Kill ’em All!

Nobody  likes mosquitos – and with good reason.  They’re pests. But worse than that – they kill people.  Hundreds of thousands of people died from malaria last year.  More from dengue and yellow fever.  If you add it up, mosquitos kill more people than war!   And now Zika’s in the headlines.  So it’s a pretty good bet that if all the mosquitoes on the planet suddenly dropped dead tomorrow,we might actually rejoice.

But here’s the question – should we kill them off ourselves?   Because for the first time, it seems like that’s actually a choice.  That the technology exists to deliberately wipe out all the mosquitoes.   Exterminate them.  Forever.   But should we?

Here’s Charles Monroe-Kane with journalist Daniel Engber –he’s in favor of mosquito-cide.