Combat One Plague, Risk Another?

Scientists have genetically engineered a malaria-resistant breed of mosquito that can out-compete non-modified mosquitoes in nature, the BBC reports.Releasing the mosquitoes into the wild could be a winning and cost-effective strategy to combat a disease that kills 1 million people worldwide each year and has dire financial consequences for countries where it is endemic.

But the risks of unleashing the GM mosquitoes are completely unknown, and researchers say it may be 10 years (and 10 million lives lost) before the insects are set loose in nature. The Overcoming Bias blog wonders if it’s worth the wait.

The question is a classic example of the Ellsberg Paradox, which claims that we prefer measurable risk to immeasurable uncertainty. Dubner and Levitt wrote about it in relation to nuclear energy.