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Ask HN: Making the eradication of aedes aegypti my life’s work

3 points by elbasti ↗ HN
TLDR; I want to help eradicate zika, chinkunguya and dengue. I think the technology exists to have a good shot at this in the next 20 years. I am willing to devote basically all of my time to making this goal obtain. What should my next steps be?

Eradicating aides aegypti mosquitos will be a tremendous net gain for humanity. It’s no longer a scientific problem, but rather one of coordination and political will.

Shortening the time to eradication by even one year would be worth a lifetime of work, because the ill borne by these diseases compounds: every person who contracts chikungunya fever is riddled for life with pain and arthritis; every person born with zika virus is a human tragedy as well as a tremendous economic burden.

About me: I am in my late twenties. I have some outdated and very minor publications in biochem/molecular biology—I’d say that while I’m not fluent in genetics I certainly have the vocabulary and can converse at a basic level. I haven't done wet lab work in years.

I’ve spent the past 5 years working in finance startups, building and shipping product. I have enough passive income to be able to live frugally relatively indefinitely.

I’m closest (emotionally and politically/socially) to southern Mexico, so that’s the place I would like to start.

What should my next steps be? What level of impact do you think I could have in the next 5-10 years?

3 comments

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smt88
If you email me (see my profile) I'll put you in touch with friends at the CDC.

Here's a question I'd like to ask you, though. Which of these would have the most benefit?

A) You devote all your time to learning about how to eradicate aedes aegypti. You re-learn the biochem you used to know, and you learn a lot more of the advanced stuff. You'll earn very little money during this time. In 5 or 10 years, you'll have caught up to the leaders in the field. You may, however, not have as much raw intelligence or creativity as the current leaders.

B) You do what you're already employed to do. Your salary grows rapidly, as it often does for smart people in tech. Your salary should be well above $200k in 5 or 10 years, and you may even have some options that become liquid around that time, giving you a few hundred thousand more in cash. During this time, you donate all of your extra income to the leaders in the field who are trying to eradicate aedes aegypti.

Maybe those two scenarios aren't spot on for you, but do you see what I'm getting at? My friends in science rarely complain that there aren't enough people working on something like this. Their problem is that budgets are unpredictable and fluctuate at unfortunate times. Many of my scientist friends went deeply into debt to get their PhD's, and they can't survive without a decent income.

elbasti
My assumption is that the science needed to do this exists. We don't need any breakthroughs, but rather some one or some org or some thing to lobby, push, coordinate, and drive the use of genetically modified mosquitoes.

In my mind, we're at the stage where this is a political/financial/organizational problem, not a scientific one.

smt88
So I could slightly change those scenarios: in scenario A, you do the lobbying and political organization yourself. In scenario B, you donate all your extra money to a PAC or some sort of lobbying organization, which ideally has been doing this sort of thing for years or even decades and has deep political connections.