Andre Abassi is from UC Law, San Francisco. He currently serves as co-president of the student chapter of the Animal Legal Defense Fund in SF and is working on a campaign to increase legal protections for invertebrates at the federal and state levels having founded the ‘Society for the Protection of Insects’. Here are some of the questions we try to answer: Do insects live net-negative lives? Is there an anthropocentric way to frame insect welfare? How can lessons learned from securing crustaceans legal rights be applied to insects? What does legal protection for insects even look like and how will we be able to secure it?
Thank you so much, Zander! You raised a really interesting point. Insecticides unquestionably pose greater harm to mosquitoes; therefore, sterilization surely is the more ethical option in my view. Not to mention the potential benefits that human populations could derive from smaller mosquito populations. The only concern I have is regarding the potential consequences of eradicating mosquitoes on our ecosystem. I'm confident, however, that gene-editing can be targetted at eliminating mosquito-borne diseases by making mosquitoes resistant to pathogens. I'm looking forward to a world where mosquitoes cease to transmit pathogens all together! Do let me know your thoughts on the experiment the US is doing on mosquito sterilization!
Great stuff, Karthik! Made me think of (and question) the ethics behind the US’s experiment of sterilizing mosquitoes!
Thank you so much, Zander! You raised a really interesting point. Insecticides unquestionably pose greater harm to mosquitoes; therefore, sterilization surely is the more ethical option in my view. Not to mention the potential benefits that human populations could derive from smaller mosquito populations. The only concern I have is regarding the potential consequences of eradicating mosquitoes on our ecosystem. I'm confident, however, that gene-editing can be targetted at eliminating mosquito-borne diseases by making mosquitoes resistant to pathogens. I'm looking forward to a world where mosquitoes cease to transmit pathogens all together! Do let me know your thoughts on the experiment the US is doing on mosquito sterilization!