Mosquito: The Nemesis

Mosquito are mostly treated condescendingly by humans. As much as we humans may think that the advancement and where we have reached today maybe attributed to the ingenious mind which may not be entirely true. Recently I finished reading up The Mosquito, A Human History of our deadliest Predator by Timothy C. Winegard and this a brief of how I felt about the whole story.  

A nice video explaining how mosquito has evolved to be such deadly predator. Mosquitoes have been on this planet before us and has been biting other creatures including the Dinosaurs. Only the female mosquitoes (no pun intended) bite and they need the RBC from the blood in order to get nutrition for their eggs. The male mosquitoes don’t need the blood lunch and mostly survive on plant nectar.

Life on earth is believed to have started 4.5 Billion Years ago and Mosquito fossils have been found dating back to 99 million years ago whereas some kind of humans have been dated back to 2 million years ago. So mosquitoes have seen much more than humankind and have seen evolution that is much longer than us.

The parasites and viruses hitchhike a ride and when the mosquito inserts their needle in search of blood it uses the saliva which carries these different parasites and most famous being the malarial parasite Plasmodium vivax or the more deadly one falciparum. We are fortunate that there is no mixing of blood otherwise imagine what else could have hitchhiked.

The Masquerade

For a very long time humankind has suffered in hands of mosquitoes. According to one estimate more than 50 billion people have been dispatched to heaven by their bites, almost 50% of human that ever lived on earth. But the real understanding of disease and mosquito as the vector only happened in early 20th century. The word “Malaria” is literally derived from Italian words “mala aria” meaning “bad air” and this was the accepted idea that disease is spread by air or the miasma theory. 

The records of many ancient books talks about the symptoms including Sushrata who had penned some details about fevers like malaria in his Sushrata Samhita.   

Alexander and the ancients

Who doesn’t know Alexander? He was a conqueror from Macedonia famous for his expansionist policies. He had conquered most of world west of present day India and was given a formidable challenge by King Porus, whose name was lost in the subcontinent history and recorded only in the history by the other side. After making Porus one of his allies he proceeded further down the plains but his army was tired and affected by bouts of Malaria. Alexander the Great himself seems to have contracted Malaria and mostly died of the complications resulting from that.

Rome and romans had mosquitoes as ally as well as enemy. There were times when Romans suffered devastating epidemics of Malaria. The Pontine Marshes were breeding ground of mosquitoes and many armies were decimated by the mosquitoes and protected the capital. The rise of Christianity partly can be attributed to the struggling population of the roman empire due to the epidemics spread by Mosquito.

Americas, Slavery and Migration

Christopher Columbus (I think Elon Musk will be remembered similarly if he is able to take humans to Mars) led Spanish campaigns towards unknown seas and found Caribbean that started the Imperialism and migration of European peoples to Americas from 15th century. Spain started the successful campaigns in the South America and most of the Indigenous population perished after their arrival due to exotic diseases spread my mosquitoes like Malaria, Yellow Fever and others. With limited European population the disease of these people spread like fire killing hordes of unseasoned indigenous population. When British and French set their eyes on the North America it had a indigenous population of millions but mostly the disease spread out and reduced their population quite a lot. There was extreme atrocities committed by all imperialists countries like Spain, Britain, French and the whole bunch.  

Slavery had existed all across the world but was mostly localized and it was between the tribes or states that were adjacent geographies and rivalries. When Europeans started the trade and cultivation of Sugar and Tobacco they saw a possibility of making huge fortunes but unfortunately both their people as well as indigenous people kept on perishing due to the disease.

Meanwhile in Africa, the population has been struggling with diseases like Malaria for eons and the genetic evolution made some changes like Sickle Cell, Duffy Negativity, G6PDD and thalassemia which provided resistance to Malaria. Now there was a gap that Europeans saw for their plantations and Africans with their full or partial immunities were suited to fill that gap and hence started the cross continent slavery in both the Americas. Huge populations from Africa were sold in the African slave markets and their European masters shipped them to work in the plantations. Slavery continued for a while and the displaced African slave population started to lose their immunities due to intermingling of population in these new lands.

Fast forward to the American Civil War between the Union (“North”) and Confederacy (“South”). Lincoln was the leader of the Union and seeing the war getting longer than expected declared that slaves will made free and also got them into the Army. At that time, both the armies were struggling with diseases like Malaria and Yellow Fever but Union had established a good supply of Quinine (discovery of Quinine is also somewhat legendary) and they managed to tightly control the supply chain and it was mostly smuggled in the Southern territories and difficult to get. Eventually using mosquitoes as ally for the Union, the Confederacy was defeated leading to the creation of United States.    

Status Now

Malaria and others diseases like Dengue, West Nile Virus, Zika spread by mosquitoes are mostly not seen in developed countries including North America and Europe. The population affected in mostly in Africa and Asia. For years DDT was considered the antidote for mosquitoes and the world was almost drained with that, but very soon mosquito and its parasite became immune to that. The synthetic medicines like Chloroquine has already lost the efficacy towards the parasites. The world has gone back to ancient Chinese finding of a drug based on artemisinin and use of cocktail of medicines which these parasites have started dodging as well. With Gates foundation pouring in money there is vaccine trial that is going on  in African countries without a lot of positive results so far. 

There is now a possibility of using gene editing technologies called CRISPR to change the genetic coding for mosquitoes in such a way that they become harmless or even make them extinct. But should we go down that path is a question nobody has an answer. I think with our limited knowledge of how genes effect the end results we may do an irreversible damage to the natural evolutionary process.

My Tryst

I was in a hostel that had HIV infected kids and we were talking with few of these kids and the caretaker. It was somewhat rainy like many Bangalore days and there were bunch of mosquitoes and I had a fleeting thought. What happens when mosquitoes are biting everyone there? I know it’s selfish but that was the day I realized that HIV can’t be spread by mosquito bites. If it did world would have been a different place. Apart from that I have suffered Malaria couple of times during my schools days. 

The scourges of future and how it will shape life on earth is a question that the Covid-19 pandemic has opened up quite a bit. The superbugs that are resistant to all the antibiotics of the world is already a problem. With the burgeoning human population, constrained natural resources, gene editing tools, climate change, melting permafrost the future seems to be somewhat scary but human have persisted all along and that’s the hope. Sorry for being a little pessimistic.

Hope next time you see a mosquito buzzing around you remember that they have helped to shape the world order Mr. Winegard has called them General Anopheles.