Wednesday 25 November 2015

Turning mosquitoes harmless

In a few years, if all kinds of mosquitoes become harmless owing to the advances of medical science, and they transform into only annoying insects that love to suck your blood without passing any diseases on to you, the world will be a nicer place to live.

According to the BBC News article “Mutant mosquitoes'resist malaria',” Michelle Roberts tells us that the DNA of the mosquitoes Anopheles Stephensi was modified in order to breed offspring which is resistant to malaria. It is a promising method: if it works in the field, malaria could be stopped spreading to humans.

I am really scared of deadly diseases carried by mosquitoes: malaria and dengue fever. These infectious diseases are extremely dangerous, and many people are infected by them every year. At night, if I can hear these blood-sucking insects buzzing around my head, I am really concerned that they might be carrying those diseases. This makes me sleepless, unless I can eliminate them. It sounds like I am a terrible murderer, but I do not want to stay in the hospital for weeks.

When I read this article, I thought about a recent story in the news about a Thai actor who got dengue fever and his condition was very serious: he stopped breathing for a few seconds and had to have one of his feet cut off in order to prevent the infection passing through his body. I have heard of pe
ople who I know got this disease but their conditions were not as serious as his.

I hope that this method of genetic modification in mosquitoes will work well in the field and it can be done in other types of mosquitoes. Then all infectious, dangerous diseases would be wiped out, so that we would not have to be worried about them anymore.
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Reference
Roberts, M. (2015, November 24),BBC News.Mutant mosquitoes ‘resist malaria’. 
Retrieved from

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34898931
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2 comments:

  1. Unknown26 November 2015 at 00:41

    I never got dengue fever before and become aware how dangerous it is from the recent news about Thai actor, Por. I think it is unlucky of him that infected the most serious type of the disease, most of the people I know they just need to stay in a hospital for 2 weeks and get recovered. I heard the disease will be spreading to Europe soon due to global warming effect, not just found in tropical area anymore.

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  2. Peter AUA26 November 2015 at 08:23

    I think our technological advances i genetic modification offer help in many different areas, with the genetic re-engineering of mosquitoes being one example of how our technology can help us.

    I was also happy to read recently (last week?) that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has finally approved genetically modified (GM) salmon for sale to humans. If genetic modifications can produce better food at lower environmental costs, I'm all for it. Bring on the GM steaks!

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