Excellent, another round of one of my pet projects, namely mosquitoes and pest control.
Regarding species the topic here is initially Malaria and then some notes about similar work involving Leishmaniasis. Both are caused by protozoan parasites of different Genera, the former being the Plasmodium with the latter being Leishmania, which is certainly far easier to pair with its related disease.
What's important about protozoan vs other causes of insect borne diseases are just how much larger they are vs bacterium and viruses.
Imagine the difference between a motorbike, a humvee, and a double decker bus. Protozoa are the double decker bus, viruses are the motorbikes, and just like how a motorbike can get in between things neither the bus or humvee can the viruses can infect along vectors that protozoan are simply too large to copy.
This difference in parasite can be significant enough to warrant drastically different control methods because in the case of Malaria carriers no Anopheles spp. or other Malaria carrying mosquito is ever born carrying the diseases, they have to feed on an already infected host first then transfer it to another. Whereas something like Dengue which is transmitted by a virus can be passed on from generation to generation in mosquitoes so newly hatched Aedes aegyptii for example are already infectious. This is as highlighted above because of the size difference in the parasites. Dengue and other viruses are small enough to undergo vertical transmission from mother to offspring, Malaria is too large however.
So in order to avoid infection with Malaria you need to prevent the known hosts from feeding on an infected host and/or then transferring the diseases to healthy hosts, a somewhat easier process than trying to prevent any and all Dengue infections from instantly infecting vectors feeding just the once.
Precisely how you prevent those hosts doing things in the first example varies from vaccinating healthy individuals on the off chance any future mosquito bite might be the one with the diseases, to vaccinating against the actual mosquito itself - It's possible to create a vaccine that targets the mosquitoes carrying the disease so that if they feed on such vaccinated hosts the mosquitoes die preventing subsequent transmissions.
There's also the "Star Wars" option of using a photonic fence to simply zap your target vector out the air before it reaches anyone or anything to bite, however the infrastructure required for these suffers from local problems of lack of electricity and flat out theft of the devices 🙄
Also worth pointing out Leishmaniasis isn't just spread by mosquitoes [Culicidae], there are also horse-flies [Tabanidae] and midges [Ceratopogonidae] so such control methods aren't even that absolute and would require broader control methods than simply focusing on "the mosquito problem", and if people think mosquitoes are bad then they've never had the displeasure of being bitten by a horse-fly or swarmed by midges.
Mosquitoes can and will bite you and you won't know it until later if ever. You WILL know when a horse-fly bites you, it's unironically like being stabbed it's that sudden and significant a sensation. Midges however are in the completely opposite end of any such a spectrum and will not only be impossible to feel biting you but do so in such numbers you won't realise it has happened until you're already covered in countless bites because they're that small in comparison. Mosquitoes can be as large as 18mm in length and you might at least hear coming and going, but midges top out at around 3mm so good luck seeing them let alone hearing them.
The notes about consent aren't wrong though, and while the proposed method would work well against controlling Malaria and then other diseases there is a whole list of issues this then brings up, the least of which being yet again a decrease in mortality in areas already suffering from overpopulation and lacking resources. Then there's the far more sinister point about once this method is actually finalised it's not much additional work to change the payload to something dangerous and weaponise the vaccine vector, which some will suggest is the point in the first place.
As someone who's taken government mandated anti-malaria medicines before, I don't trust the government with the power of weaponizing mosquitos as a bio-weapon against their own population, especially when the side effects of the drug we were given included untreatable hysterical insanity. I think it was called Doxycycline.
I've had doxycycline when doing work in the tropics before, my main issue has always been I'm utterly rubbish at taking meds since I can't swallow them without some kind of aid.
There are other options to treat malaria however it swaps between preventative methods and curative, where Doxy being something you take daily would be the former, while something from the Artimicinines would be the latter. Unfortunately resistance to treatments eventually renders things redundant despite how effective they might have been at first. Artimicinines were groundbreaking in their effectiveness at first but slowly lost potency.
As for weaponising vectors it's always very likely going to be in the mind of someone close enough to these kind of projects because they know the work done treating a problem like this will lead to a lot of the work relating to their own personal porjcets being done without requiring specific research and funding. Co-opting existing studies and methods is always cheaper and easier to then apply new targets to, similar to how in the entertainment industry popular franchises get taken over and infected by talentless hacks trying to push their own agendas because without the existing audiences you get things like Concord which flop immediately.
Maybe, but most likely not. There are venomous animals which can be quite readily digested because the dangerous venom they carry simply doesn't survive the stomach barrier. They can only cause damage when able to properly introduce venom to body tissue and the circulatory system since many venoms are paralysing agents or necrotic.
Poisonous creatures however are the ones which would cause problems there and there are some rare animals which are both venomous and poisonous at the same time, but midges aren't going to be one of them when carrying a vaccine. No matter how many you or something else consumed there would be no chance a vaccine made it through the acidic environment of a stomach.
Excellent, another round of one of my pet projects, namely mosquitoes and pest control.
Regarding species the topic here is initially Malaria and then some notes about similar work involving Leishmaniasis. Both are caused by protozoan parasites of different Genera, the former being the Plasmodium with the latter being Leishmania, which is certainly far easier to pair with its related disease.
What's important about protozoan vs other causes of insect borne diseases are just how much larger they are vs bacterium and viruses.
Imagine the difference between a motorbike, a humvee, and a double decker bus. Protozoa are the double decker bus, viruses are the motorbikes, and just like how a motorbike can get in between things neither the bus or humvee can the viruses can infect along vectors that protozoan are simply too large to copy.
This difference in parasite can be significant enough to warrant drastically different control methods because in the case of Malaria carriers no Anopheles spp. or other Malaria carrying mosquito is ever born carrying the diseases, they have to feed on an already infected host first then transfer it to another. Whereas something like Dengue which is transmitted by a virus can be passed on from generation to generation in mosquitoes so newly hatched Aedes aegyptii for example are already infectious. This is as highlighted above because of the size difference in the parasites. Dengue and other viruses are small enough to undergo vertical transmission from mother to offspring, Malaria is too large however.
So in order to avoid infection with Malaria you need to prevent the known hosts from feeding on an infected host and/or then transferring the diseases to healthy hosts, a somewhat easier process than trying to prevent any and all Dengue infections from instantly infecting vectors feeding just the once.
Precisely how you prevent those hosts doing things in the first example varies from vaccinating healthy individuals on the off chance any future mosquito bite might be the one with the diseases, to vaccinating against the actual mosquito itself - It's possible to create a vaccine that targets the mosquitoes carrying the disease so that if they feed on such vaccinated hosts the mosquitoes die preventing subsequent transmissions.
There's also the "Star Wars" option of using a photonic fence to simply zap your target vector out the air before it reaches anyone or anything to bite, however the infrastructure required for these suffers from local problems of lack of electricity and flat out theft of the devices 🙄
Also worth pointing out Leishmaniasis isn't just spread by mosquitoes [Culicidae], there are also horse-flies [Tabanidae] and midges [Ceratopogonidae] so such control methods aren't even that absolute and would require broader control methods than simply focusing on "the mosquito problem", and if people think mosquitoes are bad then they've never had the displeasure of being bitten by a horse-fly or swarmed by midges.
Mosquitoes can and will bite you and you won't know it until later if ever. You WILL know when a horse-fly bites you, it's unironically like being stabbed it's that sudden and significant a sensation. Midges however are in the completely opposite end of any such a spectrum and will not only be impossible to feel biting you but do so in such numbers you won't realise it has happened until you're already covered in countless bites because they're that small in comparison. Mosquitoes can be as large as 18mm in length and you might at least hear coming and going, but midges top out at around 3mm so good luck seeing them let alone hearing them.
The notes about consent aren't wrong though, and while the proposed method would work well against controlling Malaria and then other diseases there is a whole list of issues this then brings up, the least of which being yet again a decrease in mortality in areas already suffering from overpopulation and lacking resources. Then there's the far more sinister point about once this method is actually finalised it's not much additional work to change the payload to something dangerous and weaponise the vaccine vector, which some will suggest is the point in the first place.
As someone who's taken government mandated anti-malaria medicines before, I don't trust the government with the power of weaponizing mosquitos as a bio-weapon against their own population, especially when the side effects of the drug we were given included untreatable hysterical insanity. I think it was called Doxycycline.
I've had doxycycline when doing work in the tropics before, my main issue has always been I'm utterly rubbish at taking meds since I can't swallow them without some kind of aid.
There are other options to treat malaria however it swaps between preventative methods and curative, where Doxy being something you take daily would be the former, while something from the Artimicinines would be the latter. Unfortunately resistance to treatments eventually renders things redundant despite how effective they might have been at first. Artimicinines were groundbreaking in their effectiveness at first but slowly lost potency.
As for weaponising vectors it's always very likely going to be in the mind of someone close enough to these kind of projects because they know the work done treating a problem like this will lead to a lot of the work relating to their own personal porjcets being done without requiring specific research and funding. Co-opting existing studies and methods is always cheaper and easier to then apply new targets to, similar to how in the entertainment industry popular franchises get taken over and infected by talentless hacks trying to push their own agendas because without the existing audiences you get things like Concord which flop immediately.
The inhalation of midges is an unconsidered vector for potential infection.
Nice post 👍
Maybe, but most likely not. There are venomous animals which can be quite readily digested because the dangerous venom they carry simply doesn't survive the stomach barrier. They can only cause damage when able to properly introduce venom to body tissue and the circulatory system since many venoms are paralysing agents or necrotic.
Poisonous creatures however are the ones which would cause problems there and there are some rare animals which are both venomous and poisonous at the same time, but midges aren't going to be one of them when carrying a vaccine. No matter how many you or something else consumed there would be no chance a vaccine made it through the acidic environment of a stomach.
You are forgetting the tongue linings of the mouth and overall olfactory system Mr. Gates.
Fancy a game of online poker?