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RE: The need for using animals as experimental subjects, and why releasing them into the wild is a terrible idea!
This behavior scares me in the wake of CRISPR technology and gene drives. If one fruit fly from a lab using gene drives in a controlled environment gets released then the entire population would have that gene quicker than we could control. Does anyone else see this as a problem?
Actually, this is a strategy how Malaria can be eradicated: by gene editing the Anopheles mosquito for it to not be able to propagate the Plasmodium parasite within itself, and then releasing it into the wild to breed with the endogenous populations.
Right, although there are good uses what would happen if we had a gene drive in a fruit fly that carried a virus that used a human as it's host? Now the people free the fruit flies and people end up with the virus.