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Why we don’t actually want a world without mosquitoes

Scientists are trying to make mosquitoes less terrible — but not to eradicate them.

I want you to close your eyes and imagine a perfect summer girls’ night out: It’s dusk and you assemble your crew and hit up the ultimate cookout. You avoid hanging out by the grill because you don’t want all that smoke in your face, but the food really starts calling your name. And it’s quite the spread! You gorge yourself on a delicious meal and then — even though you hate to dine and dash — you head out. You got what you needed and you’re off to the next spot.

That is the perfect Saturday night… for a mosquito.

These bloodthirsty insects are more than an annoyance that feasts on your ankles. Mosquitoes are the deadliest animal on the planet. They spread illnesses like malaria, which kills over 600,000 people a year.

The good news: Scientists are working on swatting our mosquito problem away for good. Google’s Debug program, for example, recently asked the Environmental Protection Agency for permission to release over 30 million sterile male mosquitoes in Florida and California, with the goal of shrinking the mosquito population by limiting reproduction.

It’s a great strategy to curb diseases spread by mosquitoes, such as Zika and dengue. But would it be possible to get rid of these annoying insects altogether? And if so, should we?

The great mosquito resurgence

That’s a question Greg Kaebnick, a research scholar at the Hastings Center for Bioethics, tackled for the National Academies of Sciences. “We got together a group of environmental ethicists, conservation biologists, and ecologists to think about this question: Would it be okay ever to wipe out a species?” he told Vox. “We brought together folks like me [who are] predisposed to try to protect species. But we were persuaded that........

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