This week we meet with Dr. Rowan Hooper to discuss the possibility of making malaria extinct. In his book, “How to spend a trillion dollars,” Rowan explores the feasibility of totally eradicating malaria. However, some people believe that making a species extinct is wrong, due to the possible intrinsic value the species could hold, or due to knock on effects on the wider ecosystem. In this episode, we find out more about this. What technologies are available to do this, is it possible to make malaria extinct, and could the ecological implications on extinction really be bigger than the existing implications of malaria?
Dr. Rowan Hooper
Dr. Rowan Hooper is a biologist, a journalist, an editor and host of the New Scientist podcast, and an author of multiple books (see links below). He has a PhD in evolutionary biology and worked in a conservation biology lab in Japan for five years.
How to spend a trillion dollars
Togetherness: Symbiosis and the hidden story of life’s greatest collaborations
The New Scientists podcasts
Further reading
If you would like to know more about the topics we discuss on this episode, below are some interesting papers that look more at the potential implications and methodology behind malaria extinction
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