mosquito talking points you can whip out. Well. So, yeah,
I looked at an article justifying why we should just
(35:47):
annihilate mosquitoes. Basically, uh, and this isn't me speaking, this
is the article, but the source mainly comes from Walter
Reed Army Institute of Research, which is based in Silver Spring, Maryland.
They study mosquitoes. They're uh. In fact that the stories
about how they study the mosquitoes they are absolutely insane.
Like they feed them ground up fish food and then
(36:08):
they offer them bellies of unconscious mice to drain the
blood out of. And they said that the mosquitoes drain
the blood out of twenty four mice a month. Um,
so I'm assuming that they actually kill these mice, but
they knock them out first. Now, even these scientists who
spend all day interacting with these mosquitoes and studying them,
(36:29):
when they were asked about this, we're like, oh, yeah,
we'd be much better off about them kill them. Uh.
Malarious bread by mosquitoes infects two hundred and forty seven
million people per year and it kills one million people
per year, not to mention all those other diseases we've
already mentioned. So the question here really is would mosquitoes
be missed in the ecological system if we just utterly
(36:51):
exterminated them. Well, we know they're everywhere, right, so they
probably have a lot of role in the cyst them
And that's true. It could leave a predator without a prey,
or it could leave a plant without a pollinator. Yeah,
I mean these are both really important factors because mosquitoes,
first of all, they make up a fairly huge slice
of the biomass on our planet. They serve as food
(37:13):
for various invertebrate and vertebrate species. We're talking beetles, fish, birds, bats, dragonflies,
et cetera. The larva are especially uh an important gobbled
up in aquatic environments. And you can also look at
it this way. They're providing an important uh benefit here
to aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems by converting pyramisium and other
(37:35):
first level consumers into high quality insect proteins. Oh yeah,
that is a good point. I Uh. I mentioned Bill
shoots uh excellent book Dark Banquet earlier in that he
rolls out some various estimates for how many mosquitoes bats eat,
and the the upper estimate, and this is one that
that he actually has some problems with, but just to
give you an idea, the upper estimate is as many
(37:56):
as six hundred mosquitoes per hour. So even IF's if
it's less than that, bats eat a lot of mosquito.
So if you remove that, what are they going to eat? Well,
that's interesting because one of the things that I read
said that bats are the perfect model to look at
how some predators would move to other insects because when
they have the option, that's prefer to eat moths and
(38:18):
they have a much smaller percentage of mosquitoes in their
bellies when they're opened up. Okay, So so the bats
might be okay, maybe we don't know. Um. Also, just
a quick note on the pollination issue. We already mentioned
about how both both sexes of mosquitoes visit flowers and
are involved in pollination. Uh, they're particularly involved in various
(38:42):
orchids species. So if you if you value a beautiful
orchid like like a lot of people, bear in mind
that mosquitoes may play an important role in and in
carrying on that species through pollination. So there's here's a
really weird repercussion that I have never thought of, but
it goes to show you sort of that circle of
(39:03):
life thing that just like there's a or a butterfly
effect that we could never predict. Uh. So, apparently mosquitoes
highly affect caribou herds and what their migratory patterns are
because if there's clouds of mosquitoes along a certain way,
the caribous sense that they swerve out of the way
and it changes their directional patterns. I've seen, Yeah, I've
(39:25):
seen this featured on documentaries before concerning cariboo and perhaps
maybe misremembering here, but perhaps reindeer as well, where the
the the airborne parasites become just such a problem that
they'll they'll go to higher altitudes where they're not bothered
by but of course there they don't have is as
as good in access to food exactly. So, So how
(39:46):
does all of that change if we just utterly get
rid of mosquitoes, you know, uh, what does that do
to cariboo and then subsequently what does that do to
the human population. Yeah, this is interesting because basically with
the cariboo, the mosquitoes are an obstacle and the pattern
of their life revolves around circumventing those obstacles, and we
(40:08):
see that in human history as well. UH science writer
David Quaman proposed this several years back, and I believe
Robert Kroulwitch talked about this in a blog post that
also picked up additional attraction in recent years. But uh
Kuaman proposed that the ravages of mosquito born illnesses in
many equatorial rainforest at forest areas actually staved off the
(40:31):
advance of human exploitation until the twenty one century. I
remember seeing this as well, that they're sort of like
the guardians of the rainforest. Yeah, they're the swamp thing
that evil here because just of the the pervasive nature
of mosquito born malaria and other illnesses just keeping us
from from just completely tearing it down and exploriting it. Well.
(40:54):
And then the other argument in favor of destroying mosquitoes is,
let's face it, if we eradicated them, there would be
more people, right, Like mosquitoes spread, These diseases killed millions
of people every year, and in a sense they are
managing our population exactly. So do the costs of an
(41:14):
increased human population outweigh the benefits of a healthier human population. Yeah,
that's because you can't. That is not something you can
argue in a political environment, or you can barely argue
with just in in human conversation and say, hey, sure
malaria related deaths are horrible, but they're keeping our numbers down,
(41:34):
so we should you know, you just can't argue that
we should, that we should keep an illness around, right
if we can fight it. Yeah, So, I mean it's
it's a tough one and scientists on both sides of
it are they're arguing about it, but they're also kind
of at a loss, like do we do this? I mean, now,
keep in mind, like the stuff that we talked about
today of the walbakia and the genetically modified thing, this
(41:55):
is restricted to one species of mosquito. They're not they're
not destroying all mosquitoes. But because again, only like two
hundred out of dred are actually a past to us,
So we wouldn't be taking out all the mosquitoes. But certainly,
as we've discussed, just focusing on a few taking them
on entirely, are we pulling the biological jinga block out
(42:17):
too too close to the bottom that who knows. Only
time will tell, but it it definitely sounds like the
origin story for some kind of science fiction horror masterpiece, so,
you know, or a utopian dream it might be in
which you don't have to worry about going. Maybe this
will fix everything. Maybe this is the answer to wicked problems.
Just kill all the mosquitoes. Well, I'm sure some of
(42:39):
you out there listening and are like, I have an
opinion on this. Well, you want to share that opinion
with us. There's lots of ways to do so. You
can reach out to us on social media. We're on Facebook,
we're on Twitter, we're on Tumbler, we're on Instagram. All
those platforms were Blow the Mind or something close to that.
If you search for Blow the Mind, you'll find us.
Look look for the little head with the exploding symbol.
(43:00):
Although our logo might be changing soon. That's exciting, true. Yeah, uh.
And then you can always go to stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. That's not just where the podcasts live.
We've got all kinds of stuff there. We've got the
videos that we do, we've got articles that we write.
Robert's blog posts about electronic music that we mentioned in
the last episode about a musea. So there's lots of
stuff going on in the Stuff to blow your mind,
(43:23):
eCos system that you might be missing out on that
aren't just podcasts, and maybe their pokemon there. I don't
know if there could be there everywhere. Yeah, they could
be in I bet that's where mew two lives. Which
that's like the super powerful one. That's crazy rare. That's
actually Pikachus, a super powerful one. Pika choose the protagonist man.
But mew two is like the it's genetically modified. Actually,
(43:46):
wait are they all? So they're heroes and villains among
the Pokemon. It's more along the lines of that they're
all the neutral depending on who catches them and what
they do with them. But mewtwo was genetically modified and
evolved into like a super sentience psychic Pokemon that wanted
to take over in destroy the world. Okay, well, hopefully
Mosquito Factories won't go in that direct. Yes, and as always,
(44:08):
if you want to reach out to us the old
fashioned way, the email address is blow the Mind and
how stuff works dot com. For more on this than
thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works dot
com
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