[SilverElfin]

No thanks. I’m very concerned some short term thinking behind a plan to alter the biology of our environment will have various side effects no one anticipated. It has happened many, many times before. Same with geo engineering in general - hard to trust the incentives, competency, and long term side effects.

[modeless]

The species is not native. Surely we can agree that eradicating non-native species is a good thing?

[SilverElfin]

Yes but you’re assuming that whatever they put into our environment will target that perfectly. I’m concerned there’ll be other effects and that such releases aren’t reversible.

[modeless]

They are releasing sterile males of one specific species, infected with a naturally occurring bacteria that naturally infects them in the wild as well. It's hard to imagine a more targeted or less objectionable method than this. If you won't accept this method then you're essentially arguing we should never attempt to reduce the invasive mosquito population by any means, which I will have to respectfully but strongly disagree with.

[SilverElfin]

I can imagine many ways this can backfire. The simplest is - the targeting you’re assuming may not be actually what happens. It may be that some number of bugs released are different and have an unintended side effect. What gives this private organization the right to run this experiment on all of us? Will they assume liability?

[scubbo]

> Surely we can agree that eradicating non-native species is a good thing?

So...which areas is humanity native to?

[dekhn]

If you mean that seriously: homo sapiens came into existence in Africa, existed solely there for a long time (generating lots of genetic diversity) and then spread throughout the world in multiple waves. It's complicated by the fact that there was no single location and population that became homo sapiens- it was more like a network of locations and populations that evolved concurrently (there was genetic exchange between them as they evolved from their predecessor species).

Depending on how you define it, I could see "parts of Africa" as being "native" but that doesn't really help this discussion.

[scubbo]

> that doesn't really help this discussion

It's the clearest possible example of the fact that simply "eradicating non-native species" is anything _but_ simple, and will have unforeseen implications and consequences. I doubt that modeless intended to advocate for the culling of the majority of humanity, but that was technically what they did. Similarly, SilverElfin correctly points out the high probability of unforeseen consequences of "just" changing the species make-up of a large component of the food web.