The species is not native. Surely we can agree that eradicating non-native species is a good thing?

SilverElfin 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes but you’re assuming that whatever they put into our environment will target that perfectly. I’m concerned there’ll be other effects and that such releases aren’t reversible.

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modeless 6 hours ago | parent [-]

They are releasing sterile males of one specific species, infected with a naturally occurring bacteria that naturally infects them in the wild as well. It's hard to imagine a more targeted or less objectionable method than this. If you won't accept this method then you're essentially arguing we should never attempt to reduce the invasive mosquito population by any means, which I will have to respectfully but strongly disagree with.

	▲	SilverElfin 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I can imagine many ways this can backfire. The simplest is - the targeting you’re assuming may not be actually what happens. It may be that some number of bugs released are different and have an unintended side effect. What gives this private organization the right to run this experiment on all of us? Will they assume liability?

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scubbo 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Surely we can agree that eradicating non-native species is a good thing?

So...which areas is humanity native to?

	▲	dekhn 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If you mean that seriously: homo sapiens came into existence in Africa, existed solely there for a long time (generating lots of genetic diversity) and then spread throughout the world in multiple waves. It's complicated by the fact that there was no single location and population that became homo sapiens- it was more like a network of locations and populations that evolved concurrently (there was genetic exchange between them as they evolved from their predecessor species). Depending on how you define it, I could see "parts of Africa" as being "native" but that doesn't really help this discussion.