The Fall and Rise of Screwworm

The Fall and Rise of Screwworm(construction-physics.com)

81 points by crescit_eundo 5 hours ago | 27 comments

Planktonne 1 hour ago |

> (Some anti-screwworm efforts may have been hindered by DOGE, which cut APHIS staff, screwworm monitoring programs, and may have delayed funding for the Mexico facility, but it’s hard to be confident about this, and the administration has unsurprisingly rejected these claims.)

For an article that is so detailed in other areas, this feels like a very short dismissal of a topic that--regardless of direction--deserves more focus.

natbobc 13 minutes ago | |

DOGE probably didn’t help matters but the problem started to rise in 2023. My gut reaction was “damn that DOGE!” too but they didn’t start with cuts until 2025. So it likely just exasperated an already growing concern. This is the same kind of stuff anti-vaxers don’t get. We left South America out of the equation so when the circumstances of migration and feeding changed so did the status quo of a “screwworm free” line in the sand. Other peoples problems can quickly become everyone’s problem if left unchecked.

srean 23 minutes ago |

I have a question for folks who have background in interventions like these.

Isn't there a risk that the artificially introduced reproductory pressures would select for screwworms that produce males that are resistant to radiation.

My chain of reasoning is that not all the of the irradiated males would be completely sterile. If so, then the next generation would be a mix of hatchlings of not radiated parents and those parents who have not been completely sterilized in spite of radiation -- thereby increasing the proportion of radiation resistant varieties, assuming resistance is an inheritable trait. These may then find themselves at the input side of sterile male generation factories.

The intervention obviously worked, but was that because steps were taken to counteract the possibility of raising radiation resistant varieties.

BTW the article was a great read.

SoftTalker 16 minutes ago | |

I'm not sure radiation resistance is really a thing. Radiation causes physical damage, it's not like a virus or bacteria that an organism can potentially fight off with an immune response.

The few males that might survive the gamma exposure with intact fertility are probably just ones that didn't get a full dose.

It is rather amazing to me in fact that it's possible to sterilize the males without killing them.

srean 3 minutes ago | | |

Couldn't there be genes that help with repairing the radiation induced damage ?

From what I have read, flora and fauna around Chernobyl seems to have acquired degrees of radiation tolerance.

BTW I am a complete ignoramus in these matters.

goda90 5 minutes ago | | |

This might be a way to adapt to radiation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosynthesis_(metabolism)

goda90 4 hours ago |

I wonder if anyone ever did the math on whether trying to maintain a barrier at the Darian Gap with occasional failures was really a better financial choice than teaming up with South American countries to drive screwworms to extinction.

praptak 1 minute ago | |

Releasing the steriles blindly is not enough, you gotta monitor the pest too. This is prohibitively expensive in rainforests and other areas with poor infrastructure.

Okay, maybe you could release the flies in large enough numbers not to need monitoring but I guess it would also be prohibitively expensive.

AlotOfReading 4 hours ago | |

Yes, they did because various countries have talked to the US about expanding it. The problem is that South America is an enormous place, whereas Panama is a narrow isthmus. It could have been done with some amount of money, but that opportunity ended in 2010 at the latest.

moffkalast 1 hour ago | | |

In the end though, history will see it as a half measure where they really shouldn't have half assed it. It only took one moron to defund the project and all of it will come streaming back.

cogman10 2 hours ago | | |

[deleted for being misinformation]

consensus1 1 hour ago | |

I think the issue is that you would have to push the barrier across the entire South American continent, which is twice the distance of the US-Mexico border and also crosses the Amazon where there is basically no infrastructure.

needSomeCoffee 2 hours ago |

Thanks to the author. That was a great read imho. Loved the early parts about the guys who -- despite the ridicule and lack of resources -- achieved eradication. Again, great read.

comrade1234 3 hours ago |

Out of curiosity I looked up the cost to south American beef producers like Argentina/brazil. The extra constant animal inspections costs ~$10 per cattle up until slaughter I think. Not a huge cost but a pain nonetheless.

boelboel 3 hours ago | |

$10 in Brazil/Argentine would be significantly more in the US because of labour costs I assume. Is there any training needed for the inspections/enough people who could do it on a short notice in the US? Could drive up the price even more.

Not that I believe it'll drive up the price that much but I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being 50-70 USD per in the US.

dcrazy 3 hours ago | |

Surely the bigger issue is not the inspections, but the loss of infected livestock?

marcosdumay 2 hours ago | | |

It's not some contagious disease that will spread to every animal. One can just treat the infected cattle until they get healthy again.

whalesalad 4 hours ago |

> Eventually capable of producing more than 200 million screwworm flies a week, the Mission factory was a grotesque marvel of insect-producing efficiency. Operating 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, it was, in essence, a 76,000-square-foot artificial wound. Trays full of meat, blood, and water, each one heated to the exact right temperature to stimulate screwworm growth, moved through the facility on a monorail system timed to the lifecycle of the screwworm.

Imagine working at the screwworm factory.

alexpotato 3 hours ago | |

I was born with no sense of smell [0] and I always wondered if I could combine that with my tech skills to be CTO at a place like the screwworm factory or possibly Waste Management.

0 - https://x.com/alexpotato/status/1559865770515087360?s=20

delichon 3 hours ago | | |

> I applied this principle and married someone with a great sense of smell

May you and your smelling nose wife live happily ever after.

trashface 2 hours ago | | |

I'm sure the fly production methodology has improved over the years, but based on what TFA describes, I'm not sure lacking smell would save you from disgust. I think even a Buddhist would be hard-pressed to find compassion for this particular fly species.

bee_rider 4 hours ago | |

I guess you’d probably have taken some solace in the fact that you didn’t have to live at the screwworm factory. Past tense, unfortunately, since the worms are setting up their own factories all over.

computerdork 43 minutes ago | |

Scenes from the human harvesting operations at in the Matrix come to mind, but am sure it's different than that:)

CodingJeebus 2 hours ago |

> Overall, the screwworm program seems like a classic case of something becoming a victim of its own success: a problem got solved so thoroughly that we forget how big of a problem it was, and we gradually undermine the conditions that made the solution possible.

Chesterson's Fence strikes again. It's so easy to wax poetic about how ineffective government spending always is and should be cut to the bone that we don't stop to recognize that preventative programs like this save us from billions in economic losses.

JKCalhoun 1 hour ago | |

"Some anti-screwworm efforts may have been hindered by DOGE, which cut APHIS staff, screwworm monitoring programs, and may have delayed funding for the Mexico facility…"

Yep.

consensus1 1 hour ago | |

The article is very clear that the issue arose in 2021 and the main causes are increased migration / cattle smuggling across the Darien Gap and over zealous COVID lockdowns. But sure, cherry pick that quote because you want to blame something that happened 4 years after the problem started.

jmye 1 hour ago | | |

> The article is very clear that the issue arose in 2021

“Sometime around 2023, the barrier at Panama failed”

And further text suggesting a fairly normal incursion in ‘21 that didn’t become a major issue until much later.

> and over zealous COVID lockdowns

“The disruption caused by COVID-19 seems to be partly to blame”

I love when people insert hyper-inflammatory bullshit because they have a stupid axe to grind.

There are like, 10 paragraphs of equally relevant contributors, but you picked out the two that make you angry and are pretending those are the “main causes”?

Come the fuck on.

taco_emoji 2 hours ago |

Well that's nightmare fuel D: