Launching Screwworm-Free Future – Funding and Support Request
TL;DR
Screwworm Free Future is a new group seeking support to advance work on eradicating the New World Screwworm in South America.
The New World Screwworm (C. hominivorax—literally “man-eater”) causes extreme suffering to hundreds of millions of wild and domestic animals every year.
To date we’ve held private meetings with government officials, experts from the private sector, academics, and animal advocates. We believe that work on the NWS is valuable and we want to continue our research and begin lobbying.
Our analysis suggests we could prevent about 100 animals from experiencing an excruciating death per dollar donated, though this estimate has extreme uncertainty.
The screwworm “wall” in Panama has recently been breached, creating both an urgent need and an opportunity to address this problem.
We are seeking $15,000 to fund a part-time lead and could absorb up to $100,000 to build a full-time team, which would include a team lead and another full-time equivalent (FTE) role
We’re also excited to speak to people who have a background in veterinary science/medicine, entomology, gene drives, as well as policy experts in Latin America. - please reach out if you know someone who fits this description!
Cochliomyia hominivorax delenda est
Screwworm Free Future is a new group of volunteers who connected through Hive investigating the political and scientific barriers stopping South American governments from eradicating the New World Screwworm. In our shallow investigation, we have identified key bottlenecks, but we now need funding and people to take this investigation further, and begin lobbying.
In this post, we will cover the following:
The current status of screwworms
Things that we have learnt in our research
What we want to do next
How you can help by funding or supporting or project
What’s the deal with the New World Screwworm?
The New World Screwworm[1] is the leading cause of myiasis in Latin America. Myiasis “is the parasitic infestation of the body of a live animal by fly larvae”. This[2] footnote describes the infection in more detail, there are also many photos online if you want to see examples. Although it’s hard not to over-update on the ‘eww’ aspect it seems true that a screwworm infection is very painful. Infected animals display atypical behaviours associated with suffering – they stop eating, isolate themselves from their herds or groups, often can be seen attempting to bite or scratch at the affected areas, and towards the end of an untreated infection animals become lethargic, immobile and then die.
Even when treatment is available for farmed animals, it involves the traumatic manual removal of larvae, typically without anaesthesia. This process requires opening the wound further with a knife to extract deeply burrowed larvae.
New World Screwworms were eradicated from North and Central America in the second half of the 20th century, in an US-led effort to reduce economic losses. This eradication protected millions of farmed and wild animals from screwworms.[3] The eradication was done with the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT), a method where Screwworm pupae are irradiated with radiation that sterilises them. Since female screwworms only mate once in their lifetime, when the sterile males are released there is no reproduction, and the population shrinks.
For a long time, a “wall” of sterile screwworms at the Panama border prevented screwworms from returning to Central and North America. This large project requires over $15 million annually to release 20 million sterile flies in Panama. Unfortunately, this wall broke sometime in 2023, and screwworms have been speeding up Central America. One official we talked to said that they had “no control” over the current screwworm situation.
This wall-breaking adds both urgency and opportunity to act on screwworms now. There has been some media attention on the screwworm spread, and the US government has acted blocking cattle imports from Mexico after a recently reported case. From officials we’ve talked to, we know there are meetings between US and Latin American officials. We hope that this punctured equilibrium provides an opportunity to get the US government involved in eradication efforts in South America.
Two other things to note:
There appears to be some new resistance of screwworms to the antiparasitic drugs Ivermectin and Doramectin.
Climate change is expanding the habitable range of screwworms. This study concludes that, with rising temperatures, screwworms could become established year-round in the US.
If Screwworms were only a case about the large amount of preventable wild animal suffering, then this intervention probably wouldn’t be very tractable outside of EA circles. Fortunately, (or unfortunately) screwworms have a massive economic impact on Latin America. For example, this (slightly old) estimate says that the eradication of screwworms in Latin America would save farmers $3.5 billion annually[4]. Other key country-specific figures:
Screwworms cost about 41 million USD/year in Uruguay.
They cost about 52 million USD/year in Argentina[5].
In Brazil, they cost 450 million USD/year just in navel myiasis[6].
In the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul alone, costs are estimated at 28.3 million/year.
Because of this large economic incentive, screwworm eradication is much more tractable.
What we’ve learnt so far
Over the past months, we’ve been doing a literature analysis and meeting with government officials, with the aim of identifying the scientific and political barriers to screwworm eradication. We’ve identified five key bottlenecks:
Coordination Issues:
The eradication efforts in North America were led and funded by the US and just went down the “corridor” of Central America. South America’s geography and multiple borders require transnational agreements and extensive coordination, which complicates the process. For example, eradicating screwworms in Uruguay requires cooperation from Brazil and Argentina to prevent re-infestation. Due to the border length, a biological barrier between South American countries like the one in Panama would be almost impossible to maintain.Uruguay currently has an SIT eradication project, (supported by the USDA and international organisations) which is dependent on the collaboration of Brazil and Argentina to succeed.
Lack of Awareness and interest:
Authorities in South America show little interest in eradicating screwworms, despite farmers and experts considering it a priority. Our Interviewees suggest this is due to a status quo bias—farmers’ representatives are now used to screwworms, and consider eradicating them less urgent than other causes[7]Relatedly, in Brazil we can’t find data on the overall prevalence of the disease in cattle, even though ranchers are supposed to, by law, monthly report new cases to animal health authorities; we suspect that the disease is underreported.
Lack of Funding:
SIT-based eradication programs are expensive. Central America succeeded in eradication largely because it was 80-90% US-funded. Uruguay’s current 10-year SIT based program is estimated to cost $114 million USD.Technological Limitations:
The Sterile Insect Technique works, but is expensive and requires continual release of screwworms. Gene drives are promising, however, a C. hominivorax gene drive is still in development, and they face large regulatory hurdles (eg. compliance with the Cartagena Protocol).The role of the U.S.
Screwworms were eradicated from North and Central America in a project led by the U.S. The Uruguayan eradication programme is funded by U.S. agencies. This makes the U.S. the main player in eradication efforts, and we think their role is crucial. If they decided to expand their plans to South America, this would be game-changing.
Future plans
Our research has convinced us that there is much work that can be done to accelerate screwworm eradication. With funding and staff, we would focus on X main areas:
Political lobbying: Latin American representatives working on screwworm eradication are very scarce. Getting commitments from politicians sounds plausible, as they would achieve something almost no lawmaker has yet done: champion animal welfare, farmers’ protection, rural development, and economic growth. This would greatly improve the chances of making eradication a transnational priority.
Act as a coordinator facilitator organisation: often, countries are trapped in themselves, and are unable to work with other countries to achieve common goals. In an activity that requires as much coordination as screwworm eradication, an organisation actively coordinating countries through multilateral meetings, conferences, and other events would have great potential to maximise impact.
Accelerate research: screwworm eradication is partially constrained by knowledge gaps. Some of these have to do with the behaviour of political institutions and their seeming lack of interest in collaborating. But most of it revolves around the development of novel techniques to make eradication easier and cheaper. Currently, there is only one lab in Uruguay working on developing one of this novel technology: gene drives. With more funding and staff, we would work alongside research institutions and funders to push for more research into eradication alternatives[8].
Lobby the industry: While for farmers getting rid of screwworms is a priority, for their representatives it is seen as something that doesn’t merit much attention compared to other issues. Lobbying these farmers’ associations has the potential to accelerate screwworm eradication by improving political awareness.
Request for support
While we think the activities outlined above are crucial and necessary to accelerate the eradication of screwworms in South America, we are currently at capacity, and are unable to pursue any of them with the time and dedication required. We are, then, constrained by funding and expertise:
Funding/time:
Our volunteer team members have other commitments and can only dedicate ~5 hours per week to this project. To make significant progress, we need people working full-time, which requires funding.Proposed solution:
$15,000 for a part-time program director, and a research associate. With the capacity to expand to 100k for a full-time team
If you are an individual donor interested in funding us, drop us a message!
Expertise
We are seeking connections with:Veterinarians
Entomologists
People with Gene drive experience
Latin American policy experts
If you are one of these people or know someone who is, we want to talk to you!
If you are a funder or interested in funding suffering-reduction interventions, or an expert in disciplines relevant to eradicate screwworms, please reach out to us. We need your support to spare thousands of animals of extreme and excruciating suffering.
Relevant EA discussions on Screwworms:
Wild Animal Initiative is planning on funding a research investigating the welfare effects of screwworm eradication
Animal Ask has included eradicating screwworms from Brazil as one of the top priorities for impact in the country
Policy advocacy for eradicating screwworm looks remarkably cost-effective — EA Forum
- ^
There are other types of screwworms (Chrysomya bezziana, known as the Old World Screwworm), and other related flies that cause myaisis (such as the Lucilia cuprina). For the rest of the post, when we say ‘screwworms’ we will be referring to New World Screwworms.
- ^
When female screwworm flies detect a small wound (even as small as a tick bite or scratch) they lay 200-400 eggs at the site. Within 12-24 hours, these hatch into larvae that feed on living tissue, using sharp mouth hooks to tear into healthy flesh. Unlike regular maggots that consume dead tissue, screwworm larvae secrete enzymes to liquefy and digest live tissue, preventing healing and enlarging the wound as they grow. Over 5-7 days, the larvae burrow deeper, causing severe pain as they feed on nerve-rich tissue. As the wound increases in size more female screwworms can lay eggs in the same wound, leading to a feed back cycle of more larvae → larger wound → more larvae. Without treatment, animals suffer painful deaths from tissue destruction, secondary infections, organ failure, fluid loss, exhaustion a combination of the above, or being caught by predator because of their weakened condition.
- ^
FAOSTAT estimates ~500 million animals in 1999 (pg 633)
- ^
According to an estimate, $3.5 billion could be saved in 2005 if screwworms were eradicated (pg 634). This is an annual cost of $5.8 billion after adjusting for inflation (2024).
- ^
These two figures were mentioned in conversations with government officials.
- ^
A 2014 study estimates $340 million USD/year, that is $450 USD in today’s money.
- ^
Relatedly, in Brazil we can’t find data on the overall prevalence of the disease in cattle, even though ranchers are supposed to, by law, monthly report new cases to animal health authorities; we suspect that the disease is underreported.
- ^
Some of our unanswered questions include:
How much cheaper (if at all) is developing and deploying a gene drive compared to SIT? Also, how much do sexing strains in SIT facilities reduce the cost of SIT?
Are there any proposals in Brazil to use GMOs—as is already the case, for example, for Aedes mosquitoes and the Spodoptera caterpillar (p. 63 of this report)? And the use of gene drives? Would GMO release depend on a license from CTNBio, Anvisa, or another public agency?
Cases of C. hominivorax in livestock seem to be subject to compulsory notification in Brazil (according to the regulatory standard in maps 50⁄13). However, NWS is not listed on the official notification page why? Are there open databases that we can consult (or request access to) about this? Or a database with data on slaughtered animals?
Why are there no C. hominivorax reports in central Amazonas (IAEA, slide 12)? Is this due to missing data in remote areas, or could rivers and dense forests act as natural barriers, as the same claim for the Argentina-Uruguay border?
I’m very glad some people are finally working on this. This is one of the best suggested interventions I’ve seen in effective altruism to date. I correctly predicted that my biologist tumblr mutual nunuisancenewt would have a skeptical take though, and since he doesn’t have an account here, I will present his thoughts in his absence:
First, he’s very skeptical of the estimates for how many wild animals are affected by the new world screwworm. The only source given in your google doc is a paper which provides a statistic on the prevalence of myiasis in feral swine, which is really not enough information to conclude that myiasis is equally prevalent among all warm-blooded animals in South America. It’s plausible that screwworms are significantly more likely to target large mammals like pigs and cows to lay their eggs in, and that screwworm myiasis is rare among the small rodents and bats who make up the majority of the wild mammals in South America, since those mammals spend a lot more time in burrows and caves, and are more vulnerable to predation (making them less likely to die from parasites, and also making it a worse idea to lay eggs in them because they don’t live as long). KB Mathias cites a paper that cites another paper from 1937 that looked at 298 wild rabbits in North America prior to the eradication of the screwworm in that region, and found that 4% of them (12) were infected. This datapoint is evidence that screwworm myiasis is nearly as prevalent in smaller and more numerous wild animals than in larger and slower ones, but it is quite weak evidence. The EV estimates could easily be overstated by multiple orders of magnitude. Screwworms could conceivably affect closer to a million animals than a billion.
Secondly, there would be negative consequences for wild-animal-welfare to growing the cattle industry in South America, which this plan hinges on accomplishing. I’m extremely certain that total cattle welfare would be improved by eradicating the screwworm, despite resulting in higher cattle populations, but the expansion of cattle farming in South America would hasten the deforestation of the Amazon, which has profoundly negative ecological and climatic consequences. The Amazon is a carbon sink, and destroying more of it will worsen the effects of climate change, which is bad for wild animals on a large scale. Brian Tomasik argues here that rainforest beef production is net positive because it reduces the population of wild insects, but nunuisancenewt strenuously disagrees, (primarily) on the grounds that stable ecosystems are largely populated by specialists, who are larger, fewer in number, and practice K-selection, whereas disrupted ecosystems are largely populated by generalists, who are the reverse, and can be expected to experience more suffering. I’m not sure if this rule applies to a hectare of rainforest specifically, because of how unusually dense the wildlife is in such areas, but I would assume that habitat loss in the rainforest probably means more ecological disruption generally, affecting species across a much larger area than that which is directly affected.
He’s not concerned at all about the direct ecological effects of eliminating the screwworm, or any other parasite, since they have small and predictable effects on the ecosystem, and they represent a nutrient transfer away from large slow-breeding animals towards small fast-breeding animals, which means more animal suffering, even discounting the very serious direct harm they cause.
Myself, I’m about 90% sure the EV of expanded cattle farming in South America from reduced mortality rates is negative, and also about 90% sure that that negative EV is smaller in scale than the positive EV of reduced suffering from animals that counterfactually would have suffered myiasis and instead die of something else. But the scale of the second number is really, really uncertain without a lot more information. There’s a not-super-implausible timeline where the number of animals saved from myiasis is lower than the number of animals burned to death by rainforest clearing. I’m very interested to read the results of the Wild Animal Initative’s currently ongoing investigation on the effects of the New World Screwworm on wild animal welfare, but before then the available information seems very incomplete. I can’t find any better source on the number of animals affected by screwworm myiasis than yours. Information on wild animal suffering is frustratingly incomplete generally, and the complexity of ecosystems makes predicting the sign on wild animal interventions very, very hard. This case is no exception.
Also: I’m so excited someone is trying to take a crack at this issue. Suffering caused by screwworms does seem immense. I feel a bit unsure on the specifics of how this project will evolve, but I’m rooting for you! <3
The “show up” spirit feels emblematic of a quality I love about EAs. It reminds me of this quote I like: “Often, the important things are accomplished not by those best suited to do them, or by those who ought to be responsible for doing them, but by whoever actually shows up.”
Good on you all!
Does anyone know whether CE/AIM has looked into this, and if not it seems like they should? Great that you guys have already started something so now maybe there is no need to go via their incubation program, but conversely they might still have a significant value add in terms of networks + advice + funding. I’m not sure who the relevant CE person to ask would be.
I have pushed the idea on the CE research team to the point I’m sure they’re sick of hearing me rant about it!
To my knowledge it’s on their list of ideas to research for their next round of animal welfare charities
Exciting project idea!
This sounds like the kind of thing EA Animal Welfare would fund. If that is a dead end or unfeasible for some reason I would also consider funding it, please get in touch, thanks.
I’m so glad people are working on this!
+1, I’d also consider funding SFF but I’d want to first know EA Animal Welfare fund’s opinion (and why EA Animal Welfare fund isn’t funding it).
Thank you for sharing the update! :)
Do you have a prospective director in mind, and how many hours / for how long would they work? Same question for your research associate. $15k to cover 2 part time roles seems quite low to me, especially since this would have to also include healthcare, taxes, etc. that an employer wouldn’t pay for!
I’m also generally curious who has been leading this project, if anyone in particular! :)
Speaking for myself (not other coauthors), I agree that $15k is low and would describe that as the minimum plausible amount to hire for the roles described (in part because of the willingness of at least one prospective researcher to work for quite cheap compared to what I perceive as standard among EA orgs, even in animal welfare).
IIRC I threw the $100k amount out as a reasonable amount we could ~promise to deploy usefully in the short term. It was a very hasty BOTEC-type take by me: something like $30k for the roles described + $70k for a full-time project lead.
Thanks Aaron! I think I’m now a bit confused what a prospective funder would be funding.
Is it something like, the volunteer group would run a hiring round (managed by anyone in particular?) for a part-time leader (maybe someone in the group?), but no one specifically has raised their hand for this? And then perhaps that person could deploy some of the $15k to hire a research associate if they’d like?
I respect that this is an early stage idea y’all are just trying to get started / don’t have all the details figured out yet, just trying to understand (mostly for the sake of any prospective funders) who they would be betting on etc. :)
I was hoping he’d say himself but @MathiasKB (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/mathiaskb) is our lead!
But I think you’re basically spot-on; we’re like a dozen people in a Slack, all with relatively low capacity for various reasons, trying to bootstrap a legit organization.
The “bootstrap” analogy is apt here because we are basically trying to hire the leadership/managerial and operational capacity that is generally required to do things like “run a hiring round,” if that makes any sense.
So yeah, the idea is volunteers run a hiring round, and my sense is that some of the haziness of the picture comes from the fact that what thing(s) we’ll be hiring for depends largely on how much money we’ll be able to raise, which is what we’re trying to suss out right now.
All this is complicated by the fact that everyone involved has their own takes and as a sort of proto-organization we lack the decision-making and communications procedures and infrastructure that allows like OpenPhil/Apple/the Supreme Court to act as a coherent, unified agent. Like I personally think we should strongly prioritize hiring a full time lead, but I think others disagree, and I don’t want to claim to speak to SFF!
And thanks for surfacing a sort of hazy set of considerations that I suspect others were also wondering about, if implicitly!
Thanks for sharing!
I am fine with neglecting indirect effects on other wild animals besides the infected animals and screwworms, but I think these are the most directly affected (the goal of the intervention is their eradication), so they should be considered. Do you know whether the increase in welfare of the no longer infected wild animals would be larger than the decrease in welfare of the eradicated screwworms assuming these have positive lives? If it takes 100 worm-years, like 100 worms for 1 year, to kill a host animal, and each lethal infection is worse than the counterfactual death by 0.5 host-years of fully healthy life, the welfare per worm-year would only have to be more than 0.5 % (= 0.5/100) of the welfare per host-year of fully healthy life for the intervention to be harmful[1]. This seems possible considering that Rethink Priorities’ median welfare range of silkworms is 0.388 % (= 0.002/0.515) of that of pigs. I also think the worms may have positive lives because they basically live inside the food they eat. I suspect there is a natural tendency to neglect the effect on worms because they are disguting (at least to me[2]), but this is not a good reason to disregard their welfare.
I asked Matthias 15 days ago about the effects of reducing worm-years, and Matthias replied:
I am not accounting for the effect of extending the lives of the animals which would no longer be infected because it is quite unclear whether wild animals have negative or positive lives.
Writing this comment made me feel a bit disgusted.
Speaking for myself / not for anyone else here:
My (highly uncertain + subjective) guess is that each lethal infection is probably worse than 0.5 host-years equivalents, but the number of worms per host animal probably could vary significantly.
That being said, personally I am fine with the assumption of modelling ~0 additional counterfactual suffering for screwworms that are never brought into existence, rather than e.g. an eradication campaign that involves killing existing animals.
I’m unsure how to think about the possibility that the screwworm species which might be living significantly net positive lives such that it trumps the benefit of reduced suffering from screwworm deaths, but I’d personally prefer stronger evidence for wellbeing or harms on the worm’s end to justify inaction here (ie not look into the possibility/feasibility of this)
Again, speaking only for myself—I’m not personally fixated on either gene drives or sterile insect approaches! I am also very interested in finding out reasons to not proceed with the project, find alternative approaches, which doesn’t preclude the possibility that the net welfare of screwworms should be more heavily weighed as a consideration. That being said, I would be surprised if something like “we should do nothing to alleviate host animal suffering because their suffering can provide more utils for the screwworm” was a sufficiently convincing reason to not do more work / investigation in this area (for nonutilitarian reasons), though I understand there are a set of assumptions / views one might hold that could drive disagreement here.[1]
If a highly uncertain BOTEC showed you that torturing humans would bring more utility to digital beings than the suffering incurred on the humans, would you endorse allowing this? At what ratio would you change your mind, and how many OOMs of uncertainty on the BOTEC would you be OK with?
Or—would you be in favour of taking this further and spreading the screwworm globally simply because it provides more utils, rather than just not eradicating the screwworm?
Thanks, Bruce.
Yes, as I strongly endorse impartiality and hedonism. In practice, I do not see how tortuting humans would be the best way to increase the welfare of digital minds. I assume torturing biological humans requires way more energy than torturing virtual non-sentient humans, and I think it is extremely unlikely that the digital minds would directly want humans to suffer (as opposed to being attached to a superficial property of some torture). Impartiality and hedonism often recommend actions widely considered bad in super remote thought experiments, but, as far as I am aware, none in real life.
I would also say torture is far from the right word to describe the suffering of the host animals. “Extreme torture” refers to excruciating pain, which “can’t be sustained for long (e.g., hours, as opposed to minutes) without neurological shutdown”. In contrast, I think it takes way more than minutes for screwworms to kill a host animal.
If the estimate of the increase in welfare of the digital minds, and decrease in welfare of the humans accounted for all considerations, including my prior that torture rarely is the best course of action, I would change my mind at a ratio of 1 as implied by impartiality. I also strongly endorse maximising expected welfare, as I do not see how one can reject the axioms of Von Neumann–Morgenstern utility theorem (completeness, transitivity, continuity, and independence), so I would not decide based on the uncertainty of estimates accounting for all the considerations. I would just care uncertainty to determine how much to weight my priors and observations, with more uncertain observations resulting in me staying closer to my priors that torture is bad (as in inverse-variance weighting).
The most cost-effective interventions under high uncertainty are often decreasing uncertainty instead of executing the actions which currently look best. So my top priority would be assessing the welfare of the worms, not acting as though their welfare is sufficiently negative or positive. Matthias said “I haven’t looked into this at all”, so I guess there is room for the team to learn at least a bit.
I’ll say up front that I definitely agree that we should look into the impacts on worms a nonzero amount! The main reason for the comment is that I don’t think the appropriate bar for whether or not the project should warrant more investigation is whether or not it passes a BOTEC under your set of assumptions (which I am grateful for you sharing—I respect your willingness to share this and your consistency).
Again, not speaking on behalf of the team—but I’m happy to bite the bullet and say that I’m much more willing to defer to some deontological constraints in the face of uncertainty, rather than follow impartiality and maximising expected value all the way to its conclusion, whatever those conclusions are. This isn’t an argument against the end goal that you are aiming for, but more my best guess in terms of how to get there in practice.
I suspect this might be driven by it not being considered to be bad under your own worldview? Like it’s unsurprising that your preferred worldview doesn’t recommend actions that you consider bad, but actually my guess is that not working on global poverty and development for the meat eater problem is in fact an action that might be widely considered bad in real life for many reasonable operationalisations (though I don’t have empirical evidence to support this).[1]
I do agree with you on the word choices under this technical conception of excruciating pain / extreme torture,[2] though I think the idea that it ‘definitionally’ can’t be sustained beyond minutes does have some potential failure modes.
That being said, I wasn’t actually using torture as a descriptor for the screwworm situation, more just illustrating what I might consider a point of difference between our views, i.e. that I would not be in favour of allowing humans to be tortured by AIs even if you created a BOTEC showed that this caused net positive utils in expectation; and I would not be in favour of an intervention to spread the new world screwworm around the world, even if you created a BOTEC that showed it was the best way of creating utils—I would reject these at least on deontological grounds in the current state of the world.
This is not to suggest that I think “widely considered bad” is a good bar here! A lot of moral progress came from ideas that initially were “widely considered bad”. Just suggesting this particular defence of impartiality + hedonism; namely that it “does not recommend actions widely considered bad in real life” seems unlikely to be correct—simply because most people are not impartial hedonists to the extent you are.
Neither of which were my wording!
Cool! I think this is the main point. If one is thinking about eradicating millions or billions of worms, it is worth thinking at least some hours about their welfare.
I meant bad under the worldview of a random person, not me.
Given my endorsement of impartial hedonism, and worries about the meat-eating problem, I do not know whether decreasing human mortality is good or bad in many cases, which is definitely a controversial view. However, I do not think it implies any controversial recommendations. I recommend taking into account the effects on animals of global health and development interventions, and also donating more to animal welfare instead of global health and development relative to a world where the meat-eating problem was not a concern. I guess most people would not see these recommendations as bad (and definitely not as bad as torturing people), although I assume many would see them as quite debatable.
Among the categories of pain defined by the Welfare Footprint Project, I think your wording (“torture”, not extreme torture) is the closest to excruciating pain.
I said the estimation of the effects on humans and digital minds would have to account “for all considerations”, so it would not be a “BOTEC” (back-of-the-envelope-calculation). There is a strong prior against torturing humans, so one would need extremely strong evidence to update enough to do it. A random BOTEC from me would definitely not be enough.
To expand a bit on the funding point (and speaking for myself only):
I’d consider the $15k-$100k range what makes sense as a preliminary funding round, taking into account the high opportunity cost of EA animal welfare funding dollars. This is to say that I think SFF could in fact use much more than that, but the merits and cost effectiveness of the project will be a lot clearer after spending this first $100k; it is in large part paying for value of information.
Again speaking for myself only, my inside view is that the $100k figure is too low of an upper bound for preliminary funding; maybe I’d double it.
Excited!!! Will you consider setting up an every.org fundraiser?