Man Vs. Mosquito
Man Vs. Mosquito
Tags: Arbovirus, Gene editing, Mosquitoes, WolbachiaAman Vora, Brown Political Review, 2024.
It is a middle school math teacher’s favorite trivia question: What is the world’s deadliest animal? After images of a hunting tiger or towering gorilla flash through our imagination, we remember that it is the humble mosquito, whose terrible impact on human lives and healthcare systems is only projected to grow. As carbon emissions continue to rise with no plateau in sight, one oft-forgotten implication of increasing global temperatures is the devastating impact they will wreak on public health, with historically ignored diseases now able to thrive in a new, warmer climate. As global temperatures barrel toward the preferred range for mosquitoes, the number of individuals at risk for contracting malaria and dengue fever may increase by four to seven billion by 2070 relative to 1999.
This threat is already a reality. Take dengue, for example: From 1980 to 1989, there were 1.5 million reported cases globally. Compare that to 2019 alone, when 5.2 million cases were reported. World Health Organization (WHO) officials described this astronomical rise in dengue as a “canary in the coalmine of the climate crisis.” No longer will mosquito-borne diseases primarily threaten equatorial regions—northern cities globally are all at risk due to the rise of Aegypti and Anopheles mosquitoes.
Science: 0. Mosquitoes: 1.
From bed nets to insecticides, progress is being made to combat this terrifying rise. But the current generation of anti-mosquito tools is not aggressive enough to mitigate this deadly problem: Bed nets do little to stop Aegypti, which primarily feed on blood during the day, and toxic insecticides have done little but harm the environment and drive mosquito resistance. In order to save lives from this man-made and mosquito-driven catastrophe, humanity must embrace its most promising scientific technologies: genetic engineering and Wolbachia bacteria, conscious that we are fighting against both Mother Nature and human nature itself.
