
Google is releasing 20M bacteria-infected mosquitoes in Fresno - chriskanan
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/14/googles-life-sciences-unit-is-releasing-20-million-bacteria-infected-mosquitoes-in-fresno
======
jimrandomh
This is called the sterile insect technique, and it is a well-established
practice for getting rid of mosquito populations that could threaten humans.
It is very safe, both to humans (male mosquitoes don't bite) and ecologically
(species other than mosquitoes aren't affected at all).

It sounds like Google is working on improvements to the process. This is
important work, because mosquitos are a major cause of disease, especially in
Africa, and we haven't been able to fully solve the problem with existing
technology.

~~~
pizzetta
Can they do something similar for ticks. Ticks seem to be picking up steam as
a disease vector spreading more than just Lime disease, as if that were not
enough.

~~~
hwillis
I'm still mad that the Lyme disease vaccine was killed by anti-vaxxers. If not
for those people, ticks would be about as annoying as leeches.

~~~
stinos
That would completely depend on your definition of 'annoying': ticks spread
more diseases than just Lyme. For example, I'm really not sure whether Human
Anaplasmosis [1] is only as annoying as a leech.

[1]
[https://www.cdc.gov/anaplasmosis/symptoms/index.html](https://www.cdc.gov/anaplasmosis/symptoms/index.html)

~~~
ceejayoz
There's also the one that induces a severe, life-long allergy to red meat.
[https://www.wired.com/story/lone-star-tick-that-gives-
people...](https://www.wired.com/story/lone-star-tick-that-gives-people-meat-
allergies-may-be-spreading/)

------
WaxProlix
I recall hearing when I was younger that mosquitoes were an outlier in the
natural world. With most species, the balance of any food web would be pretty
thoroughly disrupted by a major culling. As I heard it, this isn't the case
for mosquitoes - if you could press a button and kill them all tomorrow, most
ecosystems would be largely unimpacted.

Am I just making this up/misremembering it?

Edit: found a few sources.

Pro-mosquitocide:

[http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html](http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html)

[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160207-mosquitoes...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160207-mosquitoes-
zika-virus-environment-science-animals/)

Anti-mosquitocide:

[http://io9.gizmodo.com/what-if-every-mosquito-on-earth-
went-...](http://io9.gizmodo.com/what-if-every-mosquito-on-earth-went-extinct-
tomorrow-1646840383)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I believe I recall reading that if we were to eliminate only the disease carry
mosquitoes, those responsible for transmitting maleria, dengue fever, Ross
river virus) there ought not be a problem in the ecological web of life as
other mosquitoes would fill the void.

~~~
SubiculumCode
Yes. Most mosquito species do not actually bite.

~~~
CydeWeys
They don't feed on people, or they don't feed in general? If the latter, how
do they even survive? They eat in their larval form but then not as adults?

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
The Wikipedia article has more detail:

 _Typically, both male and female mosquitoes feed on nectar and plant juices,
but in many species the mouthparts of the females are adapted for piercing the
skin of animal hosts and sucking their blood as ectoparasites. In many
species, the female needs to obtain nutrients from a blood meal before it can
produce eggs, whereas in many other species, it can produce more eggs after a
blood meal. A mosquito has a variety of ways of finding its prey, including
chemical, visual, and heat sensors.[36] Both plant materials and blood are
useful sources of energy in the form of sugars, and blood also supplies more
concentrated nutrients, such as lipids, but the most important function of
blood meals is to obtain proteins as materials for egg production._ [1]

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito#Feeding_by_adults](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito#Feeding_by_adults)

~~~
fatmotherpucker
Let's pick out each mosquito one by one to check which one we should kill or
release then.

------
Keyframe
Unlike other questions, I'm interested in logistics behind this. How do you
produce 20m mosquitos and where do you hold them? How do you transport them
and how do you release them? How do you 'store' them and when releasing are
most harmed, are they 'sprayed' or you 'open a box and they will go by
themselves'? How do you decide where to release them? Is it all at once (1m
per week) or is there a pattern, is it related to wind... so many questions!!

I wan't a documentary "How it's made: Mosquitocide". I'm willing to make one
if someone can provide access to info and logistics.

------
polskibus
Google, while you're at it, please find a way to eradicate ticks. They are
getting more and more irritating and dangerous in Northern Europe!

~~~
jghn
There are even ticks now which will make you allergic to meat![1]

[1] [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/tick-bite-meat-
al...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/tick-bite-meat-allergy-
spreading-spd/)

~~~
greenshackle2
In before PETA releases 20 million ticks to turn people vegetarian.

~~~
metanoia
Don't give them any ideas!

------
sjcsjc
"Verily, the life science’s arm of Google’s parent company Alphabet, has
hatched a plan to release a ..."

My immediate reaction on reading that sentence was to wonder why they'd
written it in some kind of Shakespearean English.

My next reaction was to feel stupid.

~~~
roywiggins
Is there a startup named Hwæt yet?

------
sillysaurus3
_So what’s the plan to get rid of them? Verily’s male mosquitos were infected
with the Wolbachia bacteria, which is harmless to humans but when they mate
with and infect their female counterparts, it makes their eggs unable to
produce offspring._

Thank goodness. We can't eliminate mosquitoes fast enough.

Wildlife will probably find other food sources, so bring on the weapons of
mosquito destruction.

~~~
Cpoll
To supplement this, the article says: > This particular mosquito species
entered the area in 2013.

Although the scientific consensus I usually read on the topic of eradicating
mosquitoes is that it won't destabilize _any_ ecosystem.

~~~
dccoolgai
_that we know of_ Natural systems are like huge codebases built by novices.
That variable you are changing _shouldn 't_ cause the whole system to
collapse, but... see cases like the Cane Toad in Australia.

~~~
sqeaky
I don't really care it does disrupt an ecosystem, because the total disruption
will be reduced.

Humans suffering from horrible diseases disrupt much. Disease is one of
several things that keep people in poverty. People dying is expensive and
causes a reduction in skill and investment in trying to save those suffering.
Then there is the emotional cost of death by disease. People in poverty do
shortsighted things like clearcut jungles to grow food.

That previous argument totally ignores any value judgment. Values judgments
like how I value humans more than ecosystems so shitty as to be disruptable by
removing 1 parasitic species. Malaria is one of the single most dangerous
things to humanity, ever. Killing mosquitoes deal with the problem. The amount
of innovation, art and good works lost because of people who died to malaria
is staggering. At modern rates it kill more than a million people per year.
With that amount of lost effort not lost we could build hundreds of
ecosystems.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
You are aware that, like, humans are part of the ecosystems, right? That we
depend on these ecosystems to keep working if we want to survive? We don't
preserve bees (being the classic example) not "because ecosystems", but
because without bees, far less pollination, without pollination no food,
without food we starve to death.

~~~
sqeaky
In some ways we are, but unlike every other animal we can choose to destroy or
create a new ecosystem. For an extreme example, how much do astronauts
participate in any natural ecosystem, and what is the ecosystem of thousands
of square miles of farmland.

With the effort of millions of people not dying and struggling we develop new
farming tools and tech, produce more food on less land (as has been the trend
for the past 50 years) and could plant 10s of millions of trees and reclaim
lost jungles lost to subsistence farming.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> For an extreme example, how much do astronauts participate in any natural
> ecosystem

Well, what do you think how long astronauts on the ISS will survive if we stop
all flights to the ISS?

> and what is the ecosystem of thousands of square miles of farmland.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_biology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_biology)
?

Overall, I don't really understand what you are trying to say?! That there is
no damage we could possibly be doing to ecosystems that couldn't trivially be
undone? That we don't really need any ecosystems, but could just trivially
transition to completely artificial food production? That planting 10s of
millions of trees will bring back extinct life forms that had yet-undiscovered
secrets in them that we could have used to derive new materials or drugs?

------
teddyg1
Can someone with knowledge of this particular experiment explain how they've
overcome the regulations that have stopped Oxitec / Intrexon with their aedes
aegypti solution? They key regulatory factors cited against Oxitec, especially
in their Florida Keys trials in the past year, were centered around
controlling for the release of only males (which do not bite humans), thus
avoiding transmission of any kind from the genetically modified varieties, or
bacterially modified varieties in this case.

Oxitec has worked for years to filter their mosquitoes so only ~0.2% of the
released mosquitoes are female[1]. They then had to demonstrate that and more
in many trials before being allowed to release their mosquitoes in the wild in
Panama and Florida.

Otherwise, it's great that Google can overstep the other factors that would
stop this solution like NIMBYism and working with county / municipal boards.
These solutions are great.

[1]:[http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/florida-voters-
weigh-...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/florida-voters-weigh-gm-
mosquito-releases-what-are-issues)

~~~
apendleton
It's mostly because circuitous jurisdictional turf battles. The bacterial
approach involves applying something to the mosquitos to kill them, rather
than modifying the mosquitos, so it apparently counts as a pesticide, which
puts it under EPA purview. Producing genetically modified animals is subject
to FDA review instead. Apparently the EPA has a lighter touch, as the
Wolbachia mosquitoes got approved by the EPA for use in the same area that was
originally going to be the site of an Oxitec test in the Keys that got
squashed by the FDA.

See [https://phys.org/news/2017-04-florida-bacteria-infected-
mosq...](https://phys.org/news/2017-04-florida-bacteria-infected-mosquitoes-
bugs.html)

------
yosito
It's interesting that Google is doing this rather than some government
organization. What's Google's motivation? Is it purely altruistic, a PR move,
an experiment, or does it have some direct benefit to them?

~~~
pishpash
Maybe the mythical 20% time is back. Or they want Zika to stay out of their
self-insurance pool. Googly Googs gonna goog.

~~~
halflings
20% time was never removed, it was always in place. (there was just some
miscommunication about this I guess since people here keep saying it was
removed)

And this is something done by Verily, not Google (even if it's an Alphabet
company)

------
davesque
I'm aware that this is a known technique and thought has been given to whether
or not it will impact the food chain, etc. But I do wonder this: has anyone
considered what the effect will be of removing this constant source of
stimulation for our immune systems?

~~~
chipperyman573
Do normal (non-infected) mosquito bites do much for your immune system? I know
it will have _an_ effect (because every action has an effect) but will it even
be noticeable?

~~~
davesque
Both good questions.

------
RobLach
Just want to point out that a megacorp breeding and releasing a sterilization
disease is pretty sci-fi. Also a mutation away from a Children of Men style
dystopia.

------
sxates
"You don't understand. I didn't kill just one mosquito, or a hundred, or a
thousand... I killed them all... all mosquito... everywhere."

~~~
chrisdone
Dresden Files reference. Excellent.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
This is a Star Trek: The Next Generation reference, circa 1989! If the Dresden
Files (circa 2000) used such a line, they were, in fact, making a reference.
;)

[http://memory-
alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Survivors_(episode)#M...](http://memory-
alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Survivors_\(episode\)#Memorable_quotes)

~~~
chrisdone
Oh, that explains why it's familiar. I might be mixing them up. There's a
similar ... thing in DF. Trying not to spoiler.

------
amorphid
Reminds of when UC Riverside released some stingless wasps to prey on a
whitefly infestation in Southern California. This was in the early 1990s.

I think this paper is relevant, but I only scanned it:

[http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/repositoryfiles/ca5106p5-67707...](http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/repositoryfiles/ca5106p5-67707.pdf)

------
azakai
Why is "Google" in the title? The only connection between Google and this
company is that they share a parent company, Alphabet.

------
Lagged2Death
What kind of planning and permitting process does a project like this require?

Or would it be legal for me to just go and release a cloud of mosquitoes
myself?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
If you're a massive company that is importing a bunch of money all you have to
do is make the right phonecalls

"hi, this is X calling on the behalf of $C_level_person at Google.
$C_level_person would like to meet with you to discuss controlling the local
mosquito population, no cost to the city, of course. Please call back when you
have a chance."

A mid-level city administrator will probably call back.

------
Raphael
What an unfortunate headline.

~~~
cooper12
It's done on purpose. This is what we call clickbait.

------
dzink
From what is explained so far, this process doesn't kill mosquitoes. It just
makes sure that some of the females (that reproduce 5 times in a life of 2
weeks as an adult) get fertilized with unproductive eggs.
[http://www.denguevirusnet.com/life-cycle-of-aedes-
aegypti.ht...](http://www.denguevirusnet.com/life-cycle-of-aedes-aegypti.html)
The eggs of aedes aegypti can be spread anywhere and the fertile hatch
whenever their area gets wet in the next year or so.

Does anyone know what % population reduction impact this process results in?
They'd have males likely die after 2 weeks and that just wipes the
reproductive chances of the females in that period. Google is treating for 20
weeks in dry weather, which is not exactly the peak reproductive season of
this mosquito.

------
pcmaffey
Has any research been done on potential benefits of widespread micro blood
transfusion as a result of mosquitoes? The diseases are the obvious downside,
wondering if resistances, etc may be an unrecognized upside.

------
briandear
First they came for the mosquitos, but I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a
mosquito. Next they came for the invasive fire ants and then we all cheered
because mosquitos and fire ants were finally gone.

------
LinuxBender
Does this prevent reproduction of the mosquitos, or of the disease? If
mosquitos, will this have a negative impact on bats? My bats eat mosquitos and
moths, but there are not many moths any more.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Mosquitoes, I think. These are an intrusive species, new to the area, so
probably not a primary food source.

------
Tepix
Similar project in Germany:

[http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/tigermuecken-in-
deu...](http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/tigermuecken-in-deutschland-
tausende-sterile-maennchen-ausgesetzt-a-1158263.html)

However they use gamma rays to sterilize the mosquitoes instead of bacteria.

------
phkahler
I wish the other mosquito killing efforts would go forward.

~~~
riffic
Which "other" efforts? Do you mean pesticides?

~~~
apendleton
There has been a separate research effort to develop mosquitoes that are
genetically modified rather than bacteria-infected, with similar objectives,
that so far has been stymied in the US by a combination of stronger regulatory
hurdles (since it's regulated by a different agency) and NIMBYism. Oxitec is
the company spearheading that research. See, e.g.,
[http://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2016/11/20/50271725...](http://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2016/11/20/502717253/florida-keys-approves-trial-of-genetically-
modified-mosquitoes-to-fight-zika)

------
stanislavb
All good. Yet I thought that was a responsibility of the gov... A big corp
spending millions for free seems, you know, questionable

~~~
protomyth
Governments hire companies (contractors) to do work that is well outside the
standard city services (well, sometimes they even hire companies to do the
normal city services). This is just Google paying for a trial for the city.
I'm sure they will later charge other cities so it looks like most hired
contractors that a city uses.

~~~
kuschku
Part of the question is if we should rely on a single company for so many
different things. A company that’s controlled by only two people.

This is maybe not an issue today, but what happens once the founders die and
their inheritors take over control? Children of founders tend to purely focus
on profit, and such a focus might lead to a Google led in the way Comcast is
led today.

And I don’t want to see a Google, Amazon, etc – likely even larger than now –
with such leadership. Ideally we wouldn’t leave that much power to such a low
number of people we can’t even elect.

------
markburns
Does anyone know why the mosquitoes wouldn't evolve to be repulsed by others
infected in this way?

Or is this a similar class of problem to antibiotics becoming useless over
time?

I.e. it's useful to do now so let's cross that bridge if we come to it?

Or is there something else I don't understand about this?

------
crimsonalucard
Unless this solution virtually slaughters every single mosquito wouldn't this
technique only select out unfit mosquitos eventually leading to populations of
mosquitos with genetic countermeasures to this method of eradication?

------
tcbawo
I can't wait until the day we start releasing solar powered the mosquito-
hunting drones.

~~~
logfromblammo
I don't know about drones, but there's this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser)
.

------
Harelin
For those of us who live in Fresno and are curious as to which neighborhoods
are being targeted: Harlan Ranch and Fancher Creek. They say "communities
outside of these areas will not be affected."

------
vinitagr
This is some real breakthrough. I don't remember i have heard of anything like
this before. Any amount of success with this solution will have a lot of
consequences on other problems.

------
SubiculumCode
I wish they'd do it in Sacramento where most of the mosquitoes live.

------
jondubois
>> Verily’s male mosquitoes were infected with the Wolbachia bacteria, which
is harmless to humans

What they mean is; harmless in the short term and hopefully also harmless in
the long term.

------
pcollins123
Google is releasing 20M bacteria-infected mosquitoes in Fresno... wearing
small cameras and a projector that can display text advertisements

------
jackyb
I always wondered, how do they count so many mosquitos? Is there a technique
to determine that it's 20M?

------
franga2000
I just love how people simply refuse to use the Alphabet name and keep calling
it Google.

------
makkesk8
I've never been interested in biology. But this is so cool! :O

------
WalterBright
I'm curious how mosquitoes will evolve to beat this.

~~~
danieltillett
Hopefully by going extinct. Not all evolutionary challenges are solved by the
organism before extinction.

------
banach
What could possibly go wrong?

------
mrschwabe
No one should have the right to play god with our biosphere.

~~~
Ninn
Yes they should. Next you're going to try and tell us that we shouldn't
utilise modern medicine and vaccinations?

~~~
mrschwabe
Well you certainly don't have the right to make me use modern medicine or take
vaccinations. Just as I don't have the right to spray herbicide on your lawn.
Even if there are weeds.

------
walshemj
could we have a less clickbaity title

------
will_pseudonym
What could possibly go wrong?

------
chris_wot
At least they aren't attempting to go viral.

------
forgottenacc57
What could possibly go wrong? (Eye roll)

~~~
trhway
>What could possibly go wrong? (Eye roll)

Any perceived correlation between Zika outbreaks (like 2013 French Polynesia,
2015-2016 Brazil) and those modified mosquito releases (like 2010 French
Polynesia, 2011-2014 Brazil) is probably just pure coincidence. Even more
coincidental is that ~15 years ago the islands 300 km from Gabon were
specifically identified as the best isolated places to test the modified
mosquitoes and the 2007 Zika outbreak in Gabon, one of the first major
outbreaks (another one was in the same 2007 half a world from Gabon - on
remote island Yap :).

~~~
estebank
Could it not be that the correlation is that geographical regions with higher
incidence of Aedes Aegypti would have higher likelihood of having Zika
outbreaks and would also have local governments more inclined to pursue
mosquito reduction efforts?

------
ultim8k
I came up with this idea last year! I didn't know someone was already building
it.

------
unclebucknasty
Wait. Is there no regulation around this? Any company or individual can cook
up whatever specimen they want and simply release it into the environment en
masse?

Am I missing something?

~~~
Oletros
They are working with Fresno County [0]

[0] [http://www.mosquitobuzz.net/](http://www.mosquitobuzz.net/)

~~~
unclebucknasty
Ah. Thanks.

------
cpete
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences)

~~~
xexers
It would be very easy to re-introduce the mosquitoes back into the wild if
their absence cause problems

