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Cloning Endangered Species
JackMonkey writes "As SFGate.com reports, scientists have successfully cloned an endangered species. "The clone -- a cattlelike creature known as a Javan banteng, native to Asian jungles -- was grown from a single skin cell taken from a captive banteng before it died in 1980." Maybe Jurassic Park isn't too far away after all." See our previous cloning story also.
Somebody clone a record company executive before they die out!
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Now that we have the ability to clone animals who are endangered whilst destroyoing the habitat they live in, we can let our consciences be at ease, because even though they have no place left to live, they exist.
Next month's manager special: the McBateng (with special sauce, of course).
Several friends have picked up on this story and are all excited that now we can bring back extinct species. The dodo, ivory-billed woodpecker, etc etc and so on. I had to explain to them that for any species to survive, IN THE WILD, there must be a population of sufficient size and more importantly sufficient genetic diversity. We can clone 1000 dodo's (insert politician joke here) but it will still only be ONE dodo. Not to mention that pretty much all the dodo's natural habitat is gone gone gone .. where will they live? The suburbs?
If all we want is to have a couple of living specimens around to look at, cloning will be fine. Anyone expecting to use cloning to re-introduce extinct species to the wild is fooling themselves.
#1, it's Crichton. #2, I read Jurassic Park long before it became a movie. I thought the science in it was extremely weak. In fact Jurassic Park convinced me that Crichton had stopped writing novels and was now selling screen plays masquerading as books. The "science" in Jurassic Park was merely a plot device to allow dinosaurs to run around chomping people: great Hollywood fodder.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
...is because there were a bunch of scientists poking, prodding, and stealing its skin cells. :)
Seriously, though. I agree with some of the above posters. There is a reason the animals are no longer with us. And one can argue that it was humans that caused the extinction in the first place, and it was therefore our fault. However, the last time I checked, humans were part of the animal kingdom. Drawing off that fact, it becomes easy to argue that any forces we exerted on species were natural, albeit not in the best interest of other species on this planet (or even ourselves).
Extinction has been occurring for millions of years. It is natural, folks. The scientific community needs to try and get over their "god" complex.
For all the foibles and blunders committed by the human race in the name of science during the last few hundred years, this one personally gives me the most reason for concern.
Jethro73
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
1000 dodos of the same sex isn't going to do a lot for the population in the long run. Even dozens of each sex will cause problems; purebred dogs usually have some sort of genetic disorder because not enough genetic variation in the gene pool has led to bad genes being paired together.