Mosquitopia? The place of pests in a healthy world
“I favor insect control in appropriate situations,” the great naturalist Rachel Carson once declared, even if the question that obsessed her to the end of her days was “whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.” Mosquitoes present us with a supreme case for finding how to simultaneously promote human and ecosystem health.
This three-day symposium brings together a small group of scientists and humanists to assess how mosquitoes can better coexist with people. Our strategy is to identify major categories of mosquito-human relationships, and enrich them from multiple perspectives, especially history, anthropology, and ethics as well as entomology, molecular biology, and health sciences. Can we learn to live with mosquitoes without them ultimately killing us or us killing them, thereby allowing us to enter a new age of Mosquitopia?
A few places are still available at our meeting in Landshut (near Munich) if these themes are close to your interests. Please contact the main organizer.
Marcus Hall
University of Zurich / Rachel Carson Center