Houses, mosquitoes, and evolutionary control

This week’s issue of The Lancet has two interesting papers on mosquito control: a ‘Comment’ paper: House screening for malaria control, and a full paper Effect of two different house screening interventions on exposure to malaria vectors and on anaemia in children in The Gambia: a randomised controlled trial. Both worth reading. But Professor Paul Ewald of the Department of Biology at the University of Louisville, in his 1994 book Evolution of Infectious Disease (OUP), was ahead of the game: read the section ‘Evolutionary control’ on pages 53−55 of the book on Google Books here. And you can watch his 2007 Ted Talks lecture Can we domesticate germs? on the evolutionary control of diarrhoeal disease pathogens and also on mosquito-proof houses − very thought provoking!