Malaria might seem like a disease you don’t need to worry about, but you’re wrong. You should worry about every potential risk in the world, consistently and obsessively. All it takes is one second of letting your guard down for a foolish moment of sanity and, the next thing you know, Kim Jong Il is tracking mud through your living room. Scientists in London at the Imperial College are worried about malaria and have decided they want to do something about it. The plan is simple: unleash waves of sterile male Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes into regions where malaria is a threat. This means warmer climates, such as Sudan, would be the first to experiment, or rather, be experimented on. By preventing reproduction in that area, the mosquito population will eventually dwindle down to nothing. Because humans are the most important species on earth, actions such as this need to be taken so that everything revolves around our lifestyles. Earth, which one can only assume is Latin for “mine,” has room enough for only one group of vicious bloodsuckers. One problem anticipated was the difficulty of tracking the genetically modified insects after their dispersion into the wild. The solution was obvious. Correcting a long overlooked flaw in the divine blueprint, the sperm of the bugs was made fluorescent. Holy glowing testicles, it’s about damn time someone gave mosquito semen more zing. Who knows where this scientific advancement will take us? This isn’t the first time such a project has been arranged. In Asia, a similar method of eliminating mosquitoes was aborted after reporters created a scare by writing that the mission might be used to gather information on how to spread yellow fever. However, the fear could just have been a result of the unclear motives of the World Health Organization (WHO), not to be confused with the 1973 film called “Who?” about “the kill machine with the megaton mind.” While the idea of thousands of genetically altered parasites curing a deadly disease sounds fool-proof, a few numbskulls would suggest you consider the following: (1) behavior like this constitutes the act of “playing God” (even though we all know that God doesn’t exist or there wouldn’t be mosquitoes here in the first place), (2) the financial impact on bug spray companies will be devastating and, consequently, a decrease in beneficial emissions from aerosol cans, such as xylene and toluene, will be seen, and (3) there are much more important things to be killing right now. Do not mourn for the death of pests. Their single role as bird food in the big, smeared picture is only fulfilled once they’ve croaked. Hopefully, after we systematically kill off mosquitoes like we do with anything else we find to be a nuisance, there will be less food for birds to eat. If we’re lucky, all birds will die, too. The avian flu outbreak should be a wakeup call that we need to get rid of them. Hitchcock was right. Ideally, humans will soon be the only beings left on the planet — or at least, all of the humans that the United States likes. You can do your part by squashing anything that gets near you. Help realize the dream; slap away.
