Stopping malaria, a disease which kills 20,000 people every week, usually involves killing mosquitos. But mosquitos, like most insects, have quickly evolved resistance to sprays and chemicals, whether natural or synthetic, used against them. A recent article in Nature describes how people are now trying to spray mosquitos to stop the transmission of malaria (and dengue fever) without placing mosquitos under evolutionary pressure to evolve resistance. The secret? Malaria is transmitted only by old mosquitos. By spraying pathogenic fungi that kill mosquitos late in their life cycle, before malaria transmission can occur, fungi-infected mosquitos can still breed normally (and competitively). This way natural selection does not favor bugs who were resistant to the fungi, but they'll still die off before they can infect humans with malaria.
I think that this is a really great discovery and a creative way to deal with the problem of malaria. It just goes to show that thinking about the big picture can find better solutions to these kinds of insect problems and that scientist have been really working on looking at holistic solutions, which is a big step since the crazy over-spraying happening when Rachel Carson wrote "Silent Spring".
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