A Bite to Remember

We fear what they can do to us, yet we cannot forget to fear what we can do to them. This statement isn’t about migrants or competing countries, but about something far more mundane: mosquitoes, the transmitters of the Zika virus and many other diseases.

The recent outbreak of Zika virus in the Americas, coming on the heels of the Ebola crisis, has once more generated fears of pandemic. Symptoms include fever and headaches, but the real scare-factor relates to a possible link between the virus and spiking numbers of infant microcephaly cases, a situation where the brain and head fail to develop normally. This potential threat to the next generation sparks an almost primal fear.

Consequently, the threat has people scrambling for solutions from all avenues, from prevention tactics to vaccine creation. However, as the disease is spread through mosquitoes, specifically Aedes mosquitoes, a simple question emerges, as posed rhetorically by a BBC article: “Would it just be simpler to make an entire species of disease-carrying mosquito extinct?” Indeed, the eradication of certain types of mosquito appears to be a clear-cut solution to the problem of both the Zika virus and the multitude of other diseases spread by mosquitoes. No more would we irritably swat at a mosquito that has just bitten us on a hot summer day, wishing, if only momentarily, that those pesky mosquitoes didn’t exist anymore.

Nor is the possibility of mosquito-cide impossible or even implausible. In one approach, scientists have managed to genetically modify male mosquitoes to become sterile, leading to massive reductions of over ninety percent in mosquito test populations. Combined with other traditional anti-mosquito procedures, it’s reasonable to assume that complete eradication, or at least significant culling, is possible.

Of course, exterminating an entire species raises complicated questions, from environmental consequences to moral implications. What would fill, or not fill, the mosquitoes’ niche in the ecosystem? What harms would come back to us? Some weigh different costs and benefits. Others might fall back on morality.

Either way, we must keep in mind where and how we stand in the world. With thoughts on mosquito eradication ranging from cost-benefit analysis of human suffering and mosquito biodiversity to our offhand musings upon the seemingly endless annoyance caused by these insects, it is sobering to realize the power we wield. We have the ability to end entire species, whether that might come about through serious contemplation or momentary whims of aggravation. In our quest to better understand and thus adapt to the world, we’ve acquired the capability to make the world adapt to us.

And we should be scared, or at least mindful, of those capabilities. In the moment, this consideration has been brought on by the litany of diseases, especially infant microcephaly, that have created misery for so many people. It’s easy to frame the choice within cost-benefit analysis or as an episode in the bigger framework of medicine and humanity’s pursuit of health. But where and when does the rejection of inconvenience end? Of course, the virus is hardly only an inconvenience to afflicted mothers and children, but the point still stands. Much of progress is precisely about rejecting things that hinder or displease us, whether we point to the invention of hunting tools millennia ago or the air conditioner’s arrival in the past century. As we become ever more capable, should we continue to reject everything that inconveniences us in the name of progress? How small can the problem become; what if microcephaly was simply a cold instead?

In the end, it’s a slippery slope and a treacherous precipice. Inconveniences will continue to come; we will never find everything to our liking. Shall we continue to press forward against our inconveniences, as our forebears did through the challenges of forming the first societies, as imperial rulers pushed through the resistance of colonial peoples, and as we today push through the obstacles of nature? We must reconcile the power that we wield with the aims we seek in our attempts to master, and harmonize with, the world. Today, we discuss mosquitoes, but as we continue to move forward, these discussions could easily become about the environment and the world itself or even one another. We must strive not to reject the world so that it rejects us in turn.

We must act to help those affected by the Zika virus, perhaps through aid and vaccine assistance. We have to determine where we draw the line in either shaping or accepting the world. We cannot forget, whether in our idle grousing about a bug bite, a conference room, or a top-end laboratory, what we can do and what that entails. It’s mosquitoes today; what will it be tomorrow?

Darwin Yang '19, a Crimson editorial writer, lives in Grays Hall.