On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 01:22:06PM -0400, John Clark wrote: > On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 3:04 AM Russell Standish <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > It's not morality, but the precautionary principle in action. > > > Every single year you delay doing this you will be condemning 725,000 people > to > die from malaria and other diseases and incapacitate hundreds of millions more > for weeks at a time. This is caution? > > > I> t's one thing to show this works within a lab. But causing the > extinction of a > species in an ecosystem can cause an avalanche of knockon effects, > which generally speaking, cannot be tested for in the lab. > > > I can't claim there is zero risk if we do this, there is just no way we can > live in a zero risk world. So we must use judgement. I know of two facts that > you can use to make your judgement: > > 1) If you decide to do this there is a possibility some species of birds that > eat mosquitoes might be harmed. >
There is also the possibility of wholesale ecosystem collapse, not just some birds. Do you know that these mosquitos _aren't_ a keystone species? I'm not saying they are, but until ecological studies are done, we don't know. > 2) If you decide not to do this there is a certainty you will be sentencing > 725,000 people to die each and every year. > > I believe the rational judgement that needs to be made in this case is > obvious. I don't think you have considered _all_ the facts it is possible to know. > > > > I would be in favour of a moratorium until such time as the ecosystem is > studied > in detail, and detailed simulation models of the ecosystem run. > > > That day will never ever come! There will never come a time when self > proclaimed protectors of the environment will say "OK enough simulations have > been done and you've convinced me, lets do it" just as the will never be a day > when the ESP fans will say " I'm seen enough well conducted studies with > negative results to convince me that ESP is not worth pursuing further and we > should move on to studying something new with more potential to find something > interesting". Environmentalists and ESP fans will ALWAYS demand just one more > study before moving on. > By ESP - do you mean extrasensory perception and similar psychic woo? Is so, I fail to see the relevance to making a decision on making an ecosystem chnage. Also if by environmentalists, if you mean political activists like Greenpeace, they have little say on the decision. The decision properly should be taken by regulatory agencies, preferably an international one under (say) the auspices of the UN in the case of extermination of a species planet-wide, after consulting ecologists/biologists. Of course ecologists/biologists will never say enough research is done. That is up to regulatory agencies - weighing all the factors you mentioned: lives saved through eliminating malaria, against damage to ecosystem services, whatever those may be. Of course there is no such thing as a zero risk decision, but all we ask is that the decision is taken on the best scientific knowledge, and that mistakes are learnt from. Of course, everyone has an input into the makeup of the regulatory agencies, including the likes of Greenpeace, and Donald Trump. But the only people who are going to be able to release the gene drive are those with the technical know-how - the scientists and their corporate backers. It is better that they submit to an independent regulatory authority who is in possession of the best scientific evidence, rather than acting unilaterally. Of course, that is only going to happen if those same scientists and companies have respect for the regulatory authority, which may or may not be the case in practice :). > > > Let's not go into this blind as so often we've done before - eg the > story > of > the release of the rabbit calixi virus in Australia. > > > If that virus saved 725,000 people from death every year I'd call it an > enormous triumph regardless of the harm it caused to pet rabbits in Australia. > I mention this example because the virus was released before a small-scale trial of the virus on an offshore island was completed. This did have detrimental economic and ecological effects, not just for pet rabbits. It may well be that the regulatory authorities studying this issue would have decided the benefits outweighed these costs and approved widespread release of Calici anyway, but they never got the chance. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Senior Research Fellow [email protected] Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
