Slashdot Mirror
Is Extinction Only Temporary?
Logic Bomb writes: "A group of researchers at a privately-owned Massachusetts company are trying out an experiment that could help solve some of earth's problems with endangered species. An article from the Washington Post details their project to create a cloned Asian Guar using a good ol' American cow as a surrogate mother. The new guar, 'Noah,' is due to be born next month -- in other words, the project is a success. The company sees great possibilities for earth's wildlife, because as long as an appropriate surrogate mother can be found -- of the same or another species -- there is hope for any endangered animal. The next project is to bring a species of Spanish mountain goat back from extinction(!). Giant Pandas are on the schedule too."
There's something else here that might be overlooked: A lot of species transmit information from generation to generation in two ways. There is the DNA information path that everyone is talking about, but also many species learn behaviors from their parents. This is very obvious in humans (how close would a human, cloned from DNA samples and then raised in an alien environment be to the humans we see running around today?) but it also applies to many other animals. Those who most strongly rely on learned behavior (for feeding, communication, shelter) are going to be impossible to restore to anything resembling their state before extinction. It's like recreating hardware without any software, you will lose a tremendous amount of information in the process.
i'm sorry, i'm all for protecting animals from accelerated extinction due to man's activities, but once those animals get to the brink of extinction, it kinda means that they really don't have much place on earth anymore. if you look at giant pandas, they really should be extinct with their poor reproduction rats. i say let them die.
(weren't cut out to is a curious choice of phrase -- suggesting that species were made using a cookie cutter, a fabric pattern, or by some analogous process. It strongly suggests an intentional act of creation and hence an actor.)
Humans who chose to do resurrections like this cannot make this choice based on some value system derived from evolution. There's no evolutionary plan for them to help or mess up. They make the decisions for the same reasons all animals make all their decisions -- either they want the result or they want some expected consequence of the result.
Sure, we know what all the large mammals are, and we have some remnant of most of them we could extract DNA from. But entymologists estimate that 90% of the currently living species of insects aren't yet known to science. Similar numbers hold for most groups of invertebrates, plants, and microbes. That makes it mighty hard to collect the necessary samples.
Posted by polar_bear:
Heh... Good point. I bet we only try to save cute and furry species. No one is going to try to save any extinct variety of mosquito or jellyfish.
What is to say that is was meant to happen? I assume that by "X was meant to happen" you mean "X should happen." The sense of "should" used here is moral, e.g., you should be nice to your neigbors, not predictive in the present of incomplete knowledge e.g., when I drop a glass it should break.
Though there are reasons why any species went extinct the question of should they have gone extinct is open. It is up to a moral agents, such as humans, to reason about the goodness of a species becoming extinct.
Perhaps the extinct species would have produced an enzyme that would have lead to an AIDS vaccine. Perhaps the extinct species would have caused every species of bird in the world to become extinct.
There aren't many other species around with a moral faculty. We humans, as a consequence of possessing this faculty, have the obligation to fix things that we believe to be wrong. Being fallible, we may come to the incorrect conclusion of the best fix. That however, does not imply that we shouldn't try.
I've got the desktop (fvwm with xterms, mainly), the web site (slashdot lite, for example), a newsgroup or two (but they're clearly a secret), and the keyboard (veteran of a cream soda, which made the keys stick, because they were sticky).
Can't help you with the others...
Great, now I'll ruin some karma... How about
"European regulators"?
Or
Socialists?
But that's redundant.
Might you be on a cable modem or the like?
Maybe we could bring back the understanding that not everyone has broadband, those that have it will still be in the minority (25% or so) for a while yet.
The main problem is that some web pages seem to be designed such that the page can't be rendered until the entire file and all pictures are downloaded, for those with modems, that can be a while.
This site used to take forever but I think it has been improved some lately:
Wildcoast DVD Animania
Just saying that quite a few animals seem to adapt fine to new environments. I don't think it would be necessary to replicate the Auroch environment perfectly, probably any temperate deciduous forest would do.
The could be problems, of course, but I don't see them as being guaranteed.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
I'm hoping genetic manipulation will provide the ability to recreate diversity some day. We could clone thousands of animals, each with small mutations, and let natural selection sort them out, or later, maybe we'd come to understand the effects of individual changes, and try to reproduce the kinds of diversity which we expect existed in nature before the extinction.
I bashed one of those keyboards into oblivion and it still worked. The god damn thing was bent and it worked (actually it was an old Northgate KB) but same idea :)
- Bill
If this become a common thing I could see zoos for previously exitinct speices. I could see this as a big money. Come and see the only living Wolly Mammoth!! In the right right hands this can be a good tool but I do not think mankind will use this technology for the right reason.
(Slaps forehead)
Of course! THAT's why the dinosaurs went extinct while the mammals didn't!
:-) for the humor impaired...
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Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
So now we don't have to worry about humans going extinct through thermonuclear war or whatever, because if we do, then we'll be able to revive ourselves.
Oh, wait...
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Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Huh? Fascist?
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Just want to point out that this isn't a panacea that will solve all of the endangered species problems. It seems that some people are way too overly optimistic about finding appropriate surrogate mothers. This is very difficult, even when you have a surrogate mother of the same species. In fact, this is the major obstacle in most attempts to clone vertebrates. We have gotten to the point that cloning embryos has become quite easy, but getting a mother to carry them to term can be extremely difficult. For instance, ask anyone who has tried to clone pigs. Embryonic development will not proceed normally unless at least 4 embryos are implanted in the uterus--and getting four embryos within the same time span so that they can be implanted at the same time is NOT EASY. Now imagine trying this feat with a mother that is not even the same species. Your chances just aren't that good for many species.
Note also that this is not the first time that a surrogate mother of a different species from the child has been used successfully. In November of 1999 an ordinary housecat gave birth to an African wildcat.
i goto school with a bunch of 'em, actually.
it's a bit misleading...they call themselves computer science professors.
> New Star Trek series that don't suck.
Sounds like you saw the first episode of Andromeda this weekend.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There was story which was very similar
Tiger Cloning.The funny thing about
that tiger(it is *not* a feline, it was more
a dog) is that it was already extinct. OW, the
mechanims are very similar.
syam.
Slashdot.org: we recycle, do you ?
Sci-fi movies don't need to cover this, Home Simpson has it all handled "If you ever go back in time, don't touch anything".
:-)
Gfunk007
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
How good would it be for us to have the animals back without the proper environment for them to live in? Animals are not just something that run around and eat food, they are always part of the ecosystem. Without proper environmental support, they will somehow have to override their genetically-coded behavior pattern to adapt to the new environment. Otherwise they will still not be able to survive (except in the zoo, which is not all that different from extinction).
Woud you consider T-Rex to be "not extinct" if we have managed to reproduce half a dozen of them and place them in Jurassic Park? As long as they are not back into the ecosystem -- which takes more than individual animals -- it really makes no big difference.
The second problem they would have to deal with is genetic drift, where even a population of several thousand can randomly lose genetic diversity. This is less of a problem than it appears, because even if the population loses a few genes, they can always clone some more animals that actually have them.
As far as inbreeding, the problems here usually arise from homozygosity of deleterious recessive genes. They could potentially lower the likelyhood of this being a problem by eliminating the deleterious recessives in the lab (probably much harder than it sounds). Beyond that, deleterious recessives tend to gradually fade away in populations where inbreeding is common, because they are far more likely to cause problems in a such a population, and thus have a much higher selection pressure going against them. For instance, in many human societies where marrying one's first cousin is common, deleterious recessives are much less common than in Western cultures, where marrying even second cousins is taboo.
Hmmm... I'm starting to ramble, so I'll end here by saying that resurrecting a species, given the right conditions is certainly possible, but it would be a mammoth undertaking (pun intended) far beyond something like merely cloning a sheep.
---------------------------
"The people. Could you patent the sun?"
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
--Henry David Thoreau
I sincerly hope that if we bring back a Dodo it grabs a blunt object and starts beating humans. It is their turn after all.
A couple cans of 3M spray adhesive an insulation blow-in truck ought to take care of that.
In that case they just have to bring back the Do-Do! That was one cool bird.
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If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
I think the crux of our disagreement stems from the fact that we're arguing about two different targets. You are targeting society and culture as a whole, while I am entirely focused on the individual. To me, each person has to make the best choice among all options that are available to them at the time. Technology extends and enhances the range of options. I am not saying consequences be damned, but I am saying that the best information available at the time should be the standard of judgement.
The automobile. At the time of it's introduction, there was no foundation and no precedent for anything like it in history. There was no conceivable way anyone could have predicted the changes it brought to the world. Now, we could argue all day about whether or not cars are a good or a bad, but that doesn't change the fact that such a technology was mostly unpredictable.
However, unpredictable doesn't mean, I think, that it shouldn't have been used. I think that prior to actually having the technology around, the best guesses about it's long term results will always be wrong. But lets look at what they did know: An engine that provides useful amounts of power in a compact frame, enabling transportation on an economic scale (though not at first, the original cars were rich men's toys). Pollution? What? It wasn't an issue for them, wasn't "on the radar", I guess you could say.
Well, I have a real-world example for you. There is a group of people, headed by one Thomas Bearden, who claim to have a device (and research) that supports truly immense amounts of electrical power, with only simple equipment. It sounds like magic, and even after reading all the research papers I can find, I'm still skeptical. But if it's true, it will mean nearly unlimited power in almost any size package you want. It may be completely bogus, it may not (the department of energy seems to think he's onto something, though).Lets assume for a moment that his research is totally accurate. What are the consequences? To give you perspective, imagine something the size of a AAA battery pumping out a kilowatt/hour for ten years with little excess heat.
This technology will change the world. It will enable whole classes of other technologies that are currently unexploited, because of a lack of compact power sources. It'll erase the power economy, and everything dependant on it. It will enable cheap and easy spaceflight, as well as truly awesome weapon systems that are just a dream right now.
The fact that this technology would free me from ever having to pay for an electric bill, or pay for gasoline ever again, makes it worth it for me. I want it. My use of it doesn't harm you. So, should it be introduced or not? What we do know is that it would free us from polluting fossil fuels, but what we don't know is what sorts of new things will then be possible. Some of these new things will be 'harmful', some helpful. Though, no object can ever have an intrinsic moral value (technology depends on how it is used to become 'good' or 'bad').
Never apologize for saying what you think. And I, too, have spent alot of time on this (today I've posted more messages than I have in three years)."Avast! Prepare for the rodgering!" THWACK! "Arrr.. me nards.."
Our civilization is quite different, even if only from our own perspective. And if that damns me to being human-centric, oh well. Yes, all of our cultures and history only makes sense from our own perspective, and from life that shares that perspective.
Can an Ant perceive itself? Can an Ant reflect on who and what it is, and decide to change it? Can an Ant wonder about existance itself? Dunno, never talked to an ant. When one decides to strike up conversation, I'll ask.
So yeah, I'd say we're pretty damned different from most animals. There's been interesting work with dolphins and apes that make a good case for treating them better than animals, but it's only suggestive right now.
I reserve the term civilized for humanity only. You have not even made a case that death is a requirement for civilization. So are you saying that we have progress because people die? Thanks for your opinion. Unsustainable, eh? That would be true, were we limited to this one single planet. But it my opinion, that won't last for much longer (few hundred years at most). Maybe that's unrealistic. Fine. But nothing you have posted here has given any evidence that I, individually, am causing harm to others by my continued existance. Offspring is a hollow form of 'immortality'. I am not a DNA sequence.Oh, it's a 'fact' that some have to die to make room for others, is it? I suppose in a rather amoral fashion, you are correct. I'm sure the American Indians would like to have a word about your 'facts'.
I have posted my position. You claim I'm wrongheaded. Fine, please give evidence and supporting arguments.
Of course I'm not the pinnacle of evolution, especially since evolution doesn't really have a goal other than survival. Oh, wait.. living forever, WOULD kind of fit that, wouldn't it? All kidding aside, no, I don't think any of us are a finished product. Evolution, in fact, is a sequence of changes. Death just happens to be a change I do not personally wish to experience. Just because most life dies doesn't mean that it's a good thing. Changing the way things are is intrinsic to humanity, I'd guess."Avast! Prepare for the rodgering!" THWACK! "Arrr.. me nards.."
Now, you say that they should be working to change the destructive behaviors that caused the extinction in the first place. Well, we can't do that unless we can study a living member of said extinct species. Oh, wait. You ment alter HUMAN behavior. Ahhh, I get it now. You think that some scientist is able to accurately judge "good" and "bad" behavior.
Lets see how many holes I can shoot in that fallacy. First, there is no way to assign objective standards of behavior that are appropriate to everyone. What is murder in America is self-defense in another country. Same issue with just about every other 'behavior' you might name. Oh, you want to go 'deeper' than that? Perhaps you want to change the basic human spirit that produced technological civilization in the first place? We didn't get here peacefully, and it's doubtful that will change anytime soon (nor, do I think, should it).
We are each responsible for our own actions, and also have the right to do what we think is best for ourselves and our loved ones. That may not sit well with some folks. Tough.
"Avast! Prepare for the rodgering!" THWACK! "Arrr.. me nards.."
Uh. Meals, and little competition for survival. Mates provided. Controlled enviroment. You know, it sounds awfully like... Civilization! Well, except for the mates part.
What's so wrong about being dead? Okay, that doesn't deserve a rational response, but I'll give you one anyway: We don't know what's after death. Individually, we may think we know, or believe, but there is no real proof of any sort. So the question is this: No matter what you think happens after death, are you willing to bet it's better than life? I'm not. And, I personally think that life is a great thing, and so I believe it should be preserved, always. Our current technology doesn't allow that, but it will someday.
Do I want to live forever? Hell yes. Do I think that life itself is an instrinsically good thing? Yes. And so if someone, who feels as I do, has the resources to bring back a species, what's wrong with doing so? It has fuck-all to do with guilt.
"Avast! Prepare for the rodgering!" THWACK! "Arrr.. me nards.."
Here's a funky thought: They went extinct, and now we want to bring them back. That's one HELL of a survival mechanism, isn't? To develop some innate property that makes us want to save them. Man, and I thought humans were devious.
"Avast! Prepare for the rodgering!" THWACK! "Arrr.. me nards.."
Hey I want a pet t-rex. Have a chiwawa be the mother so I can have a really really small one =)
Most animals becomes instinct, because the enviroment they live in, is destroyed by man.
The great Panda is already instinct; sure a dwindling wild population still exist, but for all purposes, it is instinct, and I have a hard time imagining that there ever will be a sustainable population in the wild again. The Tiger and Chimpanzee too; chances are, that You will survive them.
Sure, such extinct animals will be displayed on "freak shows" like Zoo's and tv-programmes. And people will therefore continue live in the illusion, that these animals aren't instinct. But I say they are; those sad survivers are staged props.
I really dislike such projects, like this "gaur" cloning;
They don't address or change the real issue.
It is most likely just a commercial cloning-camp for the mighty freakshow.
Such project never seem to target non-cute animals, like slimy frogs, who, from a biological viewpoint, are just as interesting.
In short, I think such projects are waste of money and energy. The financial resources for preserving already existing wildlife, are scarse enough. And often it doesn't take much money to make a huge difference; just stopping draining every little muddy waterhole, stopping unnecessary pesticide spraying and cutting of plants at the roadsides etc, will give some wildlife, a sporting chance to survive on their own.
Actually not all animals suffer from inbreeding the way humans do. Dogs and cats for instance are largely immune to the effects of inbreeding as far as I know.
:)
Many mammals can tolerate incredibly small gene pools.
I think the higher apes are just genetically too fucked up to handle it.
/-\-/
Actually, you're wrong.
Many species can, and do, tolerate inbreeding. While the problem with inbreeding is that it tends to bring out bad recessive traits, that is not a problem if the germ line consists of identical individuals, i.e. they are just creating clones. Read Gould's _Panda's Thumb_ for an example of a few species of mites that engages solely in sibling-sibling mating. In fact, in one species all born offspring are female because the male dies off before being born (although he does fertilize all his sisters before that).
The aim of the project is to create a perfect reproduction, not just a creature similar to one that lived before.
People still talk about Dolly as being a successful cloning, even with the ageing abnormalities. How can a true clone be different in such a major way?
An interesting novel was once written about a man whose mother died on an exploratory mission to Mars, and the child was raised, from before birth, by Martians, and returned to Earth about 20 years later. This brought a lot of benefit to the individual, the Earthlings, and the Martians. So I don't think that undue pessimism is due.
No, a modem .. the *rendering* is fast, but the download time is slow. If I browse to a squid-cached page, or a page on my hard drive, it is instant
My Celeron-300 renders any page in under a second .. perhaps you need a better browser and a better desktop environment.
Sounds awfully like Civilization? Why do you think these animals are dead in the first place??
You think it might have something to do with so-called 'civilised' morons wiping them out by indiscriminately destroying their habitats?
You talk about Civilisation like its somehow different from the civilisation that other species have achieved.. Ants, and many other insects, for example, are extremely civilised creatures. Do you know how many ants or termites youd have crawling all over your body right now if they never died?
No, theres no proof at all of what happens after death.. But far more people have died in this world than there are alive today, if this didn't result in some kind of progress, then where do you get off even thinking about employing the word 'civilised'?
You think that the current generation of people were just dropped onto the surface of this planet, fully 'civilised'?
You want to live forever? Personally, i think thats a stupid notion. A species expanding without limit and never dying is quite obviously unsustainable, yet you think you somehow have the right to persist over others who must necessarily die to ensure your survival. Thats not very civilised now, is it?
You can live forever, and the method has been employed successfully for millions of years. Its called having kids.
The fact of the matter is that you have to die in order to make room for new people. At least some of whom will be better equipped than you, in every conceivable way.
If youre so arrogant to believe youre the pinnacle of friggin evolution, that you're right to live somehow outweighs everything else's, then you're gonna be real surprised when that car hits you, your own cancerous cells eat your vital organs, your heart just plain gives out or you get mauled to death by some example of a long dead species that escapes from it's cage.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Jesus, instead of actually doing something to modify our own behaviour to avoid killing these species, now everythings ok because we can breed them on demand, regardless of how long they've been dead. Its basically a pretty sick thing to do to the poor creatures. Whats so terribly wrong about being dead?? We wiped them out, and now seek to assuage our guilt by 'resurrecting' them They have no home to go back to, and are born into a prison where they'll live out the rest of their miserable lives. I can't imagine a worse life for an animal than to be born and die in captivity, and i'll never visit another zoo after seeing, as a young child, those poor cats (leopards, lions) in tiny cages. Why not clone, breed and reintroduce those native american indians that got slaughtered wholesale? Clone a few herds of buffalo, and set em up on the plains so they can build their wigwams and make the good ol' whitebread US feel less guilty about things.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Definitely correct. When I was in high school, my friends and I used to go to the local "Computerland" (the first retail computer chain) to laugh at the idiotic salesmen. That was in 1982.
The cake is a pie
Not entirely true. Dogs have a lot of genetic variability, so inbreeding for mutts is not an issue. However, some of the more obscure breeds are suffering from a lack of genetic variability and show effects of inbreeding.
Apparently, human beings went through some near-extinction event around 200,000 years or so ago. (If I remember correctly. I could be off by a factor of ten.) I recall reading that there is evidence that the entire human population is based on a small group of 10,000 individuals.
But in this case, any extinct animal is almost by definition going to suffer from inbreeding.
The cake is a pie
Females cats eat stillborn and will also eat mutated or damaged kittens. As you said they as a group(small mam) do have some advantages. Example Cabbits(half bunny, half cat) however I have read breaders usually have to watch for the mother cat killing the kitten(bittens?, Kites?, collective noun needed on level three please) or other mothers(cats) killing them. DoggyMoms also eat mutants and stillborns. We are odd ones for not eating them up Yum! :)
ummmm... Not everything was "unfit" lots of these species would still be around if man hadn't hunted them. It is completly irresponsible for humans to hunt an animal to extinction. If this indeed brings them back, then I don't see anything wrong with it.
mother itself. It's already been weeks since it's extinct and gone.
I don't think having DNA is sufficient. Not only do you need enzymes that can read the DNA, but you also need a cell sufficiently similar to an embryo of the organism that the DNA will know what it's supposed to be doing (creating a new organism). And don't forget to give the embryo a good environment to grow in (egg for reptiles, artificial or real uterus for most mammals, etc.)
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The shareholder is always right.
This is an interesting thing, although I can't say I'm surprised about it as it seems almost mundane for these types of things to happen nowadays.
I wonder how much of an effect this could really have though? Isn't this just attacking the symptom of the problem instead of the problem itself? Not that this is a bad thing, but it is probably the smallest and easiest step towards brining back an endangered or extinct species. The real challenge is fixing the problems that caused the extinction.
Sigs are awesome huh?
As i've seen on discovery channel, giant squids exist...but they've only been caught in fishing nets in a deceased state. If only there could be a surrogate for such a beast....
bye,
-jimbo
Via Noah... ;)
Ewige Blumenkraft.
Yes, but there are quite well preserved dodos in several Natural History Museums. It should not be too hard to get DNA from the feathers or feet. And remember, the dodo is extinct because it tasted lovely. Dodoburgers anyone?
The original Doctor Dark.
Hey dudes in charge of slashdot moderation... how about a change to the system whereby a moderator is allowed to reply to a message [s]he moderates?
Often I'd like to give a reason for moderations I've performed.
enough with this "surrogate mother" cr*p, how about some home-grown reptilian eggs?
Even some of the forms of Christianity there are vicious in the defense of their particular beliefs.
:-))
(Don't get me wrong; I have no problem with religion. Blind religion with terrorism backing it is another ball game though.
-- Talonius
My reality check bounced.
What I'd be concerned about is our meddling again and creating different problems. IANAEE (I am not an ecology expert), but I would think that, yes, we probably caused the extinction of Species X by hunting, etc., but how are we going to mess things up by bringing them back? Are we just going to tip the scale in the other direction now, and get overrun with Species X? In other words, humans suck at trying to balance the ecology, whether it's killing off species, or perhaps restoring them.
Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead.
This is exactly what was done in the Yellowstone Region with the reintroduction of Grey Wolves (imported from Canada) after they had been hunted out some 60 years ago (not sure on that timelength). The wolves have taken hold. The main effect has been on the elk, deer, and other grazers, whose population was too big and was taxing the land . . .
I understand if a species has been missing for like hundreds or thousands of years, that another predator/herbivore/whatever might take it's place, but that's the whole point-- let the animal back in and let nature find that balance for us. In over-simplified Lion-King Disney terms: Lions and Hyena share a close niche on the Serengetti, but if lions went extinct, hyenas would merely fill the void. If Lions were reintroduced, they would reestablish their balance with the hyena.
davejenkins.com |
I was thinking more in an ecological sense, where introducing species into non-native environments tends to be a bad thing.
Is it definately a bad thing? What makes it definately bad? How does one know so much as to say it is bad or good? Bad for what? Bad for who? Think about this one: Lets say some bird gets hopelessly lost on its way south for the winter, and ends up on some deserted island. Lets also say that some seeds hitched a ride on this bird, and subseqently the seeds were to germinate on this island, and eventually the plant colonizes this preiously desolate island. Uh oh, the bird indroduced a species into a non-native environment. Was that a bad thing? Seems like it wasn't, but who are we to say? Many seem to think for some reason that A bird doing something like this is only natural, but a human doing something like this is a Bad Thing (tm). Why are we so special?
Yeah, the main thing that worries me about that scenario is that people tend to make mistakes...Saying "nothing will ever go wrong" or anything like that makes me a little nervous
What could possible go wrong? Nature will work things out. We are still a part of the evolution equation. If we were to re-introduce a previously extinted species, and it survives, great! If we somehow screw up, and wipe ourselves out, great, the biosphere is probably better of without us!
When it's gone, it'se gone. You can't recreate the gaur's environment at all, because the gaur's environment had gaurs and/or their ancestors bearing, feeding and caring for their young. If you "succeed", you'll get something that's not the same. You're introducing a species, not reinstanting one.
So lets say we were able to re-introduce the ivory-billed woodpecker. It doesn't have ancestors to show it exactly how to build a nest in a tree. But lets also say that nest building is based mostly on instinct, and very little on learned behaviours. So a new colony of Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers is established, but they don't know how to build their nests right. They build friggin cirucular holes in the trees instead of rectangular holes. And the song they sing is all wrong.
Man, that would suck.
So, what am I trying to say? With no habitat to go back to, to repopulate, what's the point of bringing them back?
Will there never be a habitat to go back to? Who's to say that habitat could never be recreated? There is more than double the amount of forest land in New Hampshire than there was at the beginning of the 20'th century. As a result, we are seeing a resurgence in some song bird species, which is a good sign.
And loss of habitat is not the only reason animals go extinct. Wolves were exterminated from the rockies because humans were scared of them. Now there are problems with elk and moose dying of starvation. Is the re-introduction of the wolf to the rockies a bad thing?
not to mention the difference between a backslash and a forward slash. I don't mean what they're used for, I mean what they look like.
What????? Have you gone mad????? Please tell me how growing plants and trees is against nature! (Better alert the Arbor Day Foundation! Those folks have had it wrong all this time.) Farming is the reason FOR nature.
And it still is so.Are you advocating an all-meat diet? Oh, but that would be against nature too. I guess we'll just have to kill ourselves so as to not hurt nature.
Fire, clothing, and weapons are also part of nature, not against it. Btw, humans did not invent these things either.
Weapons: claws, teeth, quills (a porcupine's arrows or bullets, so to speak), fangs, poison (venom, ivy, hallucinogenics), spikes, thorns, horns, antlers
Fire: natural forest fires, volcanic fires
Clothing: various furs, wool, bark (a tree's clothing), various exoskeletons/shells
We are part of nature, but we rule the rest of it, so far as God allows.
So, why should humans prevent the extinction of other species? For the same reasons we geeks want to emulate defunct game consoles and preserve old computer systems, only moreso. Humans have never made a machine as complicated as the simplest microbe, let alone a mammal. We have a lot to learn by studying how other species work. By letting other species go extinct, we're throwing out 4 billion years of evolution tweaking the source code of life. Even humans' closest relatives, the bonobos, are endangered and we share > 98% of our DNA with these guys. Pretty damn shortsighted.
Not everything in an species is genetic. Behavior patterns are often acquired from a parent. Who will these new guar emulate? Who will teach them how to survive? Instinct will only carry complex animals so far, especially carnivores.
I doubt that cloning will bring back extinct species in a viable way. A species sitting in a zoo, unable to care for itself, is still extinct. It just doesn't know it, yet.
Weapons of Mass Analysis
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
I did something positive, I think, for the environment. I suggested that the local college radio station play the Deep Ecology series at the above link. They did. Twice. It's free for non-profit radio stations.
re: Umm... A lot of the behavior that makes an animal what it is and enables it to survive is taught to it by it's mother. i.e. a cat not raised by it's mother often doesn't know how to hunt. I'm not sure quite how they'd get around that...
Not quite accurate! Obviously you have not done much animal rescue work. After raising dozens and dozens of feral kittens, I came to realize that covering up their litter boxes with throw rugs,towels, anything they could move was a variation on 'wild survival instincts' (covering their scent). They do the same with food containers. NOT some of them, but the majority of them!
Much more behavior is inherited then you would think. Again, Real Life example: A male German Shepherd, with all the right stuff for working, intelligence and stature drove it's owners nuts with a weird habit of putting his 2 front feet in any reachable source of water and spending insane amounts of energy trying to dig it empty. At their pool he would step down the first step and dig, throwing water endlessly on the deck. My females produced two litters from this male and as luck would have it, I also had a pool. Ironically, puppies from both litters who NEVER even saw their male parent DID the precise same thing. Their mother did not!
Baby skunks raised from birth on eyedroppers and canned cat food, trained to kitty litter boxes, taken outside to play, will turn over rocks and joyfully munch on large ugly black crunchy beetles. You do not have to teach them to hunt. They are natural mousers.
Having said that, I tend to agree that providing a duplicate environment for a species far removed from the condition of the planet at this point in time and space is pretty nearly hopeless. The resulting cloned animal is going to be hard pressed to deal with the toxins of this era.
ah! the internet!! we may still screw up the world but NEVER again will we be able to claim IGNORANCE
Not now, not ever. That is all I wish.
Or are you just happy to see me?
What about the plants that these animals ate? What if the reason they are extinct is that their food source went away -- what are we going to do then?
IANAGeneticist, but my Bio 101 texts suggested that the (original, biological) purpose of sex was the introduction of variation, not "to normalize genetic traits" as you wrote.
.
Early lifeforms reproduced asexually by simple cell division, and all offspring were identical clones of their parent organisms untill they were exposed to some mutagen. It appears that males are a wastefull drain on resources, but that the gain in genetic variability created by sexual reproduction offsets males' otherwise reproductively useless consumption of resources. The whole idea is to de-normalize genetic traits and create a diverse range of offspring capable of adapting to environmental/habitat/competitive change.
I think you are also a bit off in calling an inbred animal an abnormal one. There are many natural circumstances that lead to inbred populations: catastrophy, isolated island populations, disease etc. Survivors of such circumstances may be burdened with negative traits but they may also give rise to large populations with great diversity -- e.g. Hom. Sap. Sap. as shown in the work of Ann Gibbons (Science, v.267 1/6/1995)
Alleles have no mechanism for knowing what "normal" is, so introduction of this culturally determined, anthropocentric idea is not going to shed light on the discussion.
A forward slash is rapid motion in which the blade-weilding hand is moved rapidly forward and across the target. There are many variations on the forward slash, but the most common are the uppper-right to lower-left and upper-left to lower-right diagonal forward slashes. The accompanying body motions are similar to the open-hand slap and backhand.
The backslash, on the other hand, is not descriptive of technique, but target. The truly effective backslash lays bare or transects the target's spinal column.
po_boy wrote: I refuse to believe that in the few thousand years since humans started being "civilized" that we have caused more animal species to become extinct than in the few million years before that. Unless species are becoming extinct at several thousand times the previous rates of extinctions, this is pretty much impossible.
well, If you "refuse to believe" then you are mindlessly dogmatic and debate with you is pointless... but, on the offchance that you were just being melodramatic when you employed that damning phrase, I'll present an argument here. Even if you refuse to believe what you don't like to hear, others who have been misled by your dogma may ne more open minded.
Widley accepted figures indicate that current rates of extinction are 100 times the "natural" rate and climbing to something between 1,000 and 10,000 times the natural rate of extinction. According to an article in the Washington Post:
Other sources of depressing news you won't want to believe:
According to scientists at the American Museum of Natural History:"This mass extinction is the fastest in Earth's 4.5-billion-year history and, unlike prior extinctions, is mainly the result of human activity and not of natural phenomena." The same scientists note that "In strong contrast to the fears expressed by scientists, the general public is relatively unaware of the loss of species and the threats that it poses." I guess they've been talking to po_boy...
http://www.greenpeace.org/majordomo/index-press-re leases/1997/msg00184.html
http://beacon-www. asa .utk.edu/issues/v78/n2/asteroids.2n.html
http://www.mapcruzin.com/ scr uztri/docs/news0922991.htm
http://www.well.com/user/davidu/ fie ldguide.html
http://www.pupress.princeton.e du/ titles/6276.html
http://www.well.com/user/davidu/ ext inction.html
Y'know, if something like Jurassic Park happened, it wouldn't be so bad. I mean, honestly, it was only bad because we were looking at it from the POV of the very *few* people on the island. In Real Life, that would just be a minor setback. Who really cares that a few people died? People die all the time...
Just go back to the island on a day when the weather's a little nicer and it wouldn't be too hard to bring things back to order.
Oh, and if they don't have scary music playing, it wouldn't be *nearly* as bad!
I'm certianly not against science, but what about survival of the fittest? They went extinct for a reason, so if we bring them back, what happens?- --------
It reminds me too much of when we step in and do something and then fuck up things far worse - like bringing in animals into an ecosystem to resolve one problem, but then create another - kudzu in the south, frogs in Australia, killer bees on the texas border... the gypsy moth - was that one?
oh well, one more thing to laugh at if it goes wrong.
-----------------------------------------
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
I think the answer you're looking for is "none".
Oh, the dodo, what a lovely bird it was!
Animal behavior changes all the time. The deer around weren't forced to eat spruce trees (yeah, I know) a hundred years ago. Pigeons weren't always beggars. They were scavengers once.
Are they still deer? are they still pigeons? Is my dog still a dog, emotional problems and all? Is the guar still a guar?
And when you pass out, are you the same person after as you were before? Your consciousness certainly didn't have any continuity.
Answer yes to any of these, and it seems you have to answer yes to all of them.
-Erik
What about Adam and Eve?
Ryan Finley
SurveyMonkey.com -- Create your own professional surveys
I'd wager there are few, if any people on the planet that could accurately predict whether this was a good idea. I tend to think that projects like this will hurt much more than they will help. Being able to accurately predict the impact a species will have on an ecosystem is currently well beyond our limited capability.
At what point do humans stop playing {insert deity of choice here}??
The oldest and most plausibility expanation for the Cheetah's lack of genetic variability is a population bottleneck about 10,000 years ago.
There is no evidence of higher infant mortality in Cheetahs due to lack of genetic variation and this is what you would expect if this lack of variability had been maintained for many generations
In theory it makes Cheetah's more vulnerable to disease - but their behaviour and ecology put them a low risk of disease.
See Caro's book, Cheetahs of the Serengeti Plains.
Andrew Taylor
Not true - try reading about (or visiting!) the more remote parts of Zaire, for example.
There may still be 100,000 or more Chimpanzees in the wild. Although the Chimpanzee has certainly declined or disappeared over much of its range due to habitat destruction and hunting for food and the pet/biomedical/entertainment trade.
Andrew Taylor
This might extend back to the Pleistocene, its controversial but some also believe overhunting caused many large vertebrate extinctions in the Pleistocene.
Suitable habitat still exists many of these extinct species - e.g. Thylacine, Toolache Wallaby, Blue Buck, Steller's Sea Cow, Caribbean Monk Seal, Great Auk, Labrador Duck.
Andrew Taylor
If I remember correctly, they're doing that. Check out http://www.discovery.com/ They found a mammoth in the north. As soon as they dug it out of the ice, they immediately harvested its genes.
The Original Celebrated Curiously Strong GHOST (mentha lemures)
Much like the proton and anti-proton,competent technical support and friendly technical support can not exist in the same universe without massive explosions and lots of dying.
I hope this does not give all of you GwG folks the wrong impression. The environment is beautiful. We should strive to protect it. Do not go shooting down bald eagles because you think they can be grown back by science. Giving a scientist employment is not a rational justification for taking life.
| Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
We think that we are all great, playing god, but once we are ground into extinction, no one will be around to clone us back into existance.
If we don't kill eachother, our laziness will leave us stuck on this rock until its hit by an asteroid... or the Sun dies... or our nest rots away in some other way.
like on the discovery channel?
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
even if a baby is born, a small population were to be re-established and the problem of inbreeding were to be circumvented (i mean, if you believe in the story of adam and eve, then that's about the most massive form of inbreeding i can think of) who would teach the once extinct creature how to live? all of the knowledge, experiance, culture, habits and what-not died when the last of the species died. without this, the population could never truly be re-established, as the habitat it once lived in, now has moved on w/out it, and this creature no longer knows how to fill it's particular "niche".
Nothing is unnatural. The fact that it can happens makes it natural.
HOWEVER, just because it can happen doesn't mean it _should_. The more power we have over stuff, the more careful we have to be, to do the right thing.
If you have complete power over everything, if you are flawed you could wish yourself out of existence in a blink of an eye. Just a foolish thought and poof.
Right now it seems as if we've got all the horsepower but the brakes and handling isn't so good, and worse, the driver doesn't seem to care.
As for "no-one has drawn the line", I believe if you look, you can see many lines - e.g. Ten Commandments, "love your neighbour as yourself".
It's just that many are choosing to disregard the lines.
Strange that some people seem to treat basketball/etc rules more seriously than these other rules.
Link.
They only clone the nucleus. The mitochondria is not from the target, it's from the surrogate.
Also, there are also other species/inheritance stuff which are not carried by DNA.
If you notice, Dolly had a significantly different size. This could be because of the different mitochondria or other stuff not being the same.
In short, you won't get a guar. You'll get something similar to a guar.
I think it is foolish to think just the nucleus is good enough to recreate a member of the species. We shouldn't fool ourselves.
Cheerio,
Link.
Has any have thought of re-evolution? If you take a relative species into the extinct animal's habitat, would it evolve into the extinct animal?
Apparently several Austrian women offered themselves as surrogate mothers for children of Otzi (the iceman from the Austrian/Italian mountain border), primarily because of his 'racial purity'.
As for other hominids - I'm sure somebody would do it - for the right price.
But then I doubt we have _complete_ Neanderthal DNA from bones.
[Antispam] Kill the x in my email address to reply
main() {1;}
Now we can watch our selves being born, just by using a DNA sample from ourselves. \r\n
YS, me
You're assuming that they existed in the first place...
Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government!
Nope. Justa random /. reader.
No? Then why do you say "we"?
I saw "we" simply because i truly did mean we as in mankind. Don't start witht the petty "you can't speak for me" BS. I know that. So does every intelligent reader. That's a given. I don't know where you took rhetoric classes, but I've never taken one, and using we was simply what came out of my head, not some planned out "trick."
is this company's interest in doing this? My guess is that they are doing research they want to do anyway, and picked the endangered-species thing purely as a form of PR.
So? I am sure they want to do some research on their own, thats what companies do! So RedHat or MS do soemthing cool and demo it at InterOp or something, do we (there's that we again!) automatically view their motives as sinister simply becvause they can benefit from it? Thats a bit simplsitic don't you think? Why shoudn't they pick a endangered species? Which do you think would bring more knowledge to the world: recreating an Asian guar that we know little about, or a wildebeast, about which we know alot. If both can be done, why not choose A) the one that can provide us more info and research fodder and B) one that is good PR anyways. PR is NOT always a bad thing.
--matt Cowger
Completely artificial- they would be serving the purpose for which they evolved, so why bother?
Of course its completely artificial. We are doing to it to correct (at least TRY to) a past error. Patches are never perfect. But by what you said you very basically miss a point. There is NO PURPOSE in evolving...that anthropomorphizes the issue. OUR purpose in doing this is to at elast TRY to preserve soemething of the past for our children, so that hopefully they will see that not only did we make a mistake, but that were were compassionate in adbanced enough to attempt to rectify it with what was available to use at the time.
--matt Cowger
Dare we upset the balance of nature by bringing back species that were naturally made extinct by the various industries of the world?
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I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
First of all, I hope the above quote was written tongue-in-cheek. Just in case it is not, though, I have to object to it, as even among the otherwise devout, Creationism is not widely accepted. If pseudo-science appeals to you, you might want to check out Breatharianism; that way, you'll either have your blind faith validated, or you will be dead and we will hear no more from you.
Humans have an annoying habit of building machines and synthesizing chemicals to solve thier problems. This in itself leads to more problems (DDT, cars, guns) which feed back into the cycle (electric cars, electronic safety gun locks, super pesticides.) I'd like to live to see the day when we turn instead to biological solutions. I'd love to commute to work on a horse, house a mosquito-craved bat, or have my wife be allowed to take our dog with her everywhere.
Those where simple examples, but I hope I made my point. In America (and other countries) we've eliminated most life that competes with us and our small cadre of farm stock. As a result, the only strategy left for other species is to avoid man (impossible) or compete better (a la cockroaches.)
However, if we increase biodiversity and learn to adapt ourselves, life will be much easier. This sort of research will enable us to learn from nature's past solutions and build on them.
(PS: Those of you interested in this line of thought would probably like the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, Bantam Books; ISBN: 0553375407.)
I mean there's nothing more endangered than the woolly mammoth is there?
Incidentally I assume you know that there is a scientist somewhere or other who is trying to do just that. Occasionally in the old USSR they found frozen woolly mammoths. Obviously the sperm and eggs are dead. But the DNA should still be largely intact...
They had a plan to take woolly mammoth 'dead' sperm implant it into elephant egg and then implant into an elephant. Turns out that usually works with dead sperm. After several generations the elemammoth should become more and more mammoth.
This was the plan before cloning was developed. They're probably hoping to do something fancier now... All they need is that mammoth popsicle. I mean there's never one around when you need one is there...
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"You realize, you're just giving THEM ideas.
</paranoia>
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose
That's why I always supported the taking and storing of blood samples from lots of individuals of endangered species.
The other problem, even if we have their genes on file, we won't have their memes. Their learned behaviours which are normally passed on from parent to child will be lost, and will somehow have to be guessed at and taught via puppets the way they do with some animals in captivity today.
Ideally we would prevent extinctions in the first place, of course, but there's no harm in having contingency plans.
As far as Best Buy goes, well, at least you know they aren't working on commission, so they have no incentive to screw you over for the more expensive option.
As for Radio Shack (Rat Shack, Ripoff Shack, etc.), I like to respond to any sufficiently ignorant answer to my question with the slogan:
In any case, the trick is to go in knowing what you're looking for, and treat the McDonald's graduates that work there like the simple wet interfaces to the inventory system they are (e.g., "Do you have any $PRODUCT?" or "Where are the $PRODUCT_CATEGORY?" questions).
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
-The Professor, Futurama
I seem to remember having this conversation with my mother when I was about seven years old...
meThis cotton shirt, that's man made, right?
momYes, it was made in a factory.
meBut the label says "natural fibres"...
momYes, cotton comes from a cotton plant.
meBut the cotton thread doesn't just hang off the branches, does it?
momNo, we have to transform it.
meIn a factory?
momYes.
meSo the thread isn't natural, either.
momYes, because it comes from the plant, even if we have to work on it to turn it into thread.
meBut what about man-made fibres?
momWhat about them?
meMy teacher says the can be made from oil...
momThat's right.
meAnd the oil comes from plants that lived millions of years ago, and got buried and pressed until they became oil and coal...
momThat's right.
meSo oil and coal are natural, because they come from plants?
momAnd because they come about just like that, through the way the world works... without the intervention of Man.
meBut when Man gets the oil, and makes it into fibres, these are man-made fibres?
momYes.
meSo how is that different to getting hold of the cotton, and making it into fibres?
momI think it's time for you to go to bed. Ask your techer to explain tomorrow...
Or is there a trick you could pull for egg-layers?
There also seems to be a lot of debate as to whether viable DNA can be retreived from all the pickled specimens in all the museums in the world.
Whats the deal there?
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
Not just obscure breeds but all the popular breeds have trouble with congenital defects (heart disease, displaced hips etc..)
The horse racing industry also has to go to great pains to introduce new bloodlines from overseas.
So I think we can safely say that most species would need to have some variation programmed into the reproduced genetic material or they would quickly revert to their extinct status.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
As they say - YMMV. Personally, I think it's the demented ravings of a mad fascist. I certainly don't think the biology (stroke sociology or psychology --- which science does behavioural characteristics of alien-raised people who return to earth and start religious movements fall under?) in it is anything to write home about, or has any bearing on this story (or anything else in the Real World).
nal 11
I am not an expert or a proponent, I just heard it a couple of months ago.
I thought you needed at least some cell material to clone animals? Besides, I hardly believe it's healthy to clone a whole population out of one DNA sample.
bring back the mammoth!!!!
I wanna see a hairy elephant !!!
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
meaning that something that should be at 2+ simply stays at 1, along with a whole bunch of mediocre posts. yes, everything at 1 is of course above anything less than zero but since most logged-in
to wit:
the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
I think I already know how GWAR will be opening the show on their next tour...something to do with the band members emerging from the nether regions of an obscenely large and anatomically exaggerated cow.
-----
the big game hunters would love that...
they'd pay big bucks to be able to go around for weeks/months at a time, just blasting everything in sight.
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
That's an excellent point and I was going to make it before I saw that you had already done so. A genetically viable breeding population requires more individuals than most people might think. Adam and Eve or Noah's Ark aren't viable options. Two is not enough and several hundred are a bit dicey.
I also wanted to point out that this doesn't solve the problem of habitat decline, which is one of the biggest threats facing endangered species in the first place. If you don't have a plan for a sustainable environment in which the species can live, that doesn't cut it either. A male and a female in a zoo aren't of much use except for providing the opportunity of stunning photography of an extinct species.
Just out of curiosity, there seems to be an assumption here that inbreeding results in the propagation of bad recessive traits. I made the assumption in an earlier post. But the Hardy-Weinberg law states that the relative proportion of dominant and recessive genes remains constant if breeding is random. Obviously breeding isn't random (Slashdot is 90%+ male so I'll ask the question: Swimsuit model vs. Janet Reno... You choose...), but what I've read about sexual selection suggests that it would favor beneficial genes. So can a species be coddled for a while in an artificial environment, letting individuals choose to mate with the members of the population with good genes(or even letting humans make the call), to eliminate bad recessive genes? How do they make the call as to what constitutes a viable breeding population?
Food for thought. Anyway, it's food for thought for me; I don't know the answer.
They're still there. I'm typing on one now. Sure it's missing the Escape key cap and a few function keys, but all you have to do is go to a junkyard and select one out of the scrap heap for $1.50; they clean up well and they'll last forever. It's one stop shopping: I also got an alternator for my car while I was there. I just wish they had put the control key in the right place. (For youngsters and PC people, that's to the left of the "A", where "Caps Lock" is now).
Great, now we can bump off animals to our hearts content, and recreate them when we forget what they looked like.
Seriously, though, great work by the scientists involved. But I just hope it doesn't make people think we can screw around with the environment, and everything in it, even more than we do now.
This will be like animals born in a zoo; while they are really the species that you see, they will not behave like they would in the wild. They will behave artificially in an artificial environment. While it might be possible to fake being a real mother to a few species (such as some types of birds), all we are likely creating are animals for zoos that wouldn't know how to find food, water, etc. if they had to. If we raised a Dodo, it wouldn't act like one would have tens of thousands of years ago.
(not trolling, actual point ahead)
It seems to me that we (humans in general) seem rather egotistical when it comes to our impact on the enviroment. Aren't humans, and the byproducts of our existance, really forces that are just as natural as any other occurance ?
The fact that we are aware of what we do, and can change our behaviors does not imply a responsibility to do so, despite the arguments of the moralists.
Change is good, is it not ? Then why the urge to keep things the same, to protect habitat, to preserve species that maybe ought to be extinct ? Aren't our motivations and actions just as arbitrary as any other natural or not ?
I grant that it's a shame that my children will never see a carrier pigeon in flight, but is it not an equal shame that none of us will ever see a T-Rex mating ritual ?
When I fought forest fires for the DNR, I was not impressed with our ability to affect the evironment, in fact I was dismayed at the futility that modern forest fire fighting really is. After years of liberal ecological indoctrination, I was appalled that the same humans that could drive hundreds of species to extinction in days was perfectly helpless against a simple oxidation reaction until the wind chose to blow the flames back into the burned area. I was equally amazed to see green things and animals reoccupy the same area two weeks later, and after a year you could barely tell that there had ever been a fire.
Humans are actually quite small and insignificant, and we really have very little to do with what goes on on this planet. I think we ought not get wrapped up in our own egotisim and worry less about maintaining the status quo and work more toward increasing our own adaptivity. After all, as history has demonstrated, those species that adapt survive, and the ones that cannot die off, regardless of what form those influences take.
Toodles,
Nephs
--
Something witty is written here.
I am just concerned that this research might not be 100% for the animals they are trying to help. I fear that some of the drive behind this might just to be the first team to succeed in bringing back a species... and the "celebrity" accociated with it. And also let's not forget Darwin in all this. Species do just cease to exist for evolutionary reasons. After all, that's how we got here!
The difference, in my mind, is this: it is unlikely for a bird to be blown more than a few hundred miles off course, and it is unlikely that it will drop those seeds in a place where A) they will successfully germinate and B) will have another of their kind and the correct types of animals to help them reproduce - therefore, they even if it sprouts, it may not last more than a single generation.
Also, environments that change in this way rarely change (AFAIK) catastrophicly. If the plant/animal is not "intended" to live in that environment, it won't. There are a few exceptions, such as rats, which can live just about anywhere, but mostly plants which are introduced by lost birds simply can't take over - their ecological niche is already filled, by something that's well established. However, if humans decide that, for instance, kudzu is a great plant, and it should be planted and nurtured along the side of every highway in the US, where it has no natural competition, and it's being helped out with fertilizer, that's a bad thing. Or, in the other direction, if people decide that they'd really like to have goats on their new island home, when that island had no grazers larger than a rabbit before, it will - and did - cause problems. I don't recall the name of the island, but most of it is dead. There are now trees, and almost no grass. In fact, those goats are now starving to death, because the island can't support them. I don't think we'll see the day when an off-course seagull carries a goat to a remote island.
Just my $.02...
Oops, sorry, was I bothering you? I'll try and keep Iggy from screaming so much next time she has an allosaur.
Exactly!
:)
Natural=Just another fantasy like God and Santa and the tooth fairy and eskimos.*
*Just ask Homer.
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Anyway, it would be *very* interesting, IMO, to watch the development of a baby animal that is genetically a panda but was given birth to by a black bear. What kind of diet would it develop? What sort of social (and mating) behaviors? What predators would it be afraid of? I'm not a biologist, but I'd think this would shed a substantial amount of light on the extent to which behaviors, at least in certain species, are hardwired vs. learned.
Conversely, it would be interesting to observe the mother's behavior -- to what extent would she "know" that her child was a little, uhhh, "special"?
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
{shiver}
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Lets say that this exparament is a success (it sounds like it will be). Does this really resurect the spieies as it would have been? With natural evolution you would have a several (or perhaps many) different "families" within the spiecies which would allow for a much "deeper" gene pool. When you resurect a spiecies, you will end up with a clone from a single animal. Even if you do clone a second animal from the same spiecies, the pool would still remain shallow.
To me, this means that the evolution of the spiecies will probably be different than what nature intended. I do not know if this is good or bad. I mean, in the case of endangered or extinct spiecies, nature may not have done all that well. But to think that a reconstitued spiecies would be the same as the original would be like comparing fresh orange juice to reconstituted or fresh milk to powedered.
Next thing you know, someone will get a bright idea to put these patented dinosaurs on a tropical island and form a tourist park. But I bet they will be ill equipped to handle these animals which will go on a rampage and destroy the park.
It would make a great plot for a movie don't you think? Nah...
A fine point, maybe, but it makes the difference between there being merit to restoring lost species. Take dinosaurs, for examples. Failure to adapt to an event that occurs every 50,000,000 years or so isn't that great a flaw, IMO. Do you design for events that very nearly never happen? Should we kill that Linux thing that's so beloved around here because it isn't perfect either? (Ooh! Sacrilege!)
It is not enough to clone a few animals to save them from extinction. You need a VIABLE breeding population and a couple or three clones isn't it.
Even if you make male and female clones, you are still not going to make a viable breeding population. They would totally lack heterogosity. There would be NO genetic variability.
The proper answer, in conjunction to this cloning, is to start collecting and freezing sperm from as many living, non-sibling males of the species of interest as possible. You can then maintain SOME genetic heterogenaeity, and thus preserve some semblance of species robustness and viability.
Simply breeding and breeding clones together in a small breeding population simply leads to complete loss of any genetic differences. It has the SAME result as brothers and sisters mating, and the resultin offspring mating with each other, and so on. You ENHANCE and amplify recessive traits and destroy all genetic variation. That is a direct road to extinction itself.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
... currently awaiting emerson willowick's (i.e. King of Religiously-themed, Racially Bigoted and Unbelievably Closed Minded Self Righteous Troll/Flamebait Comments) response. here is a preview for all interested. why? because i am bored. duh. obviously
"whinewhinewhine... do not play god, or thou shalt go to the monotheistically self-contradictory and utterly principally defeated christian hell thou deservest! et cetera et cetera et cetera"
> No it's not! it's just humans meddling again! If species X is extinct, there is a reason for it.
The extinction rate has accelerated by several orders of magnitude during the 20th century. The human impact here is primarily habitat destruction, but we also have a habit of destroying delicately balanced eco-systems by introducing foreign species.
Saying extinctions are natural is like arguing for Hitler's Final Solution on the grounds that those 6 million Jews were going to die one day anyway.
---
Nick
-- Nick "Hallo this is Beel Gates, und I pronounce weendows as
It makes no difference what you believe. The fact is we rely on many other species for our economic well-being and indeed our survival. In turn, each of those species relies on others for *its* well-being and survival. Ecosystems are a complex web interdependances that are notoriously hard to trace.
Randomly pushing species into extinction is like asking a surgeon to randomly remove 2oz from anywhere in your body. Probably you'll be lucky and no harm will be done, keep doing it and one day you will do yourself some serious damage.
-- Nick "Hallo this is Beel Gates, und I pronounce weendows as
This article is incorrectly titled. Sure, they can clone Asian Guars, but that species is not extinct; just endangered almost to the point of extinction. You won't see scientists go cloning Tyrannosaurs anytime soon, but in case that does turn into reality, let's fortify Jurassic Park with nukes this time. If those dinosaurs get out of hand, we'll make them extinct for good!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
extinction temporary. Because then when that happens extinction happens all over again as the earth gets showered with lethal doses of gamma radiation. Then all the furry little mammals that live underground in moutainess areas are the only ones left. See here.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
No...Egg layers are on a different layer of the OSI model and therefore cannot communicate their encapsulated frames directly. Therefore, only mammals will benefit.
Everything is but a number spoken by itself.
Beyond that, there would be problems with higher mammals - there's a certain amount of learned behaviour, passed on by parents to children, which is necessary to survival. That disappeared with the species concerned.
Saying extinctions are natural is like arguing for Hitler's Final Solution on the grounds that those 6 million Jews were going to die one day anyway.
this has to be the most ignorent comment i've seen on here today! comparing HUMAN life to that of animal or plant life?
you must then believe that we are nothing more then MONKEYs just animals that happen to think better then the rest. a load of crap... but that must be what you believe. were no better? then if that is the case we are a part of NATURE. and if that is true. then every thing we do is a part of NATURE. and MOMMY EARTH does nothing wrong. so there is not one damn thing we can do short of blowing the earth up that MOMMY EARTH can't take care of. every thing that dies on this planet dies for a reason.
now if you'd like something to compare to HITLER... Al Gore is a good place to start, socialist in drag! and a good evironmental wack job just like you!
loading the GLOCK... to kill some "endangered" "animals" and socialist if they get close enough.
It results in freaks because it destroys the original purpose of the sexual system which is to normalize genetic traits. By definition, an inbred animal is an abnormal one.
This has NOTHING to do with whether apes have "better" genes, etc. We are not subject to different genetic rules than the rest of the world.
"Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental." -Slashdot
A good example of this is the Tasmanian wolf (sometimes alternately called the tasmanian tiger), a marsupial that became extinct in 1936 that is related to neither wolves nor tigers. A specimen preserved in ethanol in the 1860's is being examined to see if cloning is possible. The article ran in CNN several months ago.
And bear in mind that inbreeding isn't by definition a bad thing - breeders use it quite often to bring out rare recessive traits (such as color or hair type) in rats, fish, and dogs.
If you could ensure that the (extinct) animal is seually compatable with some living animal, you could get some genetic diversity there, but eventually you would never have a 100% genetically pure example of the extinct species.
-Loooeeee averts his eyes as the Panda peels the poor racoon off it's genitals
I am troubled by how I address the "so what" question.. It seems to me that the surrogate birth of another species is something that current technology views as species-centric.
Is science trying to find (or develop) a universal "DNA mother", into which can spawn offspring of any species? Can such a being or "thing" exist? And what kind of a world is opened up when we can create entire new species that are totally different than the surrogate cows and elephants we crudely use today?
Such a world would constrast starkly from the wonderful "spin" bringing back an extinct animal promises.
I personally can't imagine this technology will really be put to commercial use simply to bring back Bambi.
You're going to think different when they bring back Alf, not only in Pog form, but in life form! Hopefully, scientists will learn how to clone Gary Coleman and Alf in the vaginas of cows. Then humanity will have reached the level of God. -bongo
prosebeforehos.com
Rape the nearest panda.
prosebeforehos.com
Since 99% of anything extinct became extinct long before humans showed up, can you please back this statement up with your source?
My .02,
My .02,
zencode
iactivist.org/jason
sticking to similar circumstances, there are the matters of understanding our environment, potentially curing our ailments (many human innovations in disease-fighting have come from our study of animals), and of course, pretty, pretty animals in our zoos.
The Meaning of Life
great comedy company.
I want my damn pet dodo bird.. Or maybe a sabertooth tiger.
This is damn cool though... Not really new entirely, just that they're using dna from extinct animals this time. They've been doing it with endangered animals for quite some time...
Shit adds up at the bottom...
I cant wait until I can go see some dinosaurs...
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
why should we bring back extinct species, or even help the endagered ones. they are dying out/dead for a reason. they are unable to survive in nature. i can sort of see doing it to a species that WE wiped out. but anything else is using science to alter the course of nature, which is never good. i dont mean to sound.. like an asshole, but who cares about a spanish mountain goat, and why should we bring it back from extinction?
Ennui
"I walk in the air, between the rain, through myself an
2 words... Jurrasic Park.
Serriously though, Why would you brint them back? I'm not all against the 'playing god' thing, but there are really some concerns here. Why would you want to bring back an extinct species? Maybe it was extinct because nature said so?
The only thing this is usefull for is to make money. Clone extinct things, peopel pay money to see it. People pay money to fund you. People pay money and think they are doing good. In reality, this cloning is just hurting life's process. The stronger species survives.
Do you really think the Asian Guar is going to give US a second chance when we are extinct? I serriously doubt they are gonna go out of their way to bring us back from the dead. Afterall, we are the ones who are destroying this planet in the first place...
This reminds me, wouldn't it be easier to just clone those whales Capt. Kirk needed rather than fly around the sun a million times fast and go back in time? Makes one think....
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
Nothing whatsoever is "meant to happen", at least from a scientific perspective. Natural selection, like gravity, describes what happens not what ought to happen. If people decide that saving species X from extinction is worth it to them, then that's just fine.
No it's not! it's just humans meddling again! If species X is extinct, there is a reason for it. Bringing back that species might in the end harm the environment. I don't like using this example, but would you support bringing back the dinosaurs because the dumb population finds it a good idea? Do you know what that would do to our planet and or society?
They're also only bringing back one animal at a time. The time (as well as surrogate mothers) required to "bring back a species" would be extraordinary.. Sounds interesting though, the time/ money invested would be recouped by the public wanting to see the only animal of it's kind existing in the world.
No sig for you.
This seems like a bad idea to me. Now, I'm no biologist, but the simple fact is that extinction happens for a reason. People are quick to point out that there are many species that have been threatened due to humans - destruction of habitats and whatnot. This strikes some people as unnatural; as if the effect of humankind on our planet somehow is outside the realm of what is "supposed" to happen. Since when have humans not been part of the natural order? We are all creatures of this earth, and we affect it differently; but it is one giant self-balancing system. It may not appear this way from our perspective, what with our puny little lifespans and all, but it is. The idea that it is our responsibility to "save" some species or "save" the environment for the good of the planet just seems a bit silly to me. George Carlin does a great bit on this whole issue... it's rather pompous of us, don't you think? The Earth is probably going to be around a lot longer than we are, and even if humans manage to wipe out scads of species of various organisms and irrecoverably ravage our environment, it will be the end of us, not the planet. We should work on cleaning up our environment and protecting other forms of life in order to save *ourselves* - to help maintain some semblance of quality of life for us - not for some conceited notion of saving the planet. Personally, I think it's time to make some room. Next up, the cockroaches ;-)
Heheh, couldnt resist...
;)
dont they already exist in some parts of America?
Spec8472
Yeah? so what do you care?
Whatever happens, we, as humans, are a part of nature. Whether that's good or bad, if you will, doesn't matter overall. Nature, other life, existed before we did and nothing is to say it won't after. We, as a species, seem obsessed with pulling an "undo" on nature as if to makeup for the fact that our ancestors fucked up. I think it's bullshit but the fact that some other humans want to is a part of nature too. If we nuked the planet tomorrow or stopped pollution tomorrow it's all us and it's our role in the whole of it all. Try and enjoy your own lives.
Haven't people heard the phrase, "Don't count your chickens before they hatch?" If the guar hasn't been born yet, who knows if its a success -- there's stil plenty of time for things to go wrong. Typically a lot of development is done in the last trimester (or whatever gestation period you have with guars!).
Great, so if extinction is not the end, then we can f*ck the world up as much as we like, 'cause anything we destroy can be pulled from the arse of a cow at a later date! Go for it, guys. Let's see if we can build that concrete continent we always wanted. btw who is volunteering to surrogate the chimps and monkeys?
"Anybody remotely interesting is mad, in some way or another" - Doctor Who
Why don't Sci-Fi movies ever cover this? If you went back in time 75,000,000 years to see dinosaurs, you'd probably die within a day from some long extinct bacteria or virus you're totally vilnerable. What's more, you presence would likely spread a wave of death over the entire eco system from bacteria and viruses you brought from the future.
If you replace the nucleus of a cow with a guar, you don't end up with a real guar which is identical to the extinct animal...you end up with a guar/cow hybrid, where 99+% of the DNA is guarian (?) and the rest is bovine. Since cows are presumably very closely related to guars, the cloned offspring may be nearly indistinguishable from a guar. But it isn't really a guar; there will never be a real guar again.
In a hundred years, if man isn't careful, we'll have embryo banks of cloned and preserved rhinos, tigers, pandas, elephants and guars, and every twenty years or so, we'll thaw one out, and put it in a cow, and create a new baby that will live in a cage in a zoo until it dies and it's time to thaw out the next one. Is this really better than putting up a sign that says: "White Rhinos: Made Extinct by Man in 2035?"
Nothing in what I said implies any of this. If you claim to have "logic" on your side, produce an argument. In an ideal world, we wouldn't cause extinction at all. In the real world, we do what we can. It would be much better if we had had the foresight to stop destroying the gaur before the last one died. Since we didn't, we do the next best thing, which (I would assume) would include restoring their habitat to the best of our ability, giving the resurrected species places to live in the wild.
And you totally ignore my point. When it's gone, it'se gone. You can't recreate the gaur's environment at all, because the gaur's environment had gaurs and/or their ancestors bearing, feeding and caring for their young. If you "succeed", you'll get something that's not the same. You're introducing a species, not reinstanting one.
And, in any case, we're talking about one concrete action: a company is making a cow give birth to a gaur clone, nothing more. If this were accompanied with some serious attempt at recreating the natural environment of the gaur (which I still would oppose), we'd have one thing. But nothing of the sort is going on. It's just a publicity stunt by a corporation that wants to appear "ecologically friendly"; it is absolutely unviable, but is packaged to promote their products and research, in particular, to distract attention from the dangers genetic engineering involves, not to mention the sheer unnecessity and utter greed driving it.
It would be much better if we had had the foresight to stop destroying the gaur before the last one died. Since we didn't, we do the next best thing, which (I would assume) would include restoring their habitat to the best of our ability, giving the resurrected species places to live in the wild.
RevAaron and mine's argument is that the "next-best thing" is not doable. You can do something which, if you don't think about it, seems like you did that, but you really can't do it. Species don't exist in a vacuum; they're not just gene pools, they arise naturally in a very specific, irreproducible context. Once the species is gone, it's gone.
Sure, it isn't perfect. Neither is medicine. Do you think surgery is a bad thing because it doesn't always work and causes problems of its own? Or medicines - are they bad because of their side effects?
Strawman argument, wherein you try to paint me as a Luddite. Still, I can answer in the following way: suppose that by means of free, universal preventive care, we could stop a huge number of infections that nowadays kill people, using a minimum of medicine, with only mild side effects.
What would be the ethical thing to do, in a world where many people died from disease? To concentrate your resources on developing further and further advanced treatments for advanced illneses, or to provide the preventive care that would minimize it?
Of course, this is not a hypothetical example.
Should cancer victims be left to die, or should we give them highly unnatural and uncomfortable treatments in the hope that we can return them to some semblance of their former selves?
Apart from the fact that here you attempt to make me look like somebody who could potentially be responsible for the premature death of cancer patients, it's ironic you pick the example of cancer. Cancer is so widespread today precisely because of our advanced medicine, and the many carcinogens we release into the environment.
Which means that you have internalized the propaganda.
I am sure they want to do some research on their own, thats what companies do! So RedHat or MS do soemthing cool and demo it at InterOp or something, do we (there's that we again!) automatically view their motives as sinister simply becvause they can benefit from it? Thats a bit simplsitic don't you think? Why shoudn't they pick a endangered species?
Where did I say they had "sinister motives"? I just said they were giving the impression of doing something which, in reality, is patently hopeless and useless, in the hopes of looking good while they were at it. Pure PR.
First of all, are you a representative of Advanced Cell Technologies, Inc.?
No? Then why do you say "we"?
This is a common rhetorical device in propaganda, referring to one's ideas, plans, interests, etc., as "ours". For example, in the US, corporate interests have been presented as "our" interests. (If you complain that you meant "we" as in "mankind", the reply is that you don't represent humanity either.)
So, leaving your petty rhetorical trick aside, I think it is fair to ask: what is this company's interest in doing this? My guess is that they are doing research they want to do anyway, and picked the endangered-species thing purely as a form of PR.
It is very different for a stray bird to wander into a new environment than for us to put it there. The first case does not involve any ethics-- it is simply something that happened, without our intervention. The second involves our agency in an essential manner, which is why ethics becomes very relevant.
First of all, you provide a very optimistic example.
Second, birds and mammals are very different creatures. The gaur is a mammal-- it has a much larger brain volume, and a correspondingly higher potential for learned behavior.
And anyway, your point does not in any way contradict any of what I said. You don't "restore" a species when you insert clones of it in a different environment, since a species occurs in a particular environment. You end up with something different.
Even if you considered a case like this to be something worthwhile to do, you'd delude yourself if you thought you had reproduced the exact same thing that had disappeared.
Whatever the answer is here, the fact remains that we are now conscious participants in environmental change, which brings along ethical considerations that weren't in the picture ever before.
To counter your point, I think one can evidence that "modern" "civilization" *is* threatening to make far more species extinct than anything ever before, if it hasn't already. My examples have mostly to do with agriculture, e.g. the push to use a few varieties of high-yield cash crops attacks, to the detriment of local varieties, threatens local crops.
Essentially, our species consciously understands and manipulates the environment in ways that go very far beyond any other species ever has. At least this point is undeniable and decisive here.
I do have moderator points today, but I couldn't find an appropriate way to moderate your inflammatory, shortsighted post. Any negative way I moderated it would not explain the reasons that I have for believing your post should be moderated down.
You show yourself to be a bad moderator . What was "inflammatory" from that post, apart from the fact that the you disagree with it?
People like you, with your "troll == disagrees with me" attitude is why this place has gone to hell.
Can't they get it? When a species is extinct, it is GONE. Period. The species itself was an essential part of the environment ito which it was adapted. Period. You can't bring that back at all.
Kudos to you and Black Parrot who get it. This is just a further example of the arrogance of non-sustainable "modern" "civilization" and its "we are the masters of nature" attitude.
You use a strawman argument to justify your ad hominem attack? Gee.
Point out where the original poster "blames all the readers". He put the cause on "civilization" (and he enclosed it on quotes). It is one thing to claim that each human being is directly and individually resposible for X, and another to claim that the modes in which our species is organized is responsible for X (in the latter case, each individual is responsible indirectly at the most).
And as for your "ignoring the other benefits of genetic research", this article is about a specific application of genetic research, and the poster was discussing that application in particular. Nothing he said has any obvious implications on any other application of genetic engineering.
Please do us all a favor. Go to your user preferences, and choose "Not willing to moderate", and stop rationalizing your impulses to mod down somebody just because you disagree with them.
Posted by polar_bear:
This is great, we'll find a way to bring back animals from extinction...after they've been killed off because we keep expanding to fill all the available habitats on Earth and ruin their ecosystem and...so - what happens when we bring them back? Keep a few choice samples in zoos and preserves so we can pretend that we've done something wonderful by recreating a species just for our own amusement?
Fact is, if we don't get our stuff together, the numbers of animals going extinct is going to rapidly increase until we end up being the one going extinct - and no other species of animal would be willing to bring us back, even if they could. (Except maybe dogs, we've been pretty nice to them overall and they're generally forgiving. But they just don't have the technology, so forget it...)
In any other species, when the population overruns the food supply then some of the population dies off and the cycle continues - generally the species reaches homeostasis. They become part of their environment, and too many or too few create an imbalance. Predators or lack of food (or both) work to make sure that overpopulation doesn't last long. Similarly, if an animal is being preyed on too much, eventually some of the predators die off and then they can repopulate. Before humans start coming on to the scene, extinction is rare. Not unheard of, but rare.
However, we've been breaking the laws of nature by producing more and more food and more and more people. It is a cycle that cannot last - we are not above nature just because we are "smarter" than other animals. Yes, I said "other" animals because we are, like it or not, part of the animal kingdom. We're not exempt just because we have tools and written language and bank accounts and other things...we're still animals. And, if we don't change our ways and learn to become part of nature again, we'll be an extinct animal.
To quote George Carlin "Save the planet? How arrogant! The planet doesn't need saving. The planet is fine. The people are f@#$ed, but the planet is fine. It'll be here long after we're gone."
Want a different perspective? Check out http://www.ishmael.org/ and get hold of Daniel Quinn's "Ishmael" or "Story of B" or "My Ishmael" - they should be required reading in second grade.
Posted by polar_bear:
:)
Refreshing indeed.
I realize that everyone has a different perspective, and I respect yours. I don't take your reply (rebuttal?) as a personal attack in any way. It's easy to see that we could probably exchange reasons for/against using new technology all day - but my main reason for posting is not to argue we should stop using new technologies - only to actually take the time to think before we deploy them and actually take the time to think whether we need them or not.
Also, no - I don't think we should freeze culture at any point. That's not what I'm trying to say - what I am saying is that our culture had changed very, very slowly throughout history - and still does. However, our technologies are advancing far faster than our culture can. The concepts of "generation gaps" are really unique to the last 150 years or so. Some of the cultural constructs we've come up with are great - like childhood. (If you look into it, you'll find that our culture's idea of childhood is quite novel and didn't exist several hundred years ago. The idea that children should be innocent of things like sex or work until a given age are very new, historically speaking.)
The main problem is this, to hold on to the car example, we introduced a major element of change to our society and no one realized until 50 years later (or so...) that it had this enormous impact on our society. Great, we can get away from an abusive home overnight or get someone to the hospital and save their life - but the car has also fostered an attitude in our culture that didn't exist 100 years ago - namely that if you completely screw up your life in an area, why you can just move and re-start. That used to be a huge undertaking. Now it's trivial. (Okay, moving's still a pain in the butt, but trivial compared to 150 years ago.)
Finally, I don't believe that we can only proceed from prior knowledge. It is possible to speculate what the consequences of a technology will be. Particularly now that we can examine the introduction of radical change through technology with other technologies that have been introduced. Granted, there's room for error, but it does give one a start. Simply saying "oh, we're not sure what this will do, so we'll throw it in the mix and see if we were right or not" is irresponsible. Maybe you'll look at something and find that it is a potential mixture of good and bad effects - but you think that the good outweighs the bad, okay - at least you've THOUGHT about it. That's all I'm saying.
Finally, saying that preventing access to technology could be unethical. That's an interesting perspective, considering you don't seem to feel that the reverse is true - namely that giving access is then ethical. I would say that not thinking about the consequences of an action is unethical - you're basically throwing caution to the wind and saying "okay, here you go - hot new technology! Hope it doesn't make your nipples fall off tomorrow, but I didn't think it through so que sera sera." Is that ethical?
I have a set of beliefs, and I try to live by them. I consider that ethical - my belief is that I have to do what I believe is right, and I have to think about the consequences of my actions - at least as far as I can reasonably predict. For me, it would be unethical to do any less. And, if I had invented something that had great potential for change, I would have to think about its possible effect. If, having thought about it, I decide it may be more harmful than positive, it would be less than ethical to go ahead and make it available. It's much harder to recall existing technology that people ingrain in their lives than it is to simply not release it. Think about the car again - if we were to decide that "Hey, cars are screwing up the environment, they're messing up the family unit and generally costing us too much - let's get rid of them" hoooo boy. What are the odds you'd be able to get rid of them without massive outcries and general chaos? Not good, I'd expect.
*whew*
Okay - off the soapbox. Sorry for the lengthy reply, and slight rambling, but this is an issue that I've thought about a lot - and it just happend to spring up on Slashdot of all places.
Posted by polar_bear:
Oh, please, save us from precautionary thinking!
Granted, you're right - "you cannot conclusively prove that any new thing will do no harm" and often you can't prove that it will, either.
However, our technology has so far outstripped our culture that it's not funny. We're still arguing about whether or not it's okay to have abortion (and some about birth control) while we're freezing embryos and working on same-sex parenting and genetic manipulation and cloning and...well, quite a few technologies that we've barely paused to examine the ethical and practical complications of. Frankly, we haven't even dealt with the invention of the car from a cultural perspective. Think about it - how fragile the nuclear family is now that you can be in another state by nightfall and across the country in a day or two.
We have an insanely bad habit of doing something just because we can. Is it great that we can clone sheep? Yeah, it's really cool. Is it something we should be practicing...um, I dunno. I really don't, and I doubt that anyone else really does either. But we are. Should we be cloning extinct animals. Maybe. Should we be worrying about why they're extinct in the first place? I'd say so. I bet it has a lot to do with the fact that we didn't stop to think of the consequences of our actions.
It's imperitive that when we as humans invent a new technology that someone ask the question "is this going to help or hurt us? or both?" This should happen before the technology has been spread all over the world and then someone notices - "oh, look, all those exhaust fumes doing massive damage to the ecosystem" "oh, bother, all the lead in discarded computer monitors is polluting the water table." "Hmmm...that's funny, all those women who took thalidomide (sp?) for morning sickness are having babies with birth defects..." Get the picture?
Would it be that terrible if we invented something, and then said "yup, it's neat, but we're not quite ready for it yet. Let's shelve it and come back in five years." By all means, we should do research, but you have to consider the consequences of inventions as well as chugging along and spewing out new technologies.
But doesn't that count as a chnage in the environment that they were unable to adapt to?
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
I wonder if there is any frozen passenger pigeon DNA around? I somehow doubt it. They were extinct in the 1930s, long before the prospect of making new life out of genes was considered.
There are a lot of contemporary "passenger pigeons"... Species which become extinct before we have ever been aware of their existence, for example.
So, Beware The Techno-fix!!! Nothing whatsoever will replace pollution reduction, habitat preservation, and hunting controls, though some will try to say that this innovation renders such commonsense conservation efforts redundant. Do not believe them. (The movie "Silent Running" shows the logical endpoint of such thinking.)
Dog is my co-pilot.
A species goes extinct, whether it's as a result of our encroaching on nature, or simply natural selection, what is to say that it wasn't meant to happen?
Nothing whatsoever is "meant to happen", at least from a scientific perspective. Natural selection, like gravity, describes what happens not what ought to happen. If people decide that saving species X from extinction is worth it to them, then that's just fine.
If species X is extinct, there is a reason for it.
There are only reasons in the sense that there are reasons which led to the event, not in the sense that the event had a higher purpose.
Bringing back that species might in the end harm the environment.
But there is no objective definition of the term "harming the environment". Sure, bringing back a species may have consequences, but whether these consequences are good or bad is entirely dependent on one's point of view.
I don't like using this example, but would you support bringing back the dinosaurs because the dumb population finds it a good idea?
Sounds like you aren't a big fan of the democratic process
Do you know what that would do to our planet and or society?
No, but the effects of not bringing them back are equally as unknown.
I'm sorry, I thought that species went extinct for a reason...
This is a prime example of humans assuming that they can 'fix' everything. A species goes extinct, whether it's as a result of our encroaching on nature, or simply natural selection, what is to say that it wasn't meant to happen?
Sigh....
You, sir, are bitter. The fact is that there has been a marked decline in the quality of techies at retail stores and a similar decline on technical support lines. It's a documented fact, one that I have had to deal with in a number of different ways. That being said, I know full well that most computer users are technically incompetent. That, however, doesn't change the fact that this problem exists. Customers, stupid or not, need a certain level of service.
A good many customers may well be willfully ignorant or abrasive, but the fact remains that there are plenty of customers that have legitimate cause for complaint. That, if you did not notice, is a complaint, and a well deserved one at that. I do not pretend that it's a solution or a full description of the problem. It is a casual, accurate, and fair comment. Your response, on the other hand, is none of the above. Your response sounds more like the whining of a malcontent techie.
Hello, this is slashdot, an _informal_ discussion forum. This thread, in particular, was meant to be mostly comical in nature. So step off your high-horse.
FYI, I am plenty literate and I could punctuate according to MLA, or what have you, when it behooves me.
PS: My use of quotes is not as improper as you suggest. For instance, it is common and accepted practice, in academia and business alike, to use quotations in instances where words have a special or ironic meaning. Unless you are omniscient, you could hardly know my meaning with any real certainty. I did, in fact, intend something of a double meaning. If you still can't handle that, then I suggest you lighten up and little more reading.
hehe well that is debatable. But the quality in both has fallen substantially. Granted, you never had the best and the brightest at such outfits, but there used to be a time when they could do more than read the labels off the products they sell. My theory is that the demand for technies has outstripped the supply for even the most marginally skilled ones. Each skill level has essentially been pushed up a notch or two, leaving only the equivelent of McDonalds employees to work such jobs (at least in most major cities). Kids with just a little bit of programming experience, can and do land real jobs programming. Whereas many of them would have started out working at radio shack, or something to that effect.
Besides, it is naive to think that cloning "brings back" species. Species die out when their habitat disappears. Cloning a species isn't going to bring their habitat back. The only way we are going to keep species from becoming extinct is by preserving their habitats, and, more generally, the ecological diversity of our planet as a whole.
> With no habitat to go back to, to repopulate, what's the point of bringing them back? Just to say we can do it?
You're right, and it really surprises me to see posters disagreeing with you.
I rather suspect that "the point is" that this can be brought up in lots of cases where the ecological impact study for a project returns an unfavorable result. "No problem, we'll just revivify the species later if anyone decides they want it."
I'm interested in the science involved, and I would like to see lots of species brought back. But face it - they'll have fewer places to live in 10 years than they do now.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
...what is to say that it wasn't meant to happen?
We are! If we are able to change our habits, protect habitats through political influence, or take active measures to protect a species, who is to say that THAT wasn't meant to happen? The whole point of conservation, and wildlife preservation, is that there is a measureable value to it, and the laissez-faire attitude damages our own interests in the long run.
Now granted, I don't think bringing back species through DNA storage or surrogacy is anywhere near a good solution, but there are good reasons for trying.
I was at the San Diego Wildlife Animal Park about a month ago (a large open space zoo and preserve), and it was mentioned that one of the species of asian animals exhibited there (a Chinese deer of some sort, I believe), has existed solely in captivity for over 700 years! I found that amazing.
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
People can't even agree if light behaves as a wave or a particle. The only coherent explication is that all science is wrong.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
What do you think? Are these species being brought back to be put on display only, or are we planning on releasing them back into the wild? If we do release them, aren't they destined for the same extinction as before?
Micro$oft(R) Windoze NT(TM)
(C) Copyright 1985-1996 Micro$oft Corp.
C:\>uptime
Extinction is permanent, so if it something can be brought back is it really extinction?
"No," said the Parrot ", I'm just resting".
The first problem you'll have to fight is the groups who are opposed to man playing "God."
Yeah, the main thing that worries me about that scenario is that people tend to make mistakes. I'm all for technology, and this sounds like one of the cooler applications of genetic engineering, but I don't know where we should draw the line.
Tech for betterment of humanity is a very good thing.
Tech because we think we ought to may or may not be. In the end, we may or may not "Get It".
Saying "nothing will ever go wrong" or anything like that makes me a little nervous- Just remember, this is the same culture that gave us such incredibly amazing things as the Hampster Dance...
What do I do, when it seems I relate to Judas more than You?
Still not dead.
Techies at computer stores that actually know anything.
You've been spending time at Fry's electronics haven't you? The sales people there don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. I should know as I used to work there in the tech department. Component sales were the worst. They would sell a customer a part they knew was wrong simply because that part paid them a higher commission. Finding memory for a particular computer system is as much an art as it is a science. However for the components department it was almost a game of pin the tail on the donkey.
Fry's electronics, the home of slow, ignorant, hard to find service.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
No shite!
I can't tell you how many people would come into Fry's electronics where I worked as a computer tech wanting us to fix the computer they put together from parts they bought from us.
The most atrocious experience was with a guy who bolted his motherboard directly onto the chassis, as in without spacers. All the pins on the bottom were sitting right on the metal, something that most people will know is a very bad idea. His excuse? That the component sales department hadn't explicitly told him not to do that.
Then there are the people who buy a premade system and expect it to be perfect, which usually means that they shouldn't have to know anything to use it.
I'll tell you, I can fix problems with computers but I can't fix people.
If the species known as "computer illiterate with hair up ass to buy system and get online but not exert any effort to do it" ever dies out, I'll be VERY VERY glad.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
A car gives the individual freedom. Yes, freedom to ruin families. Also, freedom to get out of bad situations. Freedom to rush someone to a hospital that's ten miles away, and freedom to get away quickly from the scene of a crime.
I honestly cannot assign good or bad labels to any of those actions, because I'm not the person who did them. I can only comment on those actions that directly affect my life. I guess my point is that it is the individual who has to make the best choices that they can, at the time.
I agree with you completely that we should be studying why species become extinct, but I think one (of many) useful tool in that investigation would be the analysis of a living member of that species.But I have another issue with this statement: I am not a collective. I am not your 'we.' What is right for me is not always what is right for you, and my 'rights' to perform said actions stop where your rights (and life) begins. And on that strict basis, judgements have to be made about what I can and cannot do. But like it or not, it has to be based on what we know. I KNOW that breaking into someone's home and stealing their stereo is theft. There's a very direct set of actions that leads to a given state (your no longer having your stereo), and so we judge that theft is wrong, legally and morally (in most situations).
But try this on for size: Assume, for a moment, that the most extreme predictions of chaos theory are accurate, on the macroscale. That a butterfly's flapping really can cause a hurricane. Now, that in mind, every single action that I take, or do not take, has hugely far-reaching consequences for all life on the globe. But, we can't tell what actions will cause what results. So nothing much changes. But then one day, we figure out how to predict such actions. Suddenly, the most ethical action is to change your behavior, because now you KNOW what the consequences are.
The situation is applicable here: If someone invents, say, a very effective stun gun, and all tests show it harmless, but then twenty years later all those who got hit with it develop some strange disease, you would stop using it. But, you never would have found out if you didn't use it in the first place. Is it right to prevent technological progress on these grounds? I don't think so. You may think differently, fine.
Yes. Firstly, because there is no way to judge the unintended consequences of a new technology. If there was, they wouldn't be unintended consequences, would they?Second, deliberately preventing someone getting access to technology that could help them better their lives (and realizing they are the only ones who can judge that) is a form of control that I don't feel is really ethical. What if that technology can save lives? You can't know what the consequences are, until it's used.
"Avast! Prepare for the rodgering!" THWACK! "Arrr.. me nards.."
The simple fact is that we don't yet have the ability to accurately predict the future, and so we have to make our best guesses in any situation. If those who have the resources want to bring back an extinct species, fine. But it's also their responsibility if anything goes wrong. Plus, in this situation, we also get to learn much more about said species than if we hadn't done anything at all.
Now, one could claim that bringing back an extinct species could endanger us all. I mean, look at what happened with non-native transplants, like Kudzu. Then again, Kudzu didn't result in the end of all life, either.
But, however any action turns out, there is this fact: You cannot conclusively prove that any new thing will do no harm, to anyone, ever.
"Avast! Prepare for the rodgering!" THWACK! "Arrr.. me nards.."
In any case, let the fit live, and let the unfit die. It's seemed to work just fine that way for hundreds of millions of years before man was around...
Yep. And it will continue just as it has in the past for many million years after humans are gone. Which might not be too far away...
How was the passenger pigeon unfit for survival, beside not being bulletproof? We're responsible for the majority of recent extinctions, not some grandiose concept of Darwinian pruning. Most large North American land mammals disappeared with the first arrival of human hunters. They were well adapted to the climate of the time and would still be if not hunted to extinction.
Humans are a factor in evolution just like everything else. Dying because humans hunted you into extinction is just as evolutionarily valid as dying because some other animals hunted you into extinction. Or do you think that humans are not animals?
What is wrong with trying to repair the damage we've done?
Nothing. But you can't say that the passenger pigeon wasn't unfit for survival; clearly it was, since we killed it. If it was 'fit for survival' we wouldn't have been able to kill all of them. Sorry, that's how evolution works.
Which brings me to the second point... the problems caused by inbreeding tend to breed themselves out after a few generations. The first run of clones from an endangered species might have a very high rate of fatality, but that just accelerates natural selection, so later generations will be much more robust. Eventually mutations would restore normal genetic diversity.
Then again, you could always spike it with frog DNA.
MSK
Hear hear for a working pancreas! Injections are annoying.
Anyhow, it's amazing where different groups draw the line at Interfering With God's Will. For example, having a tooth filled.
Also, I'm not sure what exectly you mean by "Middle East religions." If you're talking about religions that started in that area, then Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all fall under that category. If you're talking about religions currently practiced there, the same goes.
I apologize for any misspellings, my fingers are cold and I can't type right. (Damn diabetes again. :-)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
But it's still not as bad as Best Buy.
; )
the guar isn't extinct. I recently read an article that some had been seen in the jungles of cambodia. You can read it here.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Techies at computer stores that actually know anything.
How about bringing back customers who understand that the purchase of a PC _does not_ mean a lifetime of coddling and hand-holding?
How about bringing back literacy skills which include trivial bits of information like the difference between a colon and a semi-colon, what an ampersand is, and that "quotes" around a word are NOT supposed to be typed in?
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
So, what am I trying to say? With no habitat to go back to, to repopulate, what's the point of bringing them back?
Haven't you ever wanted a second chance after you made an idiotic mistake? This is one way of mankind making good on incredible errors after the fact.
True, mountain gorilla may be on its way out now, but that doesn't mean we won't have a collective change of heart 50 years after they're all gone.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
...that Richard Seed is never going to become extinct? Crap.
----
---- I made the Kessel Run in under 11 parsecs.
I don't have that attitude. Not only did in actually state that I did not believe that the original posted was crafted as a troll, but I also conciously avoided moderating it as such.
Furthermore, this place has not gone to hell in my opinoin. (or have I just been trolled? perhaps a meta-troll.)
The inflammatory aspects were that it blamed all of the readers (assuming they're all human) for the extinction of animals and then questioned their attempts to rectify the situation, while ignoring the other benefits of genetic research.
I refuse to believe that in the few thousand years since humans started being "civilized" that we have caused more animal species to become extinct than in the few million years before that. Unless species are becoming extinct at several thousand times the previous rates of extinctions, this is pretty much impossible. Are you trying to say that we are in the middle of a period of mass extinction that even dwarfs the period in which the dinosaurs were wiped out?
I do have moderator points today, but I couldn't find an appropriate way to moderate your inflammatory, shortsighted post. Any negative way I moderated it would not explain the reasons that I have for believing your post should be moderated down. It's not really flame bait because you take such a (currently) politically correct tone. It's not really offtopic; quite the contrary. I guess there's always the possibiliy that I have just been trolled. But to me, this post doesn't sound like a post intentionally crafted to troll, it sounds more like you're just confused.
None of my post here should be construed to represent any opinion I have on the cloning of extinct animals, or on the morality or ethics of environmental damage caused by humans. I'll save those for a more appropriate thread.
I guess it does sometimes pay to read all the way down to post #324 in some stories.
Well, I no longer "refuse to believe..." now I just "find it hard to believe..."
(when are we going to get "spelled right", "used preview well", and "failed to use preview" added to the moderation options, anyways?)
Hey, great. Since we can preserve select Panda DNA, I guess that means their natural ecosystem is saved too, right? Yay, a cure for extinction!
I can't believe they'd bring back GWAR!
Heck, can you imagine delivering those spiny outfits the band members wore? Can you say cesaerian section?
Okay, slow day. So sue me. :)
[
I say that once a species is extinct, we should leave it that way, as a reminder of our own mortality.
I am a firm believer that there are some things you just don't fsck with. This is one of them. This is just another example of humans playing god and asking all the wrong questions.
Sure we *can* do this, but *should* we?
I mean, I think that the real issue here is not that we are being responsibile and altruistic by restoring an extinct species. I think the real issue is that restoring an extinct species is an excuse to mess around with the planet's genetic heritage and say, "oh, look how clever we are."
If we were really so concerned about extinction, I think we would be doing more to preserve the species that currently exist. But hell, why bother worrying about that? Once we know how to bring a species back, we can just go about our merry way. Then it suddenly becomes a question of what species do we *want* around. Hmmm? Anybody think of that?
Oh gee, this rare mountain gorilla is in our way. That's okay, just get some samples and eliminate it. We can bring it back later on when we are done.
Sounds absurd, I know. But I don't put anything past humans.
Nothing can possiblai go wrong. Er...possibly go wrong.
Strange, that's the first thing that's ever gone wrong.
Tyler's words coming out of my mouth.
The first problem you'll have to fight is the groups who are opposed to man playing "God." (I'm not sure where I stand on the issue. It makes me nervous, because it makes me feel like I, or my DNA, could become the property of a company who desires to produce people with my mindset or abilities. I'm also not comfortable with being 100% sure I'm nothing but cells and tissue, but that's another discussion.)
:-)
The second problem will be those groups that decide the results are "unnatural" and will do anything to stop them. Think I'm kidding? Mess with the Middle East religions and see how serious they become.
I read somewhere that someone is trying to bring back a woolly mammoth from frozen tusk DNA. It's a great idea, but doesn't it make you wonder? Sure, let's see what a T-Rex really looks like.. but can we make sure "Jurassic Park" doesn't happen please?
In another way, I'm all for cloning. I'm diabetic; clone me a pancreas, PLEASE. One that works..
-- Talonius
My reality check bounced.
Folks, their species are dying for a reason, because they can't adapt to the changing environment (most likely the encroachment of man).
Right, we should let the beautiful creatures die, and keep instead those species that can adapt to the enroachment of man. Like cockroaches, rats, and house lizards.
Have you ever said the word "gaur" so many times it lost all meaning?
Anyway, on to my real point. This may be a great thing, but there is no way it's going to be used responsibly. As the process becomes easier, people will worry less about extinction, because they'll always be able to bring the animals back. And there will be one less barrier to screwing with the ecosystem. Which is bad.
Marissa
I'm not really an elf, I just play one in AD&D.
The loss of genetic diversity in Cheetahs is a perfect example of the problem the original poster was referring to. When their range was large, they had genetic variablility. As they were hunted and their habitat destroyed, the genetic variability dropped because of inbreeding. Now the main activity in their conservation is planning matings of cheetahs to ensure that the variability that exists is preserved and increased.
The low genetic variability means that infants get sick and die, and that if a disease gets into the population, it'll be almost impossible to save any of them.
I was reading through comments hoping someone would say this so I didn't have to.
Brining back a single animal from a sample of DNA from an extinct species is one thing. Bringing back an entire population is another. One imideate problem is the need for variation in the gene pool. Trying to bring back an entire population from 1 or 2 samples would lead to inbreading and the like rather quickly.
This is a problem for longer exctinct animals where the # samples is small. Animals who died in the last century should have more samples available, we just have to make sure we use a variety of them.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
I'm not thinking all that quick right now, but I'm not immediately seeing how you don't follow evolution in your belief, but you do follow survival of the fittest?- ----------
I'm not trying to pick a fight, just am curious as what you are getting at. If it is a religious thing, then please don't bother - othersie I am curious.
---------------------------------------
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
and of course all these resurrected animals are now patentable...
brave new world of greed and destruction.
kind regards philippe, StopLifePatents.org
Haven't you ever wanted a second chance after you made an idiotic mistake? This is one way of mankind making good on incredible errors after the fact.
True, mountain gorilla may be on its way out now, but that doesn't mean we won't have a collective change of heart 50 years after they're all gone.
Of course I have, who hasn't. But in 50 years, there's a good change that the environment of the cloned species will have changed so much that it is not accounted for in the cycle of things. Also, lab raised animals tend not to learn survival skills from their parents, like they would've in the wild. There's a good change reintroduction would be a flop.
As I said in another reply, I did not think about the fact that we maybe able to disect these critters toward creating new medicines or zoo-things for ourselves.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
I'm not saying we should let the sick die (as in, endangered), but was not thinking in a "how would these species help us?" sort of sense you have. Sure, they may look good in zoos, or provide some insight into our own bodies and medicine. I was thinking more in an ecological sense, where introducing species into non-native environments tends to be a bad thing.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
I refuse to believe that in the few thousand years since humans started being "civilized" that we have caused more animal species to become extinct than in the few million years before that. Unless species are becoming extinct at several thousand times the previous rates of extinctions, this is pretty much impossible. Are you trying to say that we are in the middle of a period of mass extinction that even dwarfs the period in which the dinosaurs were wiped out?
I'm not saying that humans have caused more extintions than those that happened by themselves over the millions of years life has existed on this planet. In fact, most (I cannot recall the stat- 99+%?) of new species go extinct, natural selection and all.
What I'm saying is that our civilization has caused more thna our fare share of extintions. Do you argue that fact? A particular species relies on it's habitat, and when that's taken away, it tends not to be able ot survive without it. Habitat is a term that does not only encompass the structural surroundings, but also all of the plants, animals, geological formations, microscopic life, &c.
It's fairly simple- when the ecosystem that a species has coevolved with, in and around is changed abruptly or destroyed, the species may or may not be able to adapt to those changes. When it cannot, it often goes extinct. This change can be natural (meteors, earthquakes, floods, and so on), or unnatural. Examples of unnatural change is the tearing down of a forest or prarie for laying down pavement, creating a farm, or growing grass for cows to graze. I admit, I do not like the term "unnatural," as humans are as "natural" as can be, but surely you get my point.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Around 1Billion years after this planet materialized the first primitive slime was created in the oceans. About one billion years ago immense numbers of various species have emerged into existence, 99% of them died out, the 1% populated Earth. This shows that existence of any type of life in itself is a very powerful tool for creation of new species. We do not need to preserve anything, even if every single animal (including humans) will die out there will always be slime and the population will repeat after recycling the pollution created by us.
You can't handle the truth.
We all came from Adam and Eve, and despite all the inbreeding, look how good we turned out!
__________
Don't forget that we can only bring back those species that we have a DNA sample for. For example, the dodo bird was long extinct before we even knew about DNA.
Also, while we may be able to bring back a species, it will be very difficult to recreate the natural habitat of the species, if that has been destroyed as well. It is one thing to see an animal in a zoo; it is quite another to watch it in the wild.
"Feel a glory in so rolling / on the human heart a stone" --E. A. Poe, "The Bells"
Some years ago there was a lot of hype about the whales, elephants and also the fur coats.
Now, if these endangered species just happen to be "industrially" renewable, then I am afraid that people will simply consider fur as they consider leather and will just seem to ignore how cruel it might have been to collect it.
I don't appreciate the idea of solving the consequence of human idiocy. Only the cause needs a fix.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
At some point, one must stop to consider the terms that one uses in daily life. The words that one chooses to describe something are a great indicator of one's true nature. In this same way, the words we choose to use as a society, as a species, are a great tool for determining the true nature of humanity.
One area of particular personal interest is what is referred to when you state that something is natural. "Natural" is a word that is often throw about, in advertisements, in politics, and in religion. Advertisements use the appeal of the common (mis)conception that natural is healthy. Many naturally occurring compounds can kill you. The poison that we synthesize is no more toxic than things already here before us. The only real difference is that we are ill equipped to deal with the amount of poison that we are creating. Political debate over moral issues often turns to the common argument, "This action is immoral, it is unnatural". Often there is some reference to God, or the fuzzy concept of "natural law".
With all the different ways that the word "natural" is being used, it can be hard to focus on what we really mean. It is easy to get tunnel vision. Someone with authority tells you what is and isn't natural. Nature is pushed in your face as a selling point. Political types spew meaningless arguments. What really matters is what nature means to you.
Let's define natural in a way that make sense and is easy to understand. The dictionary could be said to represent the common understanding of the meaning of words, so let's start there. It defines something natural as, "Something that exists in or is produced by nature."(1)
That doesn't help much, so the definition of nature seems to be in order, "The material world and its phenomena". Surely artificial compounds are part of the material world, and are synthesized using the material world's phenomena, so even things that we create are also natural. In fact, it is impossible to create anything that is truly unnatural.
You might argue that such things as emotions are not of the material world. Science repeatedly has proven that emotions are only a chemical reaction, which can be stopped or enhanced using chemicals. Thought, memory, control of your body, are all phenomena of the material world. To argue that anything is unnatural, you must prove that the action or object is not of the material world, and not part of the phenomena of the material world. No such thing exists, therefore everything is, and indeed must be, natural.
The most compelling example of this is the thought of total earthly destruction. Even if all life on earth were destroyed, even if it was human action that directly caused this, it would still be a natural event. This may seem a little hard to swallow, but consider this: What if we, as humans, discovered a species that existed only on you island. These animals are fighting over the remaining resources of the island, becoming more and more ingenious in their attacks. At you point, you faction discovers that fire can be used to destroy the enemy, and develops methods for using fire. Unfortunately, in the process of the attack, the island catches fire, and all the plant life is destroyed. The animals die.
Would the human viewer of these advanced animals consider the happening unnatural? No, it was only animals trying to survive. That is the same thing an external viewer of a dead earth would conclude. Just animals trying to survive. Break free from the thought pattern that some things are natural, and others are unnatural. All things are necessarily natural.
One might think, "If everything we can do is natural, why not do whatever we want." Why be concerned about the environment if nothing we do is unnatural? The distinction needs to be made that natural is not necessarily positive. Natural cannot be associated with being positive, because as we discussed before, nothing truly unnatural can exist, therefore natural cannot be used to describe the nature of an object in this way. There is no positive when there is no negative. There just is.
(1) American Heritage Dictionary Third Edition, pp 908,909
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I live in Iowa, and it is amazing that an "Asian gaur, a heavily muscled, humpbacked, ox-like animal native to the bamboo jungles of India and Burma" is being born from a damn cow here somewhere near me.
Next thing you know my neighbor will be birthing dinosaurs out of his iguana.
-- ERICmurphy -- www.jabber.org for open-source, XML-based IM
...not the mind. Many animal species learn behaviors from their parents. Behaviors are lost forever.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
I do not think you can entirely bring back an extinct specie. Because even though the ones that are cloned may be the exact same in their genetic pool they *will* be different than the original species. This is because they will act different because they have no role model to copy from. They will act different and will have a hard time surviving, that is until the time they develop new surviving techniques, through natural selection, and then behave like a brand new species
Umm... A lot of the behavior that makes an animal what it is and enables it to survive is taught to it by it's mother. i.e. a cat not raised by it's mother often doesn't know how to hunt. I'm not sure quite how they'd get around that... Can a cow teach a guar to be a guar? You could try getting humans to teach the clones, it's been done before with orphaned animals, but I'm not sure how it'd be done with extinct species where we don't know enough about their behavior..
The Meaning of Life
great comedy company.
wasn't there a point to extinction?
oh yeah, survival of the fittest/luckiest. but don't worry now, dead species, we'll bring you back even tho you didn't quite cut it the first time.
honestly, is there anything dead we can't live w/o? aren't there enough not-extinct-yet babies starving? I'd rather see them fed than an anachronism in a zoo. I mean, we're not quite star trek IV yet, are we?
Wait a minute they are using cloning. I thought there is a problem with cloning in that way that the cloned animal cells have the same age as the real one when it is born, so for example Dolly the cloned sheep, will have much shorter lifespan than the real sheep. Anybody care to confirm or correct this?
The scientists have managed to clone the nuclear(ie. in the nucleus, not atomic ;*}) DNA, but I doubt they have managed to clone the mitochondrial DNA, indeed my understanding of most mammalian cloning techniques is that they are relying on the donor egg cell having functional mitochondria.
While the nuclear DNA contains most of the genes that will determine the overall shape, plumbing and wiring of the animal, mitochondrial DNA provides the genes for the enzymes and cofactors that turn sugar into ATP(energy) within the cell, as well as those genes needed to reproduce the mitochondria themselves(yup they're like little bacteria).. What if a true Guar's mitochondria had, and more importantly needed, genes different from a cows mitochondria in order to survive in a much hotter, humid locale, such as the jungles of Asia?
And then of course there is the question of cytoplasmic inheritance...where misfolded proteins could change an organism drastically. See http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/ucmc-pmp092500. html for an example. Without direct cellular inheritance you could end up with a rather different animal, perhaps only subtlely, but then we are only about 3% different from the great apes. How much does it take to turn a Guar into a Cowguar?
And of course there is the issue of behaviours taught to a young animal by it's parents or herd, as well as the environment that it grows up in, not to mention the required genetic diversity to sustainably bring back an entire species...
These animals are not "true" Guars, they are hybrids.
So yes Virginia, extinction is permanent!
Tinker23 - Currently taking Biology and Genetics at College.
I agree 100% on the keyboard thing. But how about:
;)
Techies at computer stores that actually know anything.
Competent and friendly technical support lines.
"Manly" products that might actually hurt you without any warning labels. As opposed to the watered down, idiotproof, disclaimer'ed products of today.
News programs on TV that actually have _some_ worth.
Decent seats on the airlines.
The unapologetic hiring of attractive waitresses and such.
....
God creates dinosaurs;
...
God destroys dinosaurs;
God creates man;
Man destroys God;
Man creates dinosaurs;
Dinosaurs destroy man.
Woman inherits the Earth.
... this is largely crap. Not that it doesnt work, but the point is more that so many species become extinct every year, we can hardly keep track of them, little less keep up with reproducing them. Not to mention that this doesnt cover all the plant life that becomes extinct.
This is nteresting, and in some way good news, but this is hardly a good reason to stop worrying about destroying natural resources.
Imagine the inbreeding problems when an entire population is basically copies from one or a few individuals!
There is also the question of whether the ecosystems have adapted to being without the extinct species for so long, that reintroducing that species will have the the same potential for messing up the ecosystem as introducing an alien species.
"The good die first." "Most of us are morally ambiguous, which explains our random dying patterns." --- MST3K
No it's not. The project isn't a success until the organism is born and lives to an age where it can breed and pass it's genes on.
I understand that the goal of this project was simply to birth one extinct animal out of a common animal, but if the almost-extinct-critter doesn't make it to breeding age, then what's the point?
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
As a race, we have pushed further and further along a path away from nature. There are many - for want of a better word - "zealots" who claim to be "for nature" etc. Maybe they are right. Maybe that guy in the article claiming that guars should grow up in guar jungles, surrounded by guar trees and guar babies, maybe he's right. But then he can't see the wood for the trees.
:-) has spent all his time since then developing new and better ways to use his surroundings. We have McDonalds, Pepsi, Nike, Ford, etc., all different ways to do the same things we've been doing since before we were we - eating, drinking, getting from place to place. Except now we do it in style.
/prak
So, thousands and thousands of years ago some clever homonid decided that a stick was better at braining things than his fist. That was against nature, no?
Soon after that, another clever homonid found that rubbing sticks together, or banging a rock off another rock, could start fire, making dead things easier and tastier to eat. Was not that also against nature?
And so on. Man (meant in the non-sexist way
We have been farming for many thousands of years. Is that not against nature?
Time perhaps for some new-age philosopher to step forth from the ranks and announce the radical thought that maybe man was right to develop the stick. Maybe man was right to develop the wheel, even. And fire. And clothing. And multi-storey homes. And alternative modes of transport. At the rate we're going, heck even another place to live would be handy, as we're apparently ruining this planet as a habitat. But the point is we've had some power over nature for thousands of years, and no-one has drawn the line for us yet. Why stop now?
--
We may be human, but we're still animals.
They've been using surrogate mothers for endangered species for a long time. It goes back at least to 1983, when scientists used a common Eland antelope as a surrogate for the rare Bongo antelope. In 1989 they used a common housecat as a surrogate for the endangered Indian Desert Cat. Cloning has been around for awhile. Cloning endangered and extinct species and then using surrogates isn't exactly a breakthrough idea.
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
But is recreating individuals the same as preserving the species? Absolutely not.
A species doesn't exist in isolation. It exists as part of a larger natural community. ("Ecosystem" is a hot-button word, so I won't use it.) It preys, and is preyed upon, it has symbiotic and parasitic relationships ... in short, it has thousands of relationships with the rest of the world, most of which science simply doesn't understand.
Consider the Aurochs. There's no shortage of Aurochs DNA -- you ingest some every time you visit McDonald's. There have even been attempts to create "new" Aurochs by backbreeding from their domestic descendants, the cows. But even if you could create a "real" Aurochs, you'd have nothing but a scientific curiousity that can't survive without ongoing human maintenance. That all you'll have until somebody also re-creates the Aurochs natural environment. That's not going to happen. Even if we had the motivation and the resources (and we can't even supply that for existing environments) we don't know enough about the forests of Bronze-age Europe to recreate them.
A more modern example is the chimp. Unlikely to go extinct, even without fancy DNA techniques. They're too popular in zoos and labs. But the environment needed by an authentic wild chimp is more or less gone already, and I doubt if it will be fully understood before it is gone completely.
There's a poignant description of "technically non-extinct" animals in Bruce Sterling's latest (and best) Distraction&a mp;l t;/a>
__________
Extinction weeds out those species that can't adapt to the current environment. Why should we worry about saving unfit species? Where the hell are we gonna keep them? Preserves? Zoos? Scientific labs? Folks, their species are dying for a reason, because they can't adapt to the changing environment (most likely the encroachment of man). In any case, let the fit live, and let the unfit die. It's seemed to work just fine that way for hundreds of millions of years before man was around...
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
We have neanderthal DNA extracted form ancient bones. Anybody want to be the mom of a slope-headed baby?
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
The reason (most) of these species are extinct is a loss of habitat caused by "civilization" moving in and changing it, whether to take resources or to build houses or businesses. In most cases of extintions caused by such a situation, the native habitat of these plants and animals are still in the state they're in when the species went extinct.
So, what am I trying to say? With no habitat to go back to, to repopulate, what's the point of bringing them back? Just to say we can do it? Putting them in a non-native habit will simply change that environment, possibly bringing other species to extintion. Put them in a reserve or zoo? Completely artificial- they would be serving the purpose for which they evolved, so why bother?
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Desktop environments that don't require a PIII 800 to run smoothly.
Websites that aren't full of tables, frames, and layers that take two minutes to render.
Newsgroups that aren't full of illiterates, flames, and spam.
Those elegant, sturdy, indestructable IBM keyboards that you could spill coffee on and they would still work.
/. polls that are interesting and enlightening, and actually tell us something about the current readership.
JennyCam, back when Jenny was naked all the time.
Local BBSes, back when they were cool and had real geeks on them.
New Star Trek series that don't suck.
That's about all that I can think of now. Anyone care to add to the list?
--
"How many six year olds does it take to design software?"
dinner: it's what's for beer
- 2010-2040: gazelle, lions, elephants
- 2040-2070: wildebeast, leopards, rhinos
- 2070-2100: gnus, hyenas, buffalo
- 2100-2130: repeat...
I'm sure we can make it a big event, the changing of the beasts. Maybe switch over a different ecosystem every four years, sell tickets to the extermination of the previous tenant species and the release of the new creatures.