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by wavemode 10 days ago
This was tested in Singapore 10 years ago and successfully reduced the spread of Dengue fever by 77% and has not negatively impacted the ecosystem.

This isn't a project to eliminate all mosquitos. There are over 3600 species of mosquito - this project is only targeting one: Aedes aegypti, which spreads many diseases, and is in fact an invasive species. Anywhere you see an Aedes aegypti outside of North Africa, it was humans who brought it there in the first place. This project is just trying to undo that.

1 comments

> Aedes aegypti, which spreads many diseases, and is in fact an invasive species. Anywhere you see an Aedes aegypti outside of North Africa, it was humans who brought it there in the first place.

My twisted brain spun out a version of this paragraph from some kind of parallel universe Hacker News (presumably where humans aren't the dominant species on the planet) that said:

> Homo sapiens, which spreads many diseases, and is in fact an invasive species. Anywhere you see a Homo sapiens outside of North Africa, it was humans who brought it there in the first place.

I think it's fun that my brain decided to come up spin the accepted African origin of humans and their proliferation around the world into this fun paragraph. No value judgement about humanity is implied.