This amazing bit from the wikipedia article about the fly:
"The first, and to-date largest, documented infestation of C. hominivorax myiasis outside of the Americas occurred in North Africa from 1989 to 1991. The outbreak was traced to a herd of sheep in Libya's Tripoli region, which began suffering screwworm attacks in July 1989; over the following months, the myiasis spread rapidly, infecting numerous herds across a 25,000 km2 area. Eventually, the infested region spanned from the Mediterranean coast to the Sahara Desert, threatening the more than 2.7 million animals susceptible to C. hominvorax that inhabited the area. More than 14,000 cases of large-scale myiasis due to the C. hominivorax species were documented. Traditional control methods using veterinary assessment and treatment of individual animals were insufficient to contain the widely dispersed outbreak, so the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization launched a program based on the sterile insect technique.[10] About 1.26 billion sterile flies were produced in Mexico, shipped to the infested area, and released to mate with their wild counterparts. Within months, the C. hominvorax population collapsed; by April 1991, the program had succeeded in eradicating C. hominivorax in the Eastern Hemisphere. This effort, which cost under US$100 million, was among the most efficient and successful international animal health programs in UN history."
A little tangential, but having just been in an argument here with someone who advocated a "nightwatchman state," I wonder what they'd think of the USDA's efforts here (as well as the other governments'). It seems almost impossible that this could have been coordinated by private industry alone: while there's an obvious benefit to the cattle industry, it seems hardly likely that they would have sponsored the years of investment in basic research that led to this, let alone successfully negotiated with Panama for the rights to dump irradiated bugs from coast to coast. Could it have been done?
It's also striking how much these efforts were made harder by US foreign policy and involvement in the wars of Central America, and are still made hard because of our poor relationship with Cuba.
Cuba and the Soviet Union started insurgencies in several countries in Central America. Blaming the US for its attempts to counter this is disingenuous.
> ...it seems hardly likely that they would have sponsored the years of investment in basic research...
That is the easy part. There is a good model for shared infrastructure - a private corporation is established, all the local companies buy a share then the shared company builds, owns and operates the actual infrastructure. The same thing works for funding long-term research in everyone's best interest. A shared research corporation that all the local businesses can buy into. They can be guilted in to a small contribution and the research can happen at a slow-burn to generate results over time.
To me the bigger challenge is who would pay for dumping large numbers of irradiated bugs.
> Scientists now knew, from the horrific consequences of atomic bombs dropped on Japan, that high doses of radiation damage human tissue and cells. When a colleague introduced Knipling to research on the sterilization of other flies by radiation, he wondered: Could radiation sterilize screwworms too?
This is wrong, harmful effects of radiation on cells, that it causes mutations and makes things sterile, were known long before WW2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Joseph_Muller#Discover... They basically just put a lot of fruit flies under X-ray radiation and recorded the effects.
Well it's a classic journalistic technique. Put two statements adjacent to each other and imply a connection but actually you can see there is no formal conjunction.
I wonder what would happen if instead of releasing sterile male screwworms, we used the gene drive to release screwworms that could only have male descendants. I've heard of a similar idea to eradicate malaria by doing that to mosquitoes.
The article says they are working on it:
“Biologists are also developing a genetically modified male-only strain of screwworms, which would require fewer flies to be raised and released.”
I really had no idea the sterile-insect technique worked so well! One wonders, as was chewed over in a thread a few days ago, why it isn't already being used at scale to destroy invasive populations of malaria-bearing mosquitoes in sub-Saharan Africa.
Very long essay but very good. it is the same technique they tried to use for other diseases. Not sure why evolution cannot fight it - female that can detect sterile male survive.
_bz2r|5 years ago
"The first, and to-date largest, documented infestation of C. hominivorax myiasis outside of the Americas occurred in North Africa from 1989 to 1991. The outbreak was traced to a herd of sheep in Libya's Tripoli region, which began suffering screwworm attacks in July 1989; over the following months, the myiasis spread rapidly, infecting numerous herds across a 25,000 km2 area. Eventually, the infested region spanned from the Mediterranean coast to the Sahara Desert, threatening the more than 2.7 million animals susceptible to C. hominvorax that inhabited the area. More than 14,000 cases of large-scale myiasis due to the C. hominivorax species were documented. Traditional control methods using veterinary assessment and treatment of individual animals were insufficient to contain the widely dispersed outbreak, so the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization launched a program based on the sterile insect technique.[10] About 1.26 billion sterile flies were produced in Mexico, shipped to the infested area, and released to mate with their wild counterparts. Within months, the C. hominvorax population collapsed; by April 1991, the program had succeeded in eradicating C. hominivorax in the Eastern Hemisphere. This effort, which cost under US$100 million, was among the most efficient and successful international animal health programs in UN history."
Incredible!
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochliomyia
geofft|5 years ago
It's also striking how much these efforts were made harder by US foreign policy and involvement in the wars of Central America, and are still made hard because of our poor relationship with Cuba.
jtolmar|5 years ago
tomohawk|5 years ago
Cuba and the Soviet Union started insurgencies in several countries in Central America. Blaming the US for its attempts to counter this is disingenuous.
AlgorithmicTime|5 years ago
[deleted]
roenxi|5 years ago
That is the easy part. There is a good model for shared infrastructure - a private corporation is established, all the local companies buy a share then the shared company builds, owns and operates the actual infrastructure. The same thing works for funding long-term research in everyone's best interest. A shared research corporation that all the local businesses can buy into. They can be guilted in to a small contribution and the research can happen at a slow-burn to generate results over time.
To me the bigger challenge is who would pay for dumping large numbers of irradiated bugs.
conistonwater|5 years ago
This is wrong, harmful effects of radiation on cells, that it causes mutations and makes things sterile, were known long before WW2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Joseph_Muller#Discover... They basically just put a lot of fruit flies under X-ray radiation and recorded the effects.
scandox|5 years ago
dreamcompiler|5 years ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_insect_technique
totetsu|5 years ago
josephcsible|5 years ago
jogundas|5 years ago
[0] https://m.dw.com/en/genetically-modified-mosquitoes-breed-in...
seunosewa|5 years ago
throwanem|5 years ago
LockAndLol|5 years ago
throwanem|5 years ago
toyg|5 years ago
ngcc_hk|5 years ago
benibela|5 years ago
LockAndLol|5 years ago
[deleted]
concordDance|5 years ago