From Christopher Clark, Houston, Texas, US
Simon Terry and Stephanie Howard raise the ethics around deliberately causing extinctions, with the example of mosquitoes that infect people with malaria being genetically engineered to spread sterility in their species (13 October, p 24). Couldn't we instead engineer a mosquito not to carry the plasmodium that causes malaria? That would still allow the species to be preserved.
The editor writes:
• Engineering a mosquito that is immune to the malaria parasite may be possible and is a goal now being pursued.
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