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3D Printing Might Save the Rhinoceros
GordonShure.com writes: San Francisco based biotech startup Pembient have released details of their 3D printing led method to derail the market for Rhinoceros horns. Presently the bulk of demand originates from China, where said horns — gathered in the wild by poachers who usually kill the rhinos — are revered for supposed medicinal qualities. The new firm intends to mix keratin with Rhino DNA, then machine the combination with a 3D printer in a way that their counterfeit horns are difficult to detect by customers and traffickers alike.
The company already mulls expanding its production principle to other, lucrative wild animal trades such as the claws of tigers and lions. Pembient is however a young company — for all their ingenuity, will their ambitions to take on such a colossal black market be realized?
The company already mulls expanding its production principle to other, lucrative wild animal trades such as the claws of tigers and lions. Pembient is however a young company — for all their ingenuity, will their ambitions to take on such a colossal black market be realized?
Add to it the fact that it will probably not work - to those using it as "medicine" it's only the real deal or nothing.
That's the point, they're trying to make it so that you can't tell the difference between real and fake. The idea is that you make it so cheap that poaching becomes economically unfeasible.
If the fake is good enough, then the only way to detect counterfeits is to have a traceable source. If there's a traceable source, the poachers are liable to get caught.
They aren't introducing Diet Horn here, they're trying to poison the supply chain.
The poachers probably aren't big proponents of a verifiable, traceable supply chain. They don't laser etch a serial number in the things after a kill. So you insert these fake horns into the chain and you dis-incentivize the poaching by driving prices down. Plus you get the witchdoctors questioning whether their supplier is selling them real of fake horns, which can lead to trust breakdowns and stop some purchases.
And hey, the smarter witchdoctors know it's all bullshit they're giving a polish to. So they'll secretly purchase completely legal and probably much cheaper fakes straight from the source and keep giving their victims a show.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
Animal horns have intricate ordered microscopic structures that no 3D printer can reproduce, but that are easy to look for with a microscope.
The claim that the rhino horns are clamored as Chinese medicine is way over hyped - for the vast majority of the Chinese people, over 90%, do not believe in the effectiveness of the rhino horns, with the exception of those living in the Hong Kong and surrounding region (mainly Guangzhou) This has been evidenced time and time again on the distribution data on where the rhino horns were used - over 80% of it were used inside Hong Kong In fact one can go to Chinese medicinal shops in Hong Kong and find rhino horns display prominently, but in other places inside China, there is no rhino horn in sight as there is no market for it
It isn't just rhino horn, it's rare types of wood, tiger/lion skins and the skins of other endangered species, turtle shells, elephant tusks the list goes on and all of this to feed the Chinese taste for luxuries. There used to be a market for these products in the west and to an extent there still is. Conservationist groups have done a lot of work to shame people into not buying this stuff and for a while it was actually working. With the economic boom in China that changed. A while ago I watched an interview with an African ranger who commented that "Wherever the Chinese show up the animals disappear". The problem of poaching is bad enough without the Chinese über-class of nouveau rich luxury junkies making it worse and I don't give a hoot for arguments like there being a long and rich tradition of ivory carving in China that will die out if there is no ivory. If I have to choose between luxury obsessed people in China or the West getting their fix of ivory products or elephants surviving as a species I will pick elephants every time and the same goes for tigers, lions, turtles and less cuddly or less cute creatures like the short tailed albatross, 20 % of north american mussel species, the Ganges shark, the addax, pygmy three-toed sloth, the California condor, the Lord Howe Island stick-insect, the okapi, the European fresh water pearl mussel..... the list is so long it depresses me to think about it.
This will work about as well as synthetic diamonds (which are actual, real diamonds) have collapsed the natural diamond market and eliminated the horrific practices which surround natural diamond mines in under developed areas of the world.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Are you suggesting poisoning people? That seems absurd.
But we do it for other products. We poison industrial ethanol so the government doesn't tax it at the recreational rate. We spike opioid analgesics with non-therapeuticly high levels of acetaminophen to discourage recreational use. If we're willing to poison things that are sold legitimately, why wouldn't we poison something that is illegal? I'm not saying it wouldn't work for other reasons you cited, but we've already stepped over the line as a society of intentionally poisoning things to discourage their use.