Using Gene Drive to Eradicate Malaria and other Dieases. Why Not?

What is the issue: there is a fairly new technology that could potentially be used to change the genomes of mosquitoes so that they no longer carry plasmodium, the parasite that causes malaria. It's called a "gene drive" and how it would work is you release some genetically modified mosquitoes into the wild to mate with other mosquitoes and they have a special gene that ensures that 99% of their offspring carry the new gene, thus "driving" the gene through the population until essentially all mosquitoes have this mutation.

The downside is what we don't really know. The unknown unknowns.

Here is a video to explain it:

[Yt]TnzcwTyr6cE[/Yt]

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2dmCx8o