“The malaria parasite has been responsible for half of all human deaths since the Stone Age” is the quote that jumped off the page in a recent article by Sonia Shah in the Wall Street Journal.
Sonia Shah is author of The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years.
I saw this linked from LongNow.org blog dedicated to important news. They don’t cover Justin Beiber.
The same day I read a related article on BBC:
Scientists in the US have succeeded in genetically engineering a malaria-resistant mosquito.
The researchers, from the University of Arizona, introduced a gene that affected the insect’s gut, meaning the malaria parasite could not develop.
They report the advance, which also reduced the insects’ lifespan, in the journal PLoS Pathogens.
They say that the ultimate goal is to introduce malaria-resistant mosquitoes into the environment. …
I know what you’re thinking … Man playing God. … It will inevitably end like a Michael Crichton novel.
Rick McCharles 
Can they not just engineer something to get rid of the damned things all together?
Mosquitoes are major pollinators and an integral part of the food chain, preyed upon by most freshwater fish and countless other animals. Even if this weren’t the case, are a few itchy bumps after a night-time stroll so torturous that we need to wipe out an entire class of organism? You can’t fault an animal for adapting an effective feeding method. If they didn’t carry disease, mosquitoes would be just a negligible nuisance. We have no natural predators left, I think we can survive just fine being bitten by something a millionth our size.
if only it was that simple Dana, if only.