But seriously I cannot believe that this technology exists, has proven successful in lab test but the reason they're holding it back is because they are afraid of tampering with the eco-system. I'm glad they didn't feel that when eradicating polio and smallpox and other things.
Anyway after reading some more I feel that part of it may be because it is modification to the gene. People are just afraid of some words like "nuclear", "gene", etc.
It seems whenever such technology is part of the solution the progress takes a lot time to happen because we cannot be too catious using it.
It is not because of gene manipulations per se but because by design it is proliferating by itself. Contrast that to a vaccine that turns out to be not safe: administering the vaccine would then just be stopped. If these gene-drive mosquitoes, on the other hand, turn out to be a problem, then there is no easy way to stop that. So better get it right the first time and - as much as you do not seem to like that - that requires time for due diligence.
There is some chance that a modified live vaccine can mutate into a superpathogen that becomes immediately widespread and deadly. There is a theory that this happened with the feline panleukopenia vaccine and that this became canine parvovirus, with rapid, worldwide distribution of the new pathogen. Something to think about when we put 250,000 human lives on one side of the balance and a big question mark on the other, and telling people that there's no good reason to be cautious.
If the actual full-strength virus hasn't managed it why would a live vaccine be any more likely to? It's not going to be replicating very much- it was designed to be bad at actually infecting people but good at provoking an immune response.
>Contrast that to a vaccine that turns out to be not safe: administering the vaccine would then just be stopped.
The smallpox vaccine which was responsible for the eradication of smallpox was a live virus and could spread from person to person. And through the course of time, it did mutate/become contaminated. It was originally cowpox, but at an unknown time sometime in the 1800's actually became vaccinia virus.
> It is not known whether vaccinia virus is the product of genetic recombination, or if it is a species derived from cowpox virus or variola virus by prolonged serial passage, or if it is the living representative of a now extinct virus.
But seriously I cannot believe that this technology exists, has proven successful in lab test but the reason they're holding it back is because they are afraid of tampering with the eco-system. I'm glad they didn't feel that when eradicating polio and smallpox and other things.
Anyway after reading some more I feel that part of it may be because it is modification to the gene. People are just afraid of some words like "nuclear", "gene", etc.
It seems whenever such technology is part of the solution the progress takes a lot time to happen because we cannot be too catious using it.