Is there a potential insect welfare issue here? The Atlantic article someone posted below talks about 10s of millions of screwworms being dropped a week after being reared.
Gene drives remove the need to continuously rear and drop screwworms. Counting insect welfare I would wager advocacy for using gene drives looks better not worse.
Oh, yeah, silly of me. Assuming being a screwworm is bad for the screwworm I guess that must be right. Also, I guess I find “but what if the screwworms actually enjoy being screwworms” pretty absurd as an objection to getting rid of them, even if I can’t articulate a fully convincing case for why from first principles.
Is there a potential insect welfare issue here? The Atlantic article someone posted below talks about 10s of millions of screwworms being dropped a week after being reared.
EDIT: retracted, not an issue with gene drives.
Gene drives remove the need to continuously rear and drop screwworms. Counting insect welfare I would wager advocacy for using gene drives looks better not worse.
Oh, yeah, silly of me. Assuming being a screwworm is bad for the screwworm I guess that must be right. Also, I guess I find “but what if the screwworms actually enjoy being screwworms” pretty absurd as an objection to getting rid of them, even if I can’t articulate a fully convincing case for why from first principles.