Cloning Extinct Species: Hello Jurassic Park?
The book is a classic.
The movie was a blockbuster.
But are we ready for scientists to clone a real-life Jurassic Park?
Significant genomic accomplishments in the past year have increased the possibility of bringing back to life two extinct creatures: woolly mammoths and Neanderthals.
“I laughed when Steven Spielberg said that cloning extinct animals was inevitable,” said an expert on ancient DNA who consulted on Jurassic Park. “But I’m not laughing anymore, at least about mammoths. This is going to happen. It’s just a matter of working out the details.”
The genetic details of the woolly mammoth—yielded from carcasses buried in the Siberian permafrost—have been painstakingly decoded by scientists who have now unlocked 70% of the animal’s genome, including much of the data needed to clone one.
The genome of the Neanderthal—driven to extinction 30,000 years ago—has been completely reconstructed. According to a leading genome researcher at Harvard Medical School, a Neanderthal could be brought to life using current technology for about $30 million.
But questions of ethics and responsibility nag at the nucleus of changing science fiction to non-fiction.
If we cloned our relatives the Neanderthals, asked one expert, “Are you going to put them in Harvard or in a zoo?” And woolly mammoths, notes a paleontologist, were highly social animals. “Cloning would give you a single animal, which would live all alone in a park, a zoo, or a lab—not in its native habitat, which no longer exists. You’re basically creating a curio.”
A science writer asked his readers, “Should we try to resurrect a Neanderthal? And if so, what kind of precautions should we take, and what kind of lives should we help them lead?” Many respondents expressed concern about a cloned Neanderthal’s quality of life. “What kind of life is that?” asked one, to be “raised from birth with the knowledge that they exist solely for the sake of a scientific experiment.”
“They’d have more important lessons to teach us than what we’d have to teach them,” wrote another, worried that our egos “would not see the wisdom in a species who are perhaps uglier, slower, and clumsier than us…They’d be miserable. Leave ‘em be.”
“How about making another Einstein or Bach or Rembrandt?” suggested another. “Wouldn’t that be more challenging and more scientifically useful?”
Tell us what you think: Is cloning an extinct animal responsible?
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This is just wasting time and money
I don’t understand why scientists are wasting their time and tons of money on these kind of projects like cloning woolly mammoth, creating harmful weapons/things etc when there are more important things to do in the world like saving lives, finding cures to diseases, stop killing great numbers of animals and marine species that we already have, or simply helping make the world a better place. How is this cloning the long gone animals that we don’t need now going to help the world or us? This is not being responsible.
Nusrat. S | 9 months ago
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Are you stupid
This is wasting time and money? No it’s not, the only time we are wasting us not firing this cloning process up, and money? That’s not a problem at all. This is making a world a better place by advancing further and gathering knowledge and maybe if we get good enough at cloning we could clone prehistoric sharks and learn how they became immune to every disease (including cancer).
Angry | 9 months ago
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I would be interested....
I would actually like to what other animals indeed where like before our time. I think it’s the best history lesson, however, I do believe that their social environment should be taken in effect. Also the type of diseases they would possible bring that would be harmful to humans.
I do believe it’s a waste of money as well though. However, so is war. I rather spend money on science instead of war.
Miss CaliGirl | 9 months ago
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Einsteins
Hmmm, yes please. Do make a few. That could help. And a few Chopins, Copernicuses and maybe a Tolkien.
x | 9 months ago
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Ms
In both of these cases cloning would be irresponsible and unfair. Neither the neanderthal nor the mammoth could be happy or productive in a world which has become so unlike the world he/she was created to live in. The whole idea is selfish and unwise.
Leona Sue Turner | 9 months ago
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come on...
Those are two terrible points to make. They pretty much have nothing to do with this discussion. First of all, the creatures aren’t gonna be happy, because that is a human emotion that they lack. Second, they aren’t gonna be directly interacting with our everyday lives; they would be in artificial habitats being researched, not roaming the streets or exploring the world. I wish i could see one person come up with a good reason against the cloning.
clownz | 9 months ago
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Well well...
Responsibility can be taken here. Remember how they recreated a dinosaur’s habitat in Jurassic Park? This is the same concept, except it takes just 30 million bucks to clone only one mammoth. I mean that would be wasting money, and until I know what we will learn from it to help people and current life, then I do not recommend doing so.
Sunny Singh | 9 months ago
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Yes?/No? to "Clone the Neanderthal"
Analogies:
Why clone insulin producing bacteria; it’s trying to be a god.
Why try to understand chemistry or electricity. We do fine in our 17th Century social paradigm. Why do thing that are unnatural, we might create ammonium nitrate and city states will destroy each other with munitions; Man in his evil nature will use electricity to kill people or manipulate people to buy thing they don’t need.
Why spend millions to have an astronaut hit a golf ball on the moon. Wouldn’t the millions spend pay for a lot of college tuitions for needy students?
Why try to save animals from extinction. Extinctions are natural recurrent events and preventing extinctions with genetic manipulation is playing as a god.
Why bring back a Neanderthal. He will only be the most popular and probably the richest man in the world when the lawyers and accountants show him PR and merchandizing tricks. He will be famous, popular, he’ll have the best psychologists and doctors at his beckon call. He’ll have invitations to ports of power, influence and anything his Neanderthal heart desires. Yes, it’s better to keep him dead.
He will not be able to adapt to the life I enjoy, overworked, underappreciated, and exploited by lawyers, over aged, divorced and ignored by my family. Undereducated, outsourced and unrepresented in my republic. I even lost my seat at the local bar. I have no self esteem, no money, no representatives, …essentially no life. Yes, the fate of the Neanderthal would be worse by virtue of the probable events listed above?
Does anything really make any sense? Is there really any meaning in this vale of tears we call life other than what we choose to project into it? Really?
Does cloning a Neanderthal really that outrageous considering the present state of others in our species? Have you asked a disaffected Palestinian on the West Bank refugee camp? A prisoner in China? A dockworker in Africa or a starving child in Ethiopia or North Korea?
Where do our moral imperatives stop? At mankind? At animal rescue centers? If animals have rights are they human rights? Do plants have rights? What about rocks and dirt? Are there mineral rights?
Does a Neanderthal have a soul? Does a dog? What about a parakeet or a goldfish? A bacterium?
Where are values universal and where do they stop – far beyond the Neanderthal issue. Look around.
Curious | 9 months ago
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Survival of the fittest
Survival of the fittest is a key and fundamental concept for the evolutionary growth of any and all species. Acceptance of this is natural. With research, discovery and ingenious minds at work we have, as a human race, come a long way. I can’t quite grasp the consideration of putting these qualities to waste. Cloning in a lab setting is understandable, if only to understand and observe. But don’t undermine the Darwin theory.
Don’t you agree if you let things happen, what is meant to be will be. At the same time you can make anything happen.
Keep it simple, stupid.
KimberlyAnne | 9 months ago
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Da Vinci
I would love to see them clone Leonardo Da Vinci. His contributions to science still baffle scientists today. It is proven his design for flight was well beyond it’s time and works. Not to mention some of his other works.
Gregg S Hasenjaeger | 8 months, 4 weeks ago
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