How Do You Kill a Mosquito?
5/12/202635 min
Mosquitoes are little jerks. They suck your blood to make more mosquitoes, spread deadly diseases like malaria and dengue, and have killed more humans than any other creature in the history of Earth. But now, we can fight back.
Gene-editing technology (CRISPR, gene drives) could temporarily wipe out disease-carrying mosquitoes in whole regions — potentially saving millions of lives. A miracle, but with an unsettling question of its own: Who gets to decide when humanity rewrites nature?
Also: radiation-blasted flies, Australian rabbit smoothies, and … Mosquito Jurassic Park.
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
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Ben Bradford· Host0:30
Humans were prey first, not predators. We were prey. That's why you feel scared in the dark. That's why you feel such rage when a car cuts you off on the road. You assume attack, not some forgivable mistake. Those are your instincts because you and I evolved as prey. And what is the most ferocious killer nature ever developed to feed on our kind? Not wolves, though they could surround us in packs and then leap from the dark. Not lions, though they could silently stalk and then leap from the dark. Not even hippos, though they snort and quack and sweat what looks like blood and can charge at you from the dark or the day. They don't even care. No. The most ferocious killer of us makes even the murderous wild-eyed hippo seem like a tiny glassy-eyed puppy. This creature is the mosquito.