Scientists Optimistic About Getting a Mammoth Genome Complete Enough To Clone

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Scientists Optimistic About Getting a Mammoth Genome Complete Enough To Clone

Posted by samzenpus on Monday November 17, 2014 @10:19AM from the one-piece-at-a-time dept.

Clark Schultz writes The premise behind Jurassic Park just got a bit more real after scientists in South Korea said they are optimistic they can extract enough DNA from the blood of a preserved woolly mammoth to clone the long-extinct mammal. The ice-wrapped woolly mammoth was found last year on an island off of Siberia. The development is being closely watched by the scientific community with opinion sharply divided on the ethics of the project.

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huh? by Charliemopps · 2014-11-17 10:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

I don't understand... what would be unethical about this?
1. Re:huh? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-17 10:31 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I don't understand... what would be unethical about this?
  Forcing an Asian elephant to be a "mother" to another species, one that might harm her.
  Forcing solitary existence on what appears to be a highly social species.
2. Re:huh? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-17 10:38 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Well, yeah, but you wouldn't be using a human zygote for this. Seems like only the 3 craziest members of PETA in the world would have an ethical problem with this...
3. Re:huh? by StikyPad · 2014-11-17 10:40 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  That's relevant to, but not the full story of, the ethical controversy over human cloning, but we're talking about mammoths. I don't think anyone's proposing that we insert mammoth DNA into human eggs.
  
  --
  https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Elephants? by Moof123 · 2014-11-17 12:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

It seems surreal that we are talking about resurrecting Mammoths while their close genetic kin are still in a pretty harsh decline. Perhaps we should be trying to store sequences of good cross section of the remaining elephants so that in some future century we can dust off the old thumb drives and bring them back with enough genetic diversity to properly re-introduce them somewhere.