Mosquitoes vs. Humans - Battle for the Future

it's gonna work. So you might have already seen Jonathan and his first video from c E S. There is going to be another one next week. Um. But so while he's out of town, Lauren and I figured we would talk about some topics that interested us. Yeah, and so we landed immediately upon mosquitoes, right, because they're awesome, not because they're horrible. They're horrible, they're useless. So I love nature, and I love all the critters of the forest and all of the species that exist on this

wonderful planet. But I think maybe I could make an exception and just put aside by nature protecting attitude and say mosquitoes suck. Literally, they're horrible, and I want to destroy them. And I'm not even sure if I should feel bad about that. Yeah, usually we're pretty we're pretty tree huggy, circle of life kind of people around here.

But I think that, yes, this is one example of which we just kind of go, well, you know, they caused some six hundred and twenties seven thousand deaths from malaria, and so maybe they're just not good for anything. I think it's a conclusion at the end of that. Well, okay, so maybe we shouldn't go so far as to say we'll just completely eliminate mosquitoes, but it is fair to

say we are in a war with mosquitoes. We are fighting a battle for our lives, lives for the lives of many human beings who are put greatly at risk by the diseases that mosquitoes spread um and of course malaria is the chief among those. So what are the numbers on this? How many people are are put at

risk by malaria? And there's some two hundred and seven million cases worldwide, and in anyway, these are the newest numbers that we've got from the World Health Organization WHO in and you know, the mortality rates from the disease have have fallen some forty five since the year two thousand due to a whole bunch of new technologies that have come out, which which is fabulous, but there's still that, I mean, there's still hundreds of thousands of people dying

of this disease every year. And and that's you know, you've also got West Nile virus, lots of other things that skit is spread. But okay, so what is malaria? Malaria is a disease caused by parasites from the genus Plasmodium. Right. It's not just a normal bacteria or virus, is it right? Right? Um? And only five of these specific uh species of Plasmodium parasites have been known to cosmolarian humans. They different strains cosmlarian and other animals as well. One is a new

recent crossover from monkeys, which is pretty exciting. These parasites are spread through the bites of infected mosquitoes. Yeah, apparently all of the species of mosquito that transmit the malaria parasite are found within the genus and awfulies And that's a name which comes from the Greek which literally means useless, without advantage, or good for nothing. So it's like literally part of their very etymological identity that they must be destroyed.

They're good for nothing, I mean they're they're probably good for feeding some species of birds or spiders. Perhaps. Again I'm not I'm not advocating complete extermination of the genus. But again, this is war. It is it is and Okay, So so rates of infection depend on a whole bunch of different things things. Yeah, it's it's from the species of mosquitoes, specific lifespan um. It's it's taste for human blood because some mosquitoes are more bloodthirsty than others. Um Uh.

Climate and weather conditions like rainfall, temperature, and humidity can affect this and also um different populations can have different immunity. Over the years of exposure to small amounts of this parasite, you can build up an immunity. Um. And so when the climate changes earlier I'm sorry, when the weather changes in the climate slowly kind of fills stuff in. Different populations of humans that are perhaps less immune to the

disease can can catch it, and it can run pretty rampant. Yeah, and it tends to come in sort of like boom and fade cycles, right like during the rainy seasons and the warm seasons, malaria booms exactly. Yeah, Um. And the basic way that it works is that, UM, it's a single celled parasite and it gets into your blood cells and reproduces until it kills the cell, which then releases a whole bunch of toxins and more parasites and repeats

the process. So um, you know, eventually, like in with short term it will cause kind of flu like symptoms, but in the long term it can cause organ failures, brain problems, cardiovascular problems, pulmonary problems, you know, just basically shut you down. Okay, So is there a way to deal with the disease itself? Like if we just know that mosquitoes are here to stay, is there a malaria vaccine? Well, okay, UM.

Vaccines are tricky here because the parasite changes a bunch of it grows so fast in your bloodstream that that it's changing and mutating and building up drug resistance pretty quickly. So there's no current vaccine that's effective. One isn't testing UM. It's it's against the most common and deadly of those parasites, p falciparum or falciparum. I'm not sure. My latin is really rusty, and and it's it's currently being administered as

part of a research trial in Africa. Results aren't expected until late and uh for possible use, you know, if it seems legit in starting in sometime, but you know, it's it's still in testing. People are hoping thing that this one is going to work out. It's tricky because the genomes of both the parasite and of mosquitoes, of the mosquitoes that carry it have been mapped. But you know that's as we've talked about before on the show,

a genome is a whole lot of information to pour over. Okay, so you can't really vaccinate it yet, what do they do to treat it? The best treatment for the disease right now is uh it's called art missenan based combination therapy or a CT, which acts kind of like a like a punch kick combo of of drugs that helps prevent the parasite from developing resistance. UM, but it can still the pears I can still develop resistance to this

stuff over time. And also it's pretty expensive, so it sounds like the disease itself is pretty hardy and difficult to fight, So maybe the best thing to do in this case would be something that's called vector control. And this is when there are diseases that are zoonotic, they're fed to us through an animal carrier, where you attack the animal carrier rather than the disease itself. So if it's a disease spread by rats, you'd try to control

the rat population rather than dealing with the disease. In this case, it's spread by mosquitoes. So what do you do? Go to war with mosquitoes, like I've been saying, all right, and this is tricky too, because only about one percent of the mosquito population is capable of carrying these parasites UM and mosquitoes are pretty sturdy. They've been around for like over three hundred million years UM. And furthermore, only

female mosquitoes are the ones that spread this disease. So you have to get really tough and specific against this mosquito problem. It's it's not you know, you can't just like go knock on their door at night and take them to mosquito jail, mosquito chaniel. I'm trying to picture that it's made of legos, I don't know clearly, carbon nano tubes. I'm not sure. Okay, Well, I do know that we have a bunch of different ways of trying

to fight and control mosquito infection. UM and I think the most low tech and the most widespread is probably mosquito nets. Right, Yeah, as far as I can tell, they've been around for a good couple hundred years, possibly thousands of years, although I'm not sure. I'm not sure about the veracity of that one. UM. And in the eighties or so, we started treating mosquito nets with pesticides,

which is pretty effective. I mean, I mean mosquito nets themselves can reduce the cases of malaria in a population by about forty and treated nets by something like so that's awesome. I mean, you know that's but that's still leaving hundreds of thousands of people susceptible. Yeah, and I'd imagine the mosquito net. I mean, that's something you can sleep over, but you can't, like live inside it. I mean you've got to get up and go do your things.

I mean you could, I guess if you made yourself a suit of mosquito netting, but that wouldn't really be effective impractical, yes, um so so, but I was talking about UM treating the nets with insecticides. Yeah, yeah, we've got lots of poison. Humans are pretty good at creating place and as it turns out, yeah, okay. So there's one major example that'd be d d T SO d d T S and insecticide that has been highly effective at eliminating disease carrying mosquito populations before um as in

the United States after World War Two. UH. This is actually direct quote from the CDC's history on this. The National Malaria Eradication Program UH. Let skip a bit consisted primarily of d d T application to the interior surfaces of rural homes or entire premises in counties for malaria was reported to have been prevalent in recent years. UH and so by the end of nineteen nine, more than four point six million house spray applications have been made.

It also included drainage, removal of mosquito breeding sites, and UH spraying from aircraft of insecticides. So basically, within a few years the country was declared malaria free by the use of d DT. So it's effective, why not just spray the entire world with d d T problem solved. Right, Well, that problem is solved, however, Yeah, it's d d T. You've probably heard of d d T before, maybe in

conjunction with a book called Silent Spring. D d T was the subject of controversy and ensuing decades and the sixties and seventies, and it was eventually banned, possibly with very good reason. Uh. It's toxic to the environment in all kinds of ways. Uh. And it's got nasty, persistent effects throughout the biosphere. So it's lipophili becaus I believe the word it. It bonds in a friendly way with fat cells, so it stays in organic tissue for a

long time. Yeah. Um. And then there there are questions about its toxicity to humans. It's been suggested with links to various diseases and humans, though I think it has not necessarily been proven as a carcinogen. And then finally, you've got the problem of insect resistance. Right. You use a poison long enough on insect populations is going to kill a lot of them. But in the same problem we have with the overuse of antibiotics, if you continue

using it, you're going to get some resistant insects. You'll eventually select for insects that are resistant. Right now, you have super insects who aren't harmed by d d T, and you've basically destroyed your environment by spraying it with poison that is maybe killing you. And then you'll have mosquito population surge back later, right. Yeah, So, and this

is the problem with with all insect sides. Really when you get down to it, um, you know, you also get UM D D E T, which is a little bit safer than d d T, but also i'd imagine a good bit safe. I think most things are good but safer than d d T UM. But but it's still slightly toxic to h to lots of wildlife, more

so non mammals than mammals. But um, you know, even though it's been classified as safe to use on humans in accordance with the district, the instructions on on any package labeling that you may find, it can still be slightly toxic to us as well if it's used improperly. So I was reading somewhere about that there's like a future DEET, like a hyperdet that could be coming to the market that's way more effective. Well, so the whole. One of the things, one of the weird things about

DEET is that we're still not sure exactly how it works. Um. It either confuses mosquito sense of smell or it smells really yucky to them. So it's it's not like d d T. It's not like a poison. It's not a poison. No, it's it's a repellent. UM and and there are other repellents that are in development right now. UM. One really promising one is called and this is snappy vu A A one that stands for the Vanderbilt University um allosteric

agonist number one. And basically what this does is is overload mosquito sense of smell, thus preventing them from tracking down tasty, tasty human blood. Sounds like an agonist, right, Um. And it's a it's a molecule that triggers a mosquito's olfactory nerves switchboard. Um, it's a it's a little thing called the called the orco, and the ORCO transmits signals from the bugs odorant receptors to its brain, letting it

know what it's smelling. Um. But but when you trigger the whole switchboard at once, it causes a sensory overload.

It's a basically a thing that smells like everything simultaneously, which if you think about that, that's terrible Like that, I would like no one to ever you know, not not that we've got similar switchboards and humans, but at any rate, Um, yeah, it's currently in testing, but don't they say that in trials it's like a thousand times more effective than deet or something like yeah, yeah, some

some huge amount. I don't have the number right in front of me, but um, but really quite effective and and also probably you know, I'm making up a number here, essentially, but millions of times more effective than, for example, is cit Tranella candle um, which really only confuses a particular odor recept or and not the whole switchboard. Okay, um, what about this kite patch I was hearing about? Is that another chemical solution? Yeah, this is a this is

a similar repellent sort of thing. Um that. This was a crowdfunded anti mosquito patch called kite. It just just in fall of met like seven dtent of its goal on Indigo Go, which is wonderful. They raised over five hundred and fifty thousand dollars um and uh, okay, so, so one of the other ways that mosquitoes detect humans is with carbon dioxide receptors. You know, we we exhale the stuff and so they can they've learned how to smell it. And the chemicals on this patch mess with mosquitoes.

Carbon dioxide sent receptors in um. Uh, those in particular, and maybe there are other odor receptors in general. The kite patch makers have up to this point been understandably a little bit fuzzy wuzzy on the on the details of it, since it's still in development. But um, but in general, um, someone wearing the kind of thing on their clothing should be invisible to the bugs for up to forty eight hours. Okay, so the bug, the bug

can't smell your breath. But at the same time, it's not using like a toxic chemical to confuse it, right exactly, it should be non toxic. It's pretty inexpensive and um. So it's currently with all of this money that they grabbed from Indigo go in testing in Uganda. So uh, we're going to see how that goes. Cool. Well, good luck to them. So that sounds like a good future avenue there. Yes, Well, I want to talk about some more things that are currently being used and might be

used in the future. I want to talk about traps. Traps. Did you ever play that game when you're kid? The board game, the mouse trap game? Yeah, where I'm not sure if it was actually a game as much as it was just like a thing to set up and look at. Well, you have to move around the board and hit certain spaces in order to set the pieces up, supposedly, but I'm not sure that I ever played that way. I think that I just constructed the Rube Goldbergesque machine

and did it well. I never even played the game. I just saw the commercial and wanted it really bad because of the traps. It's good. Traps are very satisfying if you're trying to eliminate pests, that there's sort of this deep down natural human urge to trap things you don't want near you and slay them. Slay them. Yeah, like slaying mosquitoes. That's much more fun than slaying mice, which is kind of sad um. Yes, mice are cute.

I had a pet mouse once. Never had a pet mosquito, because mosquitoes are attracted to heat, carbon dioxide, stinky human smell. If we know what they're attracted to. Seems like we might be able to make traps where we can lure them in, put them in a bag, send them off somewhere bad, and we're done. Send them to a mosquito jail. Yeah. Right. So here's one example, just a consumer mosquito trap that you can go on the internet and buy. This is what it's called the mosquito magnet, and a lot of

traps work like this. Basically, they attract mosquitoes with a combination of c O two and water vapor and that's created by burning a little flame from a pro propane tank. Okay, so so you've got so you've got the heat, you've got the CEO two uh yeah, and the water vapor two and so it simulates the human breath that you were talking about, just like what they're attracted to. The

kite patch messes up and then when it attracts the insects. Uh, these kinds of traps suck the insects up into a collector device with an electric fan or a vacuum or something like that. So it's it's doing the breath, it's getting them in there. Um. The video for this particular product is kind of hilarious because some guy keeps telling you to join his family. Yeah, that the announcer, and it is very enthusiastic. Uh, and I recommend it. So the machine looks more expensive than I can afford, but

if I could afford it, it would be really cool. Um. Uh, just get rid of all those those skeeters. Bye bye. Skeeters is the scientific term, by the way, Yes, here in the South it is right science South science. Um. But is there a better way? I wonder is there anything that's more attractive to them than this combination of CEO two and water vapor? Something that that like is just a really distracting smell that they would love. And if you could just put some of the smell away

from where the people are, would draw all the mosquitoes away. Okay, So I I heard on the internet that, um that mosquitoes really like cheese, like stinky, stinky, stinky cheese. Yeah, okay, So the question is what do you what if you could create a diversion for mosquitoes that would draw them away from humans and scientists have been thinking about this

for a while. In the nine nineties, of researcher named Barton Knoles figured out that Hey, it looks like mosquitoes love limburger cheese just as much as they like the human smell. Um, And this could actually lead to improve mosquito traps, drawing the insects away from the humans with irresistible piles of cheesy bait. Um. So you could just leave piles of cheese in the jungle somewhere and say the world right. Yeah, well maybe not quite, but it

but it was a step in the right direction. The research has been considered useful, even if it's not like the solution to the world mosquito problem. The paper was called on Human Odor, Malaria, Mosquitoes and Limburger Cheese, published in nine and I think Noel's eventually won an ig Nobel Prize for his research. Um, but so what other smells do? They love stinky feet, They love stink in

whatever form. So malaria infected mosquitoes. If you put like a nasty stocking that you've been wearing for about forty eight hours in a jar, the mosquitoes will flock to it. They love it. No, no, you said malaria infested mosquitoes specifically, right, that that's actually what this next study is. One that's called malaria infected mosquitoes expressed enhanced attraction to human odor, and that was actually published just last year in almost

said this year. Okay, but what it found is that malaria infected mosquitoes, in particular above regular mosquitoes are three times more attracted to stinky foot odors than uninfected mosquitoes are. Wow. Okay. So, so what you're basically saying is that that the for somehow, this this uh, this parasitic infection is driving the mosquitoes to be more attracted to humans than they otherwise would be right, And the important thing about this research is

it actually has two reasons it's really important. One is that it might help us better understand how to create lures for these mosquitoes to draw them off the trail or invite them into traps. But it also is helping us understand the behavior of the parasite itself. So we don't just have to understand the mosquito, but we understand how the malaria parasite controls the mosquito's behavior. And the more we know about that, the better we are fighting this,

especially in terms of vector control. So the question comes up, why it's better limburger cheese or stinky socks. Um. James Logan, who is one of the authors of the Stinky Feet paper, was quoted in an interview with the Huffington Post and he said this, Uh, mosquitoes aren't attracted to cheese because they've evolved to know the difference. So you have to get the mixture of the ratios and concentrations of those chemicals exactly right. Otherwise the mosquito won't think it's a human.

So he's coming down and saying stinky socks are a better bait than Limburger cheese. That's that's slightly disappointing to me, because I was envisioning this, this gorgeous future where where all the cities are made of cheese, that the American tail had it right all along, and the streets will be paved. I see a flaw in your vision there, because you wouldn't want the cities made of cheese. That would just draw all the mosquitoes to it. What you want is to find a place where nobody wanted to

live and put all of the cheese there. Joe, I really appreciate that that is your problem with my logic here, Okay, But it turns out there's another flaw, which is we shouldn't put the ease out there. We should put huge piles of stinky socks out there right right, Uh, faux cities made of stinky socks. Yes, Or an even better alternative would be as if we could create a really

cheap synthetic version of the stinky sock smell. And that's one of the things that might come out of this research in the future, is that we can make better mosquito bait, thus more attractive mosquito traps, get more of those suckers in there, and take them away from people so they don't infect them. Right and hypothetically, especially since you're putting these stinky sock generating machines, you know, not very near to human populations. You're you're you're not you're

not poisoning anything. I mean, oh well, I mean yeah, so you're not using a poison at all, so that that wouldn't harm other wildlife and it wouldn't lead to an adapted resistance among the mosquitoes, or if it did lead to an adapted resistance, it wouldn't be a poison resistance. It would just mean mosquitoes that didn't like the smell of b O which would probably be a good thing to begin with, right, Okay, I'm gonna blow your mind

with a really bizarre solution. Okay, do it blast them Empire style, what like pup you like like pup you pupu the mosquitoes to death. We are talking about mosquito lasers. It is that. That is literally the mosquito laser. This is a real solution proposed by real people, not dudes on the internet, like people who actually make stuff and make money doing it. Okay, Okay, I've heard about this, and I hear that it's actually kind of sort of the fault of Bill Gates is correct. Okay, So here's

the story. Apparently, back in the mid two thousands, Bill Gates asked former Microsoft executive Nathan mirror Vold to use his invention company, Intellectual Ventures Else to come up with a new way to battle the spread of malaria. So Mirrorvold and some associates brainstormed, and the result was the mosquito laser. Uh So, the mosquito laser was originally the idea of an astrophysicist and named Lowell Wood, who was associate he had with the Strategic Defense Initiative in the eighties,

you know, the Star Wars Star program. It all comes back to okay, alright. The idea there, I think is like, if the Soviets shoot missiles at us, we have satellites, they're going to peep them out of the sky with lasers. You can see that this guy has like maybe similar

thought kind of yeah, no, that's probably not fair. He's probably actually a genius, but let's make fun of him because you know, um so Mirrabalds back right, Mirrabalds group, including a guy named Jordan's Care, built a prototype of a mosquito laser death ray out of parts bought on eBay.

Um Mirrable demonstrated this live at a Ted talk in two thousand and ten, and if you watch the footage, it is it'll make you feel like a sadist, but it is so pleasing to just watch mosquito wings vaporized into smoke and like legs get blasted off in slow motion where this insect that it fills you with. Hate to see it blown up into this huge size on a monitor because you know it's going to bite you

and it's it's cousins are probably killing people somewhere. But they blast it with a laser and it just sort of like the thorax erupts with little plumes of smoke and the wings disintegrate and it falls slowly and gracefully. So yeah, they're shooting mosquitoes with lasers. I I have to say that, as as peace loving as I am,

that does sound. Doing research for this episode was really was one of the rougher episodes for me, because every single article feels it necessary to put a giant picture of of a mosquito at the top, like usually a blood filled mosquito, like actively drinking from human skin, mosquito Thanksgiving, and I that is so I was. I was unhappy about that. Yeah, okay, so the well, so the payoff is pretty Yeah, you can go watch these videos and you will get your sadest jollies out of it. Okay,

but so, so how how effective is this really? I mean, I mean, do they have any any even prototypes? Oh? Yeah yeah yeah, the most recent products, so they've had several. They had a handheld version. The most recent prototype works based on a photonic fence, uh photonic like photons, So there's a wall of infrared light between two fence posts.

When an insect interrupts the barrier. The system uses a non lethal laser ping, so it kind of just like pops it with a laser pointer um to determine what kind of insect it is and make sure nothing's in the way and stuff like that. So you determine and it gets data back, of course from that ping to say like, Okay, it's an insective about this size and its wings are beating at this frequency and there's nothing

in the way. And if the message it gets is this is a female mosquito because male and female mosquitoes have a different wing rate I believe, yeah, that their wings beat at different frequencies. The females are bigger, I believe, um, And it detects the Okay, this is one of the bad guys. It's a female mosquito. It then issues the killing blow in the four arm of a photon stream from a blue laser, which is actually the same kind of laser in your Blu ray player. Yeah. So, how

is the photonic fence best used. Well, it's probably best at a perimeter around buildings, like especially hot spots like hospitals and clinics, But technically you could just put one around your backyard if you wanted, and it should be highly effective. Um your old claim. This thing could shoot down about a hundred mosquitoes per second. Uh it wonderful. Jordan Care, who worked on the project, actually published an article with instructions on how people can build their own

mosquito laser fence out of consumer electronics. In the I Tribolie Spectrum article uh in two thousand and ten, I quote directly from him for this interesting fact. He says, the average flying altitude varies among mosquito species, but it's usually only about two meters, and they'll fly over obstacles

when necessary, even into an upper story window. But if your virtual fence is three to five meters high, you can catch almost all mosquitoes that fly by because they're not expecting anything, right that they think they can just float through right there. Yeah, so these cocky mosquitoes get caught in the net like Sandra Bullock and then bam

they're dead. Okay, So the benefit is is probably much less of a threat to the environment than simply spreading pesticides brays around, and pesticides brays killed a wider range of animals, while the mosquito laser can attack only the culprits you want, all right, if a b or something else that was perhaps useful to our environment floated floated flu past, then right, it can leave them alone. It can tell the difference between a female mosquito and a b um. And so this is really cool, but there

are a few problems to actually implementing something like this. Yeah, I was gonna say that this sounds all too good to be true, Like set me up with lasers in my backyard for mosquitoes immediate lane. Well, I mean, nobody's got a factory making these yet what they what these people came up with was a prototype, and that's to their stated goal is about that. They're like, we're going to put the ideas out there, but we're not going

to manufacture this on a large scale. Um. So there's a big question about can it really be cost effective, um, you know, to put one of these at every building or whatever. The other question is is it feasible to implement some places that don't have abundant grid electricity Because it's powered, right, you can spray DDT wherever you want,

but this thing needs electricity and a continual stream. It's and well, I mean, you know, at a certain point, you're going to uh destroy the mosquito population enough that it will collapse. You know, if you have too many too many males to not enough females, and you know, things will go wonky and eventually it won't work out well for them, which is basically what what D d

T did here in the United States. But uh, yeah, so well, obviously we still have mosquitoes, right, but we we just don't have a malaria problem really in the United States. Um and so yeah, so so this the laser is maybe the coolest thing I researched, but I don't know if it's the most practical. Um. But I want to talk about one more thing. Okay, right, yeah, you've you've got here in your notes. So, and what this sounds like is is people going like, okay, so

mosquitoes are kind of going to be around. It's really difficult to get rid of them entirely. Uh can we put them to use? Somebody had this idea. It's called the Flying Syringe, which is not a kung fu movie like the Flying Guillotine or anything. I would watch that kung fu movie The Flying are In. Yeah. Yeah, we should make that kung fu movie. Yeah, okay that they're

all listening. In two thousand eight, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which they've come up a couple of times now, they're they're very much into malaria, fighting malaria around the world. Right there, They're not into malaria, Yes, they're exactly the opposite. They're against malaria. They awarded a hundred thousand dollar research grant to Hiroyuki Matsuka of Gichi Medical University in Japan, and the idea was to develop flying syringes. That was

this person's idea. Uh, and what these would be. They would be genetically modified mosquitoes that are engineered to inject hosts with life saving vaccines instead of diseases through their saliva um. Obviously, one can imagine this would be really helpful in getting vaccines to people in remote and impoverished locations because most of the time, if you transport vaccines, they have to be kept refrigerated. But this can make it really hard to get them to remote places. Right.

Oh sure. Yeah. Also, you've got just a just a manpower problem and and monetary restraints, all kinds of stuff like that, right, So vaccines delivered by mosquitoes could save more lives um, so far, the transgenic mosquito doesn't seem to have been created. I read an article about this research grant from two thousand and eight, and then I saw Matsuka gave a presentation on the research at a symposium in two thousand nine. But other than that, I

don't know if it's gone anywhere. But I think that's a really cool idea. Yeah, well, I mean I don't know, like, like, to me, it sounds like there's so much there's so many ways out there that we have of killing mosquitoes that that if you're just creating really expensive mosquitoes, I'm not sure if anyone's going to want to fund that research. Oh that's true. Would be horrible if like a million

dollar mosquito flew into the photonic fence really impressive laser trap. Yeah, it's you would just everyone would cry, I think, Okay, the tears of scientists would be would be shed. Well.

I think the bottom line is that while we're not necessarily for total eradication of these mosquito species, we are sort of acknowledging that there is a struggle we must win, and that we've got a lot of tools already, and we've got some even better tools on the way for fighting this, especially to save all these lives around the world. I mean, it's not just a backyard grilling, you know, slap in your leg. It's not just itchy. It's it's

really quite terrifying. Um. But but no, I'm but I'm so excited about and all of this research that that I was reading about. Anyway, seems like people are talking about, you know, if this presents a solution, that it's going to be presented within the next like two or three years, not that like twy to fifty that we hear about with so many things, but kind of kind of soon. Yeah. Yeah, So I think that just about wraps up our conversation. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So, thank you guys so much

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