| curl-6 said: That's how they're doing it already; giving people filters to drink through and treating water sources with larvacide to make it safe. The only way the Guinea Worm can reproduce is through infecting a human body, so by protecting people from it, you're also dooming the worm to die out. |
I was thinking more along the lines of the kind of large scale water cleansing we have in more developed countrys, instead of pouring insecticide into peoples drinking water. I know a lot of countrys use chlorine among other things, but where I'm from they mostly use a long succession of diffrent micro filters and micro organisms to mimic the way groundwater gets cleared and it works really well. (Also chlorine makes me sick, so I can't drink, for example, spanish tabwater)
Your point still stands, the worm would likely die out, but not due to planned extinction, but though passive behaviour change of humans.
Think of it this way, Lions are stationary predators with large hunting grounds. Antelopes move around the continent in search of fresh grassland. The antelopes move through the lions hunting grounds, were they get decimated greatly every year. The lions have to stock up fat for the dry season when no suitable prey will come through their turf, so they hunt as many as possible.
One year the rainy season is late, where the lions are, and early further noth, so the antelopes pass through there instead. The lions starve because they failed to trail their prey around throuout the year. Did the antilopes just commit planned extinction?
In my opinion no. There's thousands of factors that contribute to a species survival in the wild, many of wich change arbitrairily, like the weather. Noticing one surce of water makes you sick and avoiding that source if at all possible is not planned extinction, it's being smart. If another animals nieche get's taken away by the other animal changing it's behaviour it has to adapt.
(That's btw. how we got so many diffrent orchid/butterfly species in the rainforest, it was a war between the Orchids and a butterly that layed it's larva on it, destrying the orchids. The orchids responded by producing insectecide to protect themselves, and the butterfies developed immunities and so on...)
I am not in favor of planned extinction or most other kinds of forceful interjection with natural balance through humans, but that doesn't mean we have to deliberately let ourselves be wasted away in order to protect another species either. I say, as long as we dont use unfair advantage e.g. shooting every buffalo in sight, it's ok. After all we're an animal species on this planet too.
