You and Me or Aedes?

In his 2012 book, Merchants of Despair, Robert Zubrin traces the antihumanism movement, beginning with Malthus, who claimed that population grows exponentially while productivity grows arithmetically; on to eugenics; on to the Nazi Holocaust.  These movements advocated getting rid of excess people.  Malthus urged, “We should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases and those benevolent but much mistaken men who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders.”  The eugenics movement sterilized the surplus population;  the Nazis killed them.  Zubrin then explores antihumanism’s modern incarnations, population control and radical environmentalism.
The current incarnation of antihumanism, the school of thought that the balance of nature must be preserved at the expense of human beings, is alive and well. The June 2016 Smithsonian Magazine has an article detailing how genetic engineering techniques could bring the Aedes aegypti mosquito to near or complete extinction.  Since more than a million people die every year from diseases such as yellow fever, dengue fever, and Zika virus, transmitted by these bugs, it would seem like a no-brainer to get rid of them. Not so fast say those who value the balance of nature over human flourishing.  From the comments to the article:
Vera Gottlieb says: “As pesky as these critters may be, they are part of the chain of life on this planet.  We are all interconnected and we should NOT upset this balance.  We have already messed up enough.”  Does Gottlieb believe that respect for the interdependent web of life takes priority over respect for human beings?
DV says, “Kill all the mosquitoes and we wipe out the bats, frogs, and numerous bird species.  If we don’t, Mother Earth will come up with some other way to quell the human infection.”  Human INFECTION?  Are human beings no better than Zika virus?
The most outrageous of the commenters, Patturk, says, “Eliminate the diseases and instead contribute to an even greater population explosion of humans, leading to more wars over dwindling resources such as fresh water and  more humans killing each other.  Hmm, death by mosquito or by war.  When will we learn that nature knows best?  Why is so much effort put into curing death?  Or, more humans living longer, crowding out other species until all that’s left are people, sheep, pigs, and cows.  Great idea.”
Is it a better idea to let millions of human beings die of preventable diseases?  Shades of Malthus, the original antihumanist, who likewise recommended not treating diseases.