First, I would like to thanks Brimstone for pointing me to this thread, and for discussing briefly with me in another place (
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2825&e=1&view=unread#unread) some of the issues that y'all expand upon here more fully. I am fascinated by this thread. I read it quickly and eagerly over my morning coffee. But I am also a little horrified by it. I regret not being present on this forum nearer the time of the thread's origin, and that I could not participate in helping to shape the original conversation. But I would like to add my thoughts now. I have a lot to say, but will try to distil this down to only the more important points. Still, this is likely to be a long post. I hope that isn't frowned upon here.
I would start by acknowledging that, of course I understand fully and can even sympathize to some degree with the impulse to eradicate disease-carrying mosquitoes. Whatever else we might think about ourselves, we remain members of our own species, and we will inevitably fight for a share of the good life on this planet. Like all animals, we can and will seek to improve our lot any way we know how. Previously this has meant increasing our quality of life at the expense of all other animals; but more recently we have been more willing to consider how furthering our interests may interfere unduly with those of other animals. (No other animal is (currently) able to return this favour to us, but one-sided altruism is just the burden we've been shouldered with.) Ecologism represents one way in which we have been doing this; veganism is another. I have therefore found it very surprising to read confessed vegans promoting casually the eradication of an entire species and for reasons I find very suspect: "good of the world"; "it won't affect ecosystems"; "they're only purpose is as disease vectors" (these are all paraphrases, by the way, not actual quotes). I want to address some of the weaknesses I see in these arguments, but before going further, and just as an aside, I feel it should be mentioned that in the Nature article linked by Brimstone (
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/ ... 6432a.html) as well as in this 2016 article from the BBC (
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35408835), researchers -- far from asserting unequivocally that the eradication of mosquitoes (even just the "harmful" ones) would have negligible ecological consequences -- actually offer several warnings of, and even some extended meditations on, the possibly serious environmental and ecological side-effects of such genocidal interventions. But, as I'll explain below, I don't think such considerations are germane to the question at hand, not insofar as veganism is concerned anyway.
Recently, in thinking about how veganism should inform how I relate to some of the more humble animals on this planet, I have often found it helpful to consider the following (sorry for the digression, but it will prove relevant). There is a lot of discussion of AI right now, and the possible impact on human wellbeing of introducing to this planet artificially designed beings that are better than us in every measure -- cognitively, efficiently, environmentally, morally. In worrying about this many (I dare say almost all) futurists based their prognostications and their prophecies on the assumption that these AI, being our creations (at least at first), will necessarily inherit our own moral model, the most salient part of which (in this context) is the motive to further our interests at the expense of other animals (and often other human animals) -- a motive we have traditionally, and still in many respects do, operate on. Many fear that, operating on the same motives we currently do, superior AI beings will inevitably come to the conclusion that humans are annoyances or (worse) impediments to the AI's ability to further its own interests. And many fear that consequently these beings may decide to eradicate humankind; or they fear that at the very least they will fail to consider us in their moral calculations -- just as humans currently do not extend moral consideration to insects. And being cognitively (and so also morally) superior to us, the AI would seem to be justified in doing so -- at least by the logic of those who fear this future scenario.
I brush these concerns aside, not because I discount the possibility of superior AI beings (which may or may not be inevitable), but because the fears many have about what superior AI would mean for humankind seems to me to rest on some pretty unimaginative thinking. In particular, it seems to rest on the inability to imagine that a moral being is capable of operating on anything other than the motive to exploit others for gain. And the fear that AI will inherit all our bad habits results simply from the inability to imagine that our habits can be different than they are at present. AI
will no doubt inherit whatever our moral model is at the time of their creation, but it is not at all clear that this moral model will be the same in the future as it is today. I rest my hopes for the future on the likelihood that, come the time that superior AI arrives (if it ever does), we will as a species have embraced more generally the principles of veganism and ecologism. At that time we will (one hopes) already have begun to model better behavioural principles, principles that we would necessarily try to replicate in the AI we create: don't murder other animals for a tasty meal when you can obtain sustenance from non-animal sources; don't murder a mouse simply because it shares the same living space as you; don't murder an ant simply to watch it die; don't eradicate another species simply because you find it to be an annoyance. If we imagine a future where statements similar to these make up part of the moral code of the beings we manufacture, it becomes more difficult to imagine how these beings might seek to eradicate our own beloved species. Fears of an "AI are the new humans and we the new mosquitoes" scenario become less vivid, if we imagine that there are ways of being that transcend exploitation of sentient creatures. And I should think that as vegans we should all be capable of imagining this.
The above (rather extended) hypothetical situation is nothing more than a "put yourself in their shoes" exercise. But it is valuable, I think, and has the benefit of possibly having real world application in the not-too-distant future.
Returning to the actual question at hand -- should we eradicate mosquitoes -- and to the arguments forwarded in favour of the answer "yes", I must say that the "it won't negatively affect the eco-system" argument seems ridiculous to me. In the first place, "eco-system" is a poorly defined (and essentially meaningless) term when used this way, as it has been throughout this thread. There are thousands of ecosystems the world over in which mosquitoes participate (almost always benignly, from a human perspective anyway). There is no way to predict exactly how the disappearance of mosquitoes would affect one of these ecosystems, let alone all of them (to assert otherwise is arrogant folly).
More unsettling to me, however, are the dodgy assumptions that underlie this ecosystem argument. While some ecosystems may appear stable in the short-term they are all of them fluctuating in the long term. Why should we define the present state of a given ecosystem as the state that is worth preserving? To do so would be to demonstrate and anthropocentrism of the most robust kind.
Moreover, ecosystems are not themselves moral entities. Why should we give them more consideration in our moral calculations than we give mosquitoes, beings that patently
are possessed of complex sensory apparatuses and the capacity to move about and pursue "mental" interests (however rudimentary those interests may seem to us)? Granted, when most people profess a concern for the state of a given ecosystem it is because they are concerned for the well-being of the animals (and -- to the extent that animals rely on them -- the plants) in that ecosystem. But the mosquitoes are one of those animals... so, there seems to be a problem of circularity here.
Finally, the ecosystem argument -- like the "for the good of the world" argument, and the "it wouldn't hurt anyone" argument, and the "they are only ever a nuisance/disease vector" argument -- fails to respect the question of the mosquitoes' own (...hmmm... how to put this without sounding silly) ... intrinsic worth (?). They are here. They have interests. You are here. You have interests. Your interests seem more sophisticated and are certainly more vivid and salient to you, and we will always struggle to imagine exactly what a mosquitoes interests may be. But they have them. There is at bottom no existential difference between myself and a mosquito. Both are highly evolved. Both are biologically complex in our own ways. Both occupy spaces on this planet and exist in complex relationships to the other animals here. Whence could you ever possibly derive the justification to put your own interests ahead of a mosquito's, except from mere chauvinism? Privileging your own interests over those of a dairy cow is something that repulses you (presumably, if you are a vegan). What is the substantive difference when it comes to a mosquito? Are you drawing a line somewhere, and placing humans and bovines on one side, and flies (including mosquitoes) on the other? If so, where is this line exactly, and on what grounds have you drawn it? Is it a line based on cognitive capacity? Then on which side of the line do you place cats? What about small mammals like raccoons and squirrels? What about mice? What about birds? Fish? Snakes? Lobsters? Tarantulae? Bees? Ants? In other words, at what point does it become ok to ignore an animal in your moral calculations; at what point will it cease to be immoral, and finally become merely immoral, to pull the legs (fins, or whatever) off of one of these creatures? Or is the line you are drawing based on mosquitoes appearing to you to be mere vectors for disease, namely dengue, zika and malaria? (And here I should remind everyone that only about 3% of mosquito species fit into this category.) If so, do you put rodents in the same category as mosquitoes, and would you be as zealous in pursuing their eradication? How do you avoid subsuming humans and other large animals into the same category, since large mammals are also common vectors for inter-special disease (e.g. rabies, BSE, swine flue; check out this article for more info on inter-species diseases, including diseases that humans regularly spread to non-human animals:
http://www.livescience.com/12951-10-inf ... uenza.html)? And on what grounds have you chosen human diseases as your criterion? Should we not be equally (or at least somewhat) concerned also about vectors for diseases that affect birds and reptiles? If so, then it is hard to imagine how all our judicious eradications of 'harmful' species could end except in a series of genocides the likes of which the earth has not seen since the last mass extinction event.
Keep in mind, too, that in condemning a species for being a disease vector you are condemning it for something it cannot reasonably be blamed for (I know "blame" is a concept that makes no sense applied outside of a human context, but you get what I am saying here). Should the organism be blamed for its parasites? Should certain mammalian species be eradicated because they have become vectors for the rabies virus (in answering this question, imagine that we have not yet discovered a rabies vaccine)? Why not direct our genocidal energies towards the actual viruses that have parasitized the mosquitoes (I assume here that viruses, like plants, would not be on
anyone's list of organisms that deserve moral consideration). A couple posts on this thread have declared mosquitoes to be mere parasites. Now, what is and isn't a parasite is merely a matter of definition and we all can argue about definitions till we're blue in the face. But is it a
useful definition? (We should only ever care about useful definitions.) Strictly speaking I think not. Half of the mosquito species that will seek out a human blood meal -- i.e. whose females seek human blood in order to nourish their young (a mere 6% of all mosquito species) -- do
not serve as disease vectors. That is to say, for only 3% of mosquito species is there the
possibility of transmitting disease to humans (this according to the BBC article linked above). Shall we then, on the basis of a few 'bad actors', condemn the entire mosquito family (the
culicidae) as "parasitic"? Is it even helpful or correct to call those species that happen to have been parasitized by zika et al. "parasites"? Is a human a parasite when it eats the blood of other animals? What about when, in harvesting animal flesh, a human becomes responsible for transmitting diseases to those animals? Shall we call the humans "parasites" who were responsible for transmitting BSE ("mad cow disease") via contaminated feed to tens of thousands of captive dairy and beef cattle? And would you support genetic intervention in the human population to prevent this from happening again? British farmers certainly wouldn't have; they eradicated millions of cows instead.
Should we eradicate 'harmful' mosquitoes? I'm not saying no. I'm not saying yes. I would certainly say that it's an interesting and an important question. It is also a hard question. And I am more than a little surprised that several posts on this thread treat the question so cavalierly. And I don't pretend at all to have vegan ethics all figured out; but I struggle to see how any of the "yes" answers so far posted here could possibly be motivated by a vegan analysis (even a superficial one). I recognize this may well be my on failing: we all have blind spots, and I may be blind to how the vegan analysis leads inevitably, and simply, to a "yes" answer. If so, I do honestly and earnestly request to be corrected in this regard.
