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The blood retrieval mosquito is raised in a clean
environment,
after biting a human victim it homes back to the lab where
the
blood is extracted and the mosquito killed (to prevent
infections from spreading)
Once a batch of blood is obtained (say 1 pint) it's tested
then
added to the
medical blood supply.
The mosquito should be white with little red cross on them
so
nice people might refrain from killing them.
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This looks like quite a good idea, until you realise it would take about 1,000 mosquitoes to extract a single cc of blood (which is diluted with mosquito spit). That makes 567,500 for an Imperial pint, or about 466,250 for a US pint. You then have to determine the typing of each sample and screen for Hep A, B, C, non-A non-B, HIV, HIB, TB, orthopoxviruses and a host of other bugs. |
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Probably easier to pay drunks and vagabonds for their blood. There is no payment for blood in Australia, so you get fewer infected samples. |
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Prehaps scaling up to "Blood Collecting Vampires" would help with the volume problem. |
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How does one train an insect to bite humans exclusively, and then fly back to the lab? Tinkering with genes will only get you so far... |
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// How does one train an insect...? // |
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By putting a chip in its head. They have made some progress with controlling (steering) rats through pleasure and pain applied to the brain (although they don't like to shout about it). Perhaps you could do something similar to mosquitos - you're going to kill them anyway, so it doesn't do them any more harm. And you could remove the chip, clean it and put it into the next one. |
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Use sufficient intelligence and you could even get the mosquito - or a whole bunch of them - to home in on a specific person, saving the problem of categorizing, and making it possible to tell them if their blood is infected with anything. |
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[Aristotle]: Or just move up to Blood Collecting Bunnies, so as not to scare the wee little ones. |
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[UnaBubba] 567,000 for a pint? How many bees does it take to make a pound of honey? Who cares how hard insects have to work - there's plenty of them. |
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The key might be to breed a type of mosquito that collected more than a µl - or merely use a type that already does. Visit Iceland and see how much a blood-bloated mozzie there can contain - my guess would be around 25 µl. |
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It might even be enough that you could test the mozzie for infection and then release it for another trip if it's clean - if you can develop a broad spectrum test that's quick enough and uses a small enough sample. |
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Ewww, gross, random blood samples! [-] |
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//The key might be to breed a type of mosquito that collected more than a µl.//
Presumably, the mosquito knows to stop sucking when its abdomen becomes distended. So, if you put a small hole in it, the mosquito would keep sucking, spilling the blood--an excellent micro-leech. |
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