Oh good, screwworms are back (2025) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48475898 - June 2026 (79 comments)
First U.S. screwworm case confirmed in South Texas - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48397036 - June 2026 (34 comments)
Isn't there a risk that the artificially introduced reproductory pressures would select for screwworms that produce males that are resistant to radiation.
My chain of reasoning is that not all the of the irradiated males would be completely sterile. If so, then the next generation would be a mix of hatchlings of not radiated parents and those parents who have not been completely sterilized in spite of radiation -- thereby increasing the proportion of radiation resistant varieties, assuming resistance is an inheritable trait. These may then find themselves at the input side of sterile male generation factories.
The intervention obviously worked, but was that because steps were taken to counteract the possibility of raising radiation resistant varieties.
BTW the article was a great read.
1. The Factory spawning population - This is self-sustained, and never encounters radiation.
2. A subset of the spawned males from the factory population are irradiated, making them sterile.
3. The wild population, consisting of the sterile males + wild males + wild females.
If for some reason the sterile population is not fully sterile (unlikely), then maybe there is a gene that helps for radiation resistance, but the children of that strain will not encounter radiation, so it fades away.
The factories are not going out to the regions where the flies are deployed to get new fly studs.
The few males that might survive the gamma exposure with intact fertility are probably just ones that didn't get a full dose.
It is rather amazing to me in fact that it's possible to sterilize the males without killing them.
From what I have read, flora and fauna around Chernobyl seems to have acquired degrees of radiation tolerance.
BTW I am a complete ignoramus in these matters.
I found and read through some of the reports of the time to try and prove myself correct. I'm wrong.
https://www.nal.usda.gov/exhibits/speccoll/exhibits/show/sto...
Okay, maybe you could release the flies in large enough numbers not to need monitoring but I guess it would also be prohibitively expensive.
Not that I believe it'll drive up the price that much but I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being 50-70 USD per in the US.
Chesterson's Fence strikes again. It's so easy to wax poetic about how ineffective government spending always is and should be cut to the bone that we don't stop to recognize that preventative programs like this save us from billions in economic losses.
Yep.
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"Though it appeared DOGE did cancel funding to the FAO, which works to monitor and control outbreaks of screwworm, in 2025, it was not possible based on the available evidence to conclude that the canceled grant directly caused the outbreak in the U.S. or to determine how it might have affected the FAO's work to contain the parasite in Central America."
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My interpretation would be that, as the parent article says, there were circumstances that have been leading to this outbreak for years. It may have happened even if Trump were never elected. However, one thing this article makes very clear is that screwworm control measures need to be in place across international borders. It takes efforts in Mexico and further South to stop screwworms before they reach the U.S.. Funding screwworm control in Mesoamerica is actually in the U.S.'s self-interest.
While this particular outbreak may have occurred anyways, cutting funding to screwworm control in Mexico and further South as a part of cutting foreign aid likely exacerbated the problem and will prolong the outbreak. The U.S., purely out of self-interest, should have been boosting funding to screwworm control South of their own borders in 2025, not slashing it.
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[1]https://www.snopes.com/news/2026/06/12/doge-cuts-screwworm/
That can’t be right. The Texas Department of Agriculture published a piece titled “Dollars Don’t Kill Screwworms” just two years ago.
https://texasagriculture.gov/News-Events/Article/10239/OPINI...
> Listen, dollars don’t kill screwworms. Sterile flies do. Detection systems do. We already have the tools to manage this issue because we’ve been doing it successfully for decades.
See? We don't need big government programs to get this under control, we just need farmers to… I dunno… raise and breed their own own sterile flies, or buy them from Walmart.
btw this is that terrifying jungle zone of Panama from the TV show Pluribus. Yes, it is real, and so are those trees.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darién_Gap - https://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/2904
Imagine working at the screwworm factory.
0 - https://x.com/alexpotato/status/1559865770515087360?s=20
May you and your smelling nose wife live happily ever after.
For an article that is so detailed in other areas, this feels like a very short dismissal of a topic that--regardless of direction--deserves more focus.
That's not what happened. DOGE carelessly cut a program in the middle of fighting a crisis.