What could go wrong with nonconsensual, covert, forced mass injections.
Today it's used for malaria, tomorrow?
When releasing these mosquitos, will they be getting consent of everyone in the area?
For all x and y.
Just because nature does something, doesn't mean it's okay to allow humans to do it.
Imagine the following: we found the part of the brain that's making you love everything done by the authority. We developed a genetic vaccine against it and we are deploying it via mosquitos.
You wouldn't say the same thing.
And you know the extent of this on the whole eco-system?
And yes, many places have eradicated mosquitos with no shift in the ecosystem.
It's pretty much the one creature that all animals would love to have eradicated or at the very least mitigated.
I read that the tropical rain forests are unlivable by humans because of mosquitos and that limits the amount of deforestation that occurs.
Whether that's really true or worthwhile I'll leave it to others to argue over.
Deforestation is an issue, as those 280 million people do need to be fed. Mosquitoes don't really get in the way of deforestation. Insect repellents and pesticides do work. And when an area is deforested and either converted to urban or agricultural land, mosquitoes don't really linger in that area anymore.
Mosquitos are an important part of the ecosystem, they (especially their larva) are important food sources for other creatures.
However, most species of mosquitoes do not bite humans and not all of those are capable of spreading disease. What you are probably referencing is experiments in extermining specific disease carrying species. I don't think those studies have claimed "no shift in the ecosystem."
CRISPR for example has been hailed as surgical tool for slicing DNA, and works well in controlled environments because we set up methodology and environment to guarantee it.
This has lead many outside the related fields to believe that the tool alone has more control than it does. In reality, any changes with these tools must be formally verified through plasmid sequencing. This is Plasmidsaurus business model, and they are quite good at it.
Even afterwards though, outside very specific conditions (which are often involved in keeping it cold and below certain safety thresholds), unstable changes can occur, the effects of which we will never know beforehand. A shift by 1 base (3 bases per codon) may alter an entire sequence, but the molecular machinery would continue running until it is stopped.
It may result in death of the mosquito, and/or provide material (shedding/ingestion) that may be taken in by other unrelated species with unknown consequence.
Who is to say what impacts that might have, and with each additional node (mosquito), the chance of such outcomes increase greatly. To my knowledge, there have been very few studies that cover the topic of genomic stability with regards to CRISPR and its related tools. This is an area with extremely low visibility to potential consequences.
The very last outcome we want is for animals to attain a defiant pupil, along the plot line of Zoo.