Man Play God Again

I read the article “Engineered Mosquitoes Could Wipe Out Dengue Fever” and felt that our world is surely heading to the end. Man is playing God again. And the worst is that they are using Bolehland as the guineapig!

The article reads:
Scientists at a British biotech company said they have evidence that their genetically modified mosquitoes, which are programmed for sudden, early death, can control the spread of dengue fever. Dengue is carried by mosquitoes and is the scourge of urban areas in the developing world, much as malaria is in rural regions.
The company, Oxitec, said it can decimate mosquito populations by breeding genetically modified male mosquitoes, then releasing them to mate with wild females. Their offspring contain lethal genes that kill them young, before they can reproduce. Company officials told Wired News that their latest test results show that the genetically modified bugs can breed just as well as wild ones. "We will be able to control dengue through controlling the mosquitoes that transmit it, especially in large urban areas," said the company's chief scientist Luke Alphey. "Thereby protecting many, many millions of people from this disease." Mosquitoes pass dengue fever to up to 100 million people each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Up to 5 million die...”

If you have been into the virgin jungle in Malaysia, I bet that you hardly find any mosquito. If there is, then that place have been visited by human.

Perhaps you would like to know why?
Because in the jungle the bats feed freely on the mosquitoes.

Then why is it that when there are human, there are mosquitoes?
Because human cook with fire which smoked away the bats, and without bats, caused the over supply of mosquitoes.

This is only a simple ecosystem. What about other fauna and flora affected by the disappearing of mosquitoes? I can think of spiders getting extinct caused by the disappearing of mosquitoes.

Here are some comments from the net:

“…removing ANY organism from a local eco-system can cause a collapse of all organisims in it. We typically think of mosquitos as no-good insects, but I'm sure they have a place in the food cycles of other creatures who are also native to the area. Wiping out or dramatically reducing the mosquito population could affect the residents' main food supplies and then you have a different problem -- starving people, rather than sick people. The effect on crop pollination in fruits and vegetables as well as other potentially hazardous effects on the ecosystem? Such tinkering with nature is dangerous indeed - what would the company (and the country of Malaysia) do if their crops/fruits no longer fruited because they weren't pollinated. Also, how would these genetic mutants be contained in Malaysia (they couldn't) - their spread could cause many more problems than they solve. Should we allow a company to use Malaysia as a laboratory for such experiments? Who knows what unseen impact this will have on our ecological balance. I would be extremely cautious - and worried - about this initiative”.