When thinking about the world’s most menacing creature, it is not often thought to be the tiny, buzzing creature that is the mosquito.

For one biologist, E.O. Wilson, a world without the itch-inducing, bloodsuckers is far better than a world riddled with deadly diseases.

Wilson founded the field of sociology, was an activist for biodiversity and introduced the idea that humans have an innate affinity for nature (biophilia). Recently, Wilson proposed the idea of mass eradication for some species of mosquitoes.

“We don’t want to wipe out all Anopheles because that’s a viral link to food chains around a lot of the world.” Wilson said in a WPR article. “But Anopheles gambiae — the group species in Africa that co-evolved with people over thousands of years is specialized to live in human settlements and live on human blood. As a result is a principal conveyor of malaria. That’s one I wouldn’t mind seeing go.”

He also said we have to find out which species are carrying malaria and the Zika virus and go after them.

“It’s unlikely that you could eliminate them entirely,” Wilson said, “but there will be regions where the pathogens occur, and that is where you take out the mosquitoes.”

Wilson said there was an earlier study similar to this involving the eradication of the flesh fly, which were causing problems for livestock when they laid their eggs on scratches and wounds of animals, burrowing into the living flesh of animals.

The successful method invented to exterminate the flies was to breed sterilized males and release them to areas where the female flies were nesting. This is what Wilson is recommending we to do to this Anopheles gambiae.

The notion of reducing this disease-bearing mosquitos population seems sensible if we’re talking about diminishing the incidence of malaria, but it can also be a daunting task since nobody knows what the long-term domino effect would be.

I am flabbergasted that the “father of biodiversity” and supposed lover of the variety of life on earth has deduced to such extreme measures for a resolution that is quite detrimental to our bionetwork.

Two things would happen to the ecosystem if the species was wiped out. Entomologist Joe Conlon of the American Mosquito Control Association said something much worse would come and fill its niche, or, from my own theories, the species that feed on them would start to disappear and then whatever feeds on the mosquito eaters would soon die out too, which would then cause a ripple effect throughout the food chain.

Wilson said there will be “regions of pathogens,” which will be annihilated to extinction, but how can anyone know where all of these infected mosquitos are located? It would take months, years maybe, to track down all of the infected ones and by then, the diseased offspring would be coming in droves

There are other potential solutions which would work so much better. If man can make flies get sterilized, then they should have no issue with genetically modifying mosquitoes to be resistant to malaria or the Zika virus. If they could find a way to do this then all of their offspring wouldn’t have the potential to spread any disease.

Another solution is to just let things be and let mother nature take its course. Mosquitoes don’t and shouldn’t have to die because “some are infected” and others are not. That is not how the world works and if it did, humans wouldn’t be here.