by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
Bill Gates is a billionaire, a real one, and instead of being focused on personal self-indulgences like cage fighting, operating personal submarines, or flying into space, Gates chooses to use his time and money to explore ways to help humanity survive and thrive.
Gates has been writing, of late, about mosquitoes, insects which he refers to collectively as "the world's most dangerous animal." The Microsoft founder said in a posting last week that he is far more afraid of mosquitoes than he is of Great White Sharks, and in support of that position he noted that mosquitoes are responsible for the death of more humans in a single day than sharks are in one hundred years.
In the brief article that I read by the tech-billionaire-with-a-conscience, he discussed several research fronts which are currently being pursued to counteract the impact that mosquitoes are having on the health of the world's human population. One company is studying fragrances, trying to find one that is pleasing to humans yet repels mosquitoes. Another company is at work developing genetically-altered mosquitoes to attack and combat an existing strain of very dangerous mosquitoes. (And we all have seen enough science fiction horror films to understand the dangers posed by mutant life forms run amok!) Others are researching more effective insecticides, and some are focused on increasing the effectiveness of malaria vaccines.
Combating mosquitoes and their impact on world health is a very complex operation that is at work on a variety of battlefronts.
(The only time in which I was brought so medically low as to fear that death might be imminent, was due to the evil machinations of another tiny animal, a member of the arachnid family that is commonly known out in the woods where I live as a "tick." I remember the doctor snapping at me, "No, you can't go take your car home first. I want you in the hospital NOW!" So I have a firsthand understanding of the very real power of some of nature's smallest creatures.)
A thought struck as I was pondering what Bill Gates had written about the current attempt to counteract the ravages of mosquitoes. What would be the result, I wondered, if all of the earth's mosquitoes were to suddenly just disappear? Even though I had gone to a rural high school in the middle of the 20th century whose science curriculum would make today's school boards in Florida and Texas proud, and even though I took only one science course in college (Botany), I had still read enough over the years to suspect that the total elimination of "the world's most dangerous animal" would have strong unexpected consequences of the negative variety.
I consulted ChatGPT regarding the consequences of all mosquitoes suddenly disappearing, and my concerns were borne out. The chatbot felt that such a scenario would result in food chains being disrupted when some animals that consumed large quantities of mosquitoes (birds fish, and frogs, for instance) might suddenly be faced with starvation - and entire ecosystems could eventually begin to collapse as a result, the disruption of pollination of certain plant species could also be impacted, invasive species could gain a footing with the disappearance of mosquitoes and thrive - bringing new negative impacts to the environment, and there might even be a rise in the spread of newer and more deadlier forms of disease which could flourish in the absence of mosquitoes.
Nature, it seems, is a great balancing act of many components. When it is in-balance things run fairly smoothly, but when the balance gets out-of-whack, problems arise. The things that seem to most consistently throw nature out-of-balance are the activities of man - something that most of us instinctively know regardless of our educational backgrounds.
Bill Gates and good people like him are working at the fringes to make our lives better, but even they know that a bulldozer approach to nature will yield unintended bulldozer impacts.
I would argue that Bill Gates is wrong about the mosquito being the most dangerous animal in the world. The most dangerous is not the six-legged mosquito, nor is it the tick with his eight legs. The most dangerous animal in the world is the creature with two legs who burns fossil fuels with wild abandon, consumes nature ravenously without making efforts to replenish what he uses, wantonly pollutes his own land, sea, and air, is constantly at war with members of his own species, and works tirelessly at trying to come up with ways to speed his own extinction and end all life on earth.
Man is the most dangerous animal, Bill, and until we can figure out a way to curb his rush to self-annilhilation, everything else is just distraction.
Buzz, buzz, buzz.
1 comment:
And some people claim that Rachel Carson is responsible for millions of deaths.
Bill is correct that the mosquito and the diseases it carries and spreads is a major problem. At least, he doesn’t blame Rachel Carson for them. I had a conversation some years back with a friend about that subject. He had heard that millions of people have died because DDT was not used indiscriminately to eradicate mosquitoes. The conversation is still going around in conservative sites. They look at the fact that robins still sing and that there are still bald eagles as proof that she was wrong, even evil.
Her work served to shift the burden of testing for responsible use to the companies that made the chemicals and money along with it. DDT, among other uses, was sprayed directly onto beaches while beachgoers were bathed in the fog. Why bother to find out whether it was toxic to anything other than bugs, as long as it killed mosquitoes. What would you say to a DDT resistant mosquito? Find another poison to kill it.
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