One step closer to making mice that fight Lyme disease?
WBUR, Boston, August 17, 2017:
By Carey Goldberg
Last summer, MIT researchers proposed a futuristic solution for the problem of widespread Lyme disease on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard: modify the genes of the islands’ mice to make them resistant to the tick-borne disease.
If the proposal comes to fruition, it could mean that a few years from now, islanders will witness the first deliberate release of a gene-edited mammal into the environment, says MIT biologist Kevin Esvelt. READ MORE.
This sounds like a really dumb idea. Mice are not the only carriers of these diseases.
I think that the main reason that humans are now so sick from these infections is due to humans’ “modifications” to microbial DNA.
Nature does NOT need humans to survive. Humans need Nature to survive, and we’ve destroyed way too much of it. If humans all disappeared from the planet today, Nature would carry on without us.
Lyme disease was a even dumber idea…..
Why do you “think the main reason that humans are now so sick from these infections is due to humans’ ‘modifications’ to microbial DNA” ? Is there any evidence of this? Please elaborate just a bit.
If it is possible to engender resistance to Lyme disease in mice, how is that destroying nature? It sounds like an improvement to me. Are you saying that fighting disease is somehow defying nature? This sounds like some outmoded religious belief – perhaps interfering with “God’s Will”. My own observation is that nature constantly interacts with itself, and that we humans are part of this nature – not supernatural outsiders. That we are not is a “really dumb idea”.
Um…no…no…and no. Just because mice may not get the disease does not mean the disease will not be transmitted to people and other animals. This makes absolutely no sense. How’s about working on a cure and vaccine. I mean a “real” vaccine? Stop wasting time and resources. Look at it this way, if dogs are made immune to cancer, does this mean we are all immune to cancer?
So what If the mice don’t get sick! The ticks don’t care about transferring Lyme Disease, they just want to eat. They will feed off of the mice so they will still be around. After they feed they drop off and wait for the next host to walk by and attach to – eventually to the human host. What am I missing here? This does not make sense.
http://www.yc2n.com/bobwhite-quail-vs-tick-study.html … … likes Ranger Erics’ idea to release quails to eat ticks!