Idiotic biotechnology

So this is a thing in America:

A release of mosquitoes genetically engineered to produce dead offspring and thus combat the spread of the Zika virus has been approved in Florida by the US Food and Drug Administration

in an experimental trial on Key Haven, a small island in the Florida Keys

It is not clear how many engineered mosquitoes could be released. Parry said it could vary from 20 to 100 mosquitoes per person on the island.

Doesn't anyone realize the abject fucking stupidity of releasing genetically modified mosquitoes that produce infertile offspring? What's the point of genetically modifying a species if the modified individuals can't reproduce? Do they fucking know that there are billions of people living in tropical regions of the world, so to release 20 mosquitoes per person they would have to make tens of billions of male mosquitoes who cannot even fucking breed? Fucking inbred idiots. And someone's paying them...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/05/florida-genetically-modified-mosquitoes-zika

Interesting. I remember talk of this when West Nile Virus was around several years ago.

Doesn't anyone realize the abject fucking stupidity of releasing genetically modified mosquitoes that produce infertile offspring? What's the point of genetically modifying a species if the modified individuals can't reproduce?

I don't think you understand what is going on. The genetically modified species is released into the wild where it attempts to mate with the natural species. When it does, the offspring is dead, and it has effectively blocked that natural individual from reproducing, thus a much lower population for the next generation, which is even more likely to mate with the engineered species.

Do they fucking know that there are billions of people living in tropical regions of the world, so to release 20 mosquitoes per person they would have to make tens of billions of male mosquitoes who cannot even fucking breed?

Yes, and? Just make the DNA require that the eggs be hatched in the presence of a certain chemical that never occurs in nature. Great, now the new mosquitoes can be breed in special breeding grounds but not in the wild. What's the big deal?

>>2

thus a much lower population

That's the crux: it won't be a much lower population because the number of wild mosquitoes is a priori much, much higher than whatever they release. The only way they could beat the numbers is having the genetically modified strain reproduce actively (then die out in 100 generations), but they specifically prevented it from reproducing. The resulting impact will be almost zero, but by that time the money invested into their High-Tech Bio-Tech Trendy-Disease-Fightin' shindig will be gone. And it's really the fault of whoever is paying that they couldn't bother thinking with their head and invested into a self-defeating, zero-impact biotech instead.

What's the big deal?

Even if they manage to make their defective mosquitoes breed in the laboratory, there's still no way they could generate as many mosquitoes as there are in the wild because - breaking news! - in the wild there are a whole fucking lot of mosquitoes, they feed off a whole fucking lot of biomass, and a lab is always smaller than half the world land surface.

anybody got a tldr for this thread ?

>>4
- Muh mosquitoes spreading muh Zika virus
- Release a tiny number of genetically modified mosquitoes
- They die, their children die, nothing changed
- Biotech scammers run away with monies

>>5
tldr. less than two lines plz

>>5
What changed that there is no new offspring of mosquitoes after the sterile mosquitoes. This means the population of mosquitoes will be reduced. The scientists will continue with this treatment to the mosquito population until the zika threat is small enough to declare "safe enough".

Might be a "rule of the tool" thing going on. They can get {technology} from {company} for cheap, so they use it.