Related Sections: Future Tech Medical
Lasers could be used to kill mosquitoes en masse, stem malaria
A relic from the '80s, Reagan's "Star Wars" program, or Strategic Defense Initiative, involved lasers designed to shoot down satellites. Decades later, I'm happy to report that we're looking into how to turn those lasers on mosquitoes.
Yep, you read that right — we're finally going to war with the buggers.
Some high-caliber researchers, including Nathan Myhrvold (formerly of Microsoft, pictured top right) and Jordin Kare (a former employee of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is a serious weapons lab), are looking at how lasers could pinpoint and eradicate one of the pests from a distance. An early demonstration showed promise, as mosquitoes inside a glass box were lit up by non-lethal beams from 100 feet away.
The scientists aren't working on producing a better American picnic, though. The real target is malaria, which kills around a million people every year — most of them in developing countries.
It's all part of a serious initiative backed by the likes of Bill Gates, the UN and non-profits such as Malaria No More to fund vaccines and preventive technologies that could curtail the spread of the deadly disease. Mosquitoes have proven resistant to previous attempts to dissuade or poison them — let's hope they don't become invulnerable to lasers, too.
Wall Street Journal, via DailyTech, via CrunchGear
By TH4T6UY at 10:11 AM ON 03/18/09
Preemptive strike to stem the possibility of a Starship Troopers scenario? Effing awesome BTW.
By ITrush at 10:29 AM ON 03/18/09
Interesting.. lets just hope this thing will help us fight those pests.
By hmm at 12:04 PM ON 03/18/09
Malaria used to be all over the world (far north and far south), but the developed world had the money and the initiative to go balls to the walls and eradicate the infected misquito population.
The problems in African countries and such is that they do half-assed exterminations because of lack of founds, government screw ups, etc. and so whatever chemical they were using on the misquitos they become resistant to. I don't see how lasers are going to be cheaper or any more effective than pesticides... especially if the political will isn't there to begin with.
By Erebiel at 3:31 PM ON 03/18/09
To HMM:
1) it's Mosquito, not Misquito.
2) Fark Africa - this is an eradication method for a more civilized nation.
By Asfda at 12:44 AM ON 03/20/09
We don't really need this. We already had the technology to kill mosquitos en masse. It was called DDT, and it stopped being used because the people in power to use it were frightened out of using it by enviromentalists that were more conecerned with DDT causing thinning of bird eggs rather than people dying of painful deaths due to Malaria. Once again we strain at flies and swallow gnats.
By O_oo at 5:48 AM ON 03/27/09
By pavanneh at 2:45 PM ON 09/27/09
in regards to Asfda's comment--it was more than just thinning bird eggs, there were entire species of birds being wiped out. Fish were dying too. People were getting sick. Beneficial insects needed for pollination were also being killed. DDT was not species specific. It killed just about anything else too.
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pavanneh:
in regards to Asfda's comment--it was more than just thinning bird eggs, there were entire species of birds being w...More »