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Cloning of extinct Huia bird approved
kade writes to us with the news that New Zealand scientists and ethicists have decided that attempts to clone the extinct Huia bird should begin immediatly. The birds were declared extinct in the 1920s, their fault being they had white tipped black feathers that were "used" in a European fashion craze in the 1920s. IMHO, more stuff like this should happen-and for the organisms in danger of extinction, we should procure cell samples in hope of cloning later. Of course, first priority should be saving them then, but what do you all think?
On the other hand, didn't anyone see Star Trek 4? If we don't save every animal that's ever lived, aliens will send a probe to communicate with them that will destroy the planet. So we're waxed either way. Life sucks.
I disagree with this premise. I've lived quite nicely without that bird all my life, I can continue just as well.
I see this endevor as an acedemic 'can we do it', not as a solution to any kind of problem. There isn't a problem with that particular animal not being in existance.
(darren)
Is there some intrinsic value in keeping endangered animals locked up in unnatural surroundings? I say there isn't. Creatures become extinct because other creatures like to kill them, or because their habitat changes too drastically. Their place in this world simply went away. It pains me to be so blunt about it, but it's true. Instead of covering up our mistakes, we should try to raise the value of life in our culture.
YOU should try to raise the value of life in our culture. Go tell somebody that the animals on our planet are precious, and anything we do that hurts them unnecessarily should be stopped. That's what will turn things around.
Finally, read stuff by Daniel Quinn, and visit the Ishmael website.
I strongly believe in Darwinism, and if the animal died out for natural reasons (without humans being the accountable cause) then we must leave nature be.
Er, what's the difference between "natural causes" and humans? We are natural causes -- natuarally evolved creatures that, in our spread, have caused the extinction of some native species that were unable to adapt to us. To a real "believe[r] in Darwinism", the distinction between "natural" extinction and human-caused extinction doesn't exist.
As a specific example -- was the Americn horse driven extinct by natural causes (a new predator that crossed over a natural land bridge from Asia), or man (which happened to *be* that new predator)? (Anyone who says that "well, man hunts for sport while other animals don't", please see Stephen Jay Gould's "Bully for Brontosaurus" for remedial education.)
That isn't to say that we shouldn't make efforts to not drive species extinct. But this goofy natural/man dichotomy is indefensible unless man was created separately.
If you're a creationist, fine, I can respect that.
If you're a Darwinist, fine, I agree with you.
If you're a self-proclaimed Darwinist that still holds to the man-nature dichotomy of creationism you were taught by our culture, STOP AND THINK IT THROUGH!
And as for getting tissue samples of endangered species so that we can clone them later, that's just not practical. How long would it take for us to take tissue samples of all the M$ users out there, cause it's not gonna be long before they're extinct... And do we really want to clone more? (Hope Bill hasn't thought of that already!) :-)
Jeremy
"Opinions are like assholes; everyone's got one..."
That much touted experiment, the Stanley Miller "Spark Chamber" experiment, which was conducted decades ago, used the starting materials, the wrong methods and got the wrong results.
Miller left out oxygen because he knew it would destroy the proteins he was trying to make. In fact, there have been oxidized rocks in the earth as deep as man has dug. There is no evidence that earth's early atmosphere had no oxygen, and of course life on earth requires it.
Miller used electrical sparks as a catalyst. Unfotunately, sparks do more tearing apart than putting together, so Miller had to draw the product out of the spark chamber in order to preserve them. This obviously would not have been possible during biogenesis without an informed intelligence.
The experiment produced an equal amount of long, short, left-handed and right-handed amino acids, whereas only short and lefthanded are used in living cells. The long and right-handed acids joining with the short and left-handed acids would prevent the coiling necessary for a useful protein.
Finally, the simplest life forms require many more than just one protein! The chances of these forty-plus proteins coming together to form a single solitary bacterium capable of reproducing (and which must now survive without oxygen, remember) are zilch for all practical purposes.
None... Long term impact of 'bringing back' any species is virtually nill. All of the cross-continental introductions of species (in effect the same thing) have only changed the details of various local environments, species displaced, over populations , but in a few generations stability is restored. The only complaint would be is this the most pleasing to the humans residing within the same local environment...
morturii
If the extinction of the Huia doesn't present a problem to you then, I'd like to know exactly when "man-induced" extinctions do become a problem? Is it when the last bald-eagle is wiped out? Or, when the last whale is hunted to extinction? Or, perhaps it's when the only living mamals, apart from us, left are domesticated species?
I for one, enjoy a walk through a national park now and then (together with all the associated flora and fauna).
Forgive the attitude, I'm a New Zealander and I'd like to see the recovery of a few more of the endangered and "previously extinct" birds of New Zealand (particularly the giant Moa!).
There is a ghost town located on a mountain slope in Montana above a small town called Phillipsburg. This town (Granit City) had a population of three thousand and covered the side of the mountain (that was a big town back then). All but a few buildings and the larger mining structures have vanished, replaced by forest, in a scant 100 years.
Aside from the remains of the lunar lander and a plastic flag on the surface of the moon, probably the only thing future civilizations will find that points back to us will be the plastic stuff like packaging and six-pack binders, and a curious bottleneck of biological diversity in the late 20th century to rival that of the extinction of the dinasaurs, there will be little for future archealogists to find. Given a few tens of thousands of years, even the satelites in orbit will have long since fallen back to earth.
Tales of a space faring civilization in 10,000 years? I doubt it, given that we haven't even bothered to go back to the moon in 25 years. Tales of a civilization that practically worshipped consumption and greed, to the point of (nearly) consuming the entire world and ultimately consuming itself? Quite possibly.
Just another cheery thought for a Wednesday morning.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
What has man done in the form of causing extinctions that nature hasnt already done. Extinctions happened all the time before we were here, we just sped up to process. Three cheers for efficient humans. The first ever mass extinction was when over 90% of all carbon dioxide breathing organisms died because of too much oxygen in the atmosphere. I see this reversing soon, so the hundreds of species we have killed would have died anyway.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
In all seriousness, we can no longer deny that we are very much, like it or not, the stewards of this planet, and by extension, all the information which has ever been encoded in any way whatsoever.
While I do not think we can make light of our decisions of what animals to promote, and what animals to drive out of existance, we certainly can not deny that we have that power, and have had it for a long time. Look at cows. What the hell is that *natural selection* ? *darwinism* ? No folks, its time to go read "out of control" and realize that we are no longer the children of this planet, but the parents of a great many life forms which may not even exist yet.
There is a great amount of nostalgia when we think of how things *used* to be. When we were growing up, we lived in a very sheltered universe. The planet was full of biomass, and we consumed and consumed and consumed. Just now as we are on the brink of running out of natural resources, we suddenly start to grasp that we can no longer afford to be frolicing around the planet in childlike bliss. Yet we still have not owned up to our larger role, our greater responsibility.
We have already altered this planet plenty by being "GOD". And we say it with distain, because we have up until this point been a childish selfish god. An infant god. Now as we are just begining to realize the complicated nature of our responsibility there is a very strong tendancy for people to want to walk away from it all, and not be "god" any more.
It is not a choice we can make. We are now the parents of the planet which reared us. To look at in any other way is wishful thinking, and nostalgia.
We should be careful. We should think more often than we act, but we should not hope that "God" knows what to do, and its not out place to mess-a-bout.
Evolution itself evolves. We are just the latest feature of nature. There is a real problem if we start to view ourselves as "other" than nature. We are an interesting evolutionary experiment. We can reincarnate species we accidentally destoyed in our youth. Is there any reason to? Maybe not. Could there be dire consequnces? Perhaps, but I think it is unlikely.
Worse case scenario: the bird has no preditors, they take over the world, and then decide to clone extinct humans.
Take a look around, at the mountains and rivers, deserts, icecaps, trees, cows, horses, dogs, sunsets, jet contrails, everything.
In a few thousand years every last piece of the planet will be dissassembled by human beings for use as raw materials to support our outward expansion into the universe.
Earth has supported us well so far, and the species that evolved on the earth will outlive the planet.
Nothing you can do about it either.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
As an already biased New Zealander...
:)
I vote the next bird to be bought back is the giant Moa. I want a bird I can look up to and really respect
Regarding Dolly:
Researchers have shown that while Dolly is aging at an accelrated rate due to the use of older donor material, the natural born offspring of Dolly do not experience this problem. Cloning may make it "easy" to start a species, but as some have pointed out, diversification is a real issue. The lack of a diverse gene pool can cause severe genetic defect amplification. This happens in all species of animals. It shows up most effectively in dogs when a particular breed becomes popular a puppy mills are established to meet the demand. The result is poor vision, bad hips, poor immune systems, bad hearing, and even bad temperments.
While some defects can be beneficial to the regions, as has happened in humans based in disparate regions of the world, most are harmful to the species as a whole. If there is a significant portion of genetic material available to create a diverse gene pool for an extinct, near-extinct, or endangered species, then cloning should be considered. Otherwise, an inferior version of the species could be the result and as such could possibly become re-extinct easily as a result of genetic maladies.
I'll never be as good as I want to be. I can only be as good as I am.
Oh yeah, we're monkeys, right? Since when do monkeys wear Huia hats and hunt a species to oblivion for the fun of it? Since when is it natural to eradicate total species just so you can sit on an ivory toilet and smoke out of a rhino-horn pipe and stuff another Huia feather in your hat? That has NOTHING to do with natural selection and survival of the fittest. By your rules, given our numbers, we will literally destroy life on earth and die as a species leaving only bugs (that survive UNATURAL pesticides) and plants (that survive the mutated bugs that survived the UNATURAL pesticides). And that we can consider such a thing seems, well, unnatural. How many monkeys does it take to build and set off a nuclear weapon? This isn't a creationism vs evolution rant - it's just a way of saying that we are totally UNATURAL as a species and go totally against the grain of natural selection and survival of the fittest which rules nature. By this, we have the ability to destroy the world, or restore it from past UNATURAL acts - which appears some smart people are attempting to do so. Hey, save the whales, recycle and all that green mumbo-jumbo...
Ok, I just have to point and laugh here. Does anyone complain when fireants erradicate a species in an area? This is Natural, well, so would whiping every elephant on earth out with machine guns. Because we are PART of nature. No other creature on earth is equipped to stand up against us. I'm a devout christian, but just because God created the Earth doesn't mean he can't change it, or allow it to change and grow after that. Creationism and Evolution aren't mutually exclusive. But certain facets of evolutionism are exaggerated, for instance, if Man were once Ape, then why are Apes not continually in the process of becoming Man? Creationism is frequently overblown as well, some people seem to think that The Earth is still in the exact same state as when God created it, which is obviusly untrue....
The Bible states in Genesis that man is the steward of Earth, we are supposed to watch over and take care of everything while we are here. If we kill off something, then decide to bring it back, then that's just fine.
I wanted to write a much more cohesive essay, but I'm at work and have to go earn my paycheck.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I think this is a great idea. Genetic engineering and biotech is probably the best thing we've ever discovered.
:)
I don't undestand people who are afraid of genetically engineered tomatoes - it's the same thing as normal farming, just sped up.
Now that's not to say we should just start cloning everything indisciminately (releasing a pack of T-Rexes into the wild might be a bad idea) but reviving dead species - especially ones WE wiped out, strikes me as being good Karma.
And if they're tasty too, hell, so much the better.
DG
Better to spend the $$$$ on saving the species in the first place than to blow it on some SiFi dream of bringing them all back.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
I hope they've saved the ovum etc. for the tigers. Because it may already be too late to save them.
...Steve
Can I have all of my telomeres stretched??
-----------------------
To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.
Why not? Obviously the preferable solution would be to responsibly manage populations back to viable levels, but in the case of extinct species, I say go for it. If someone is willing to pay to grow dodo birds, then I say more power to him/her.
Of course I tend to be radically pro-biotech (from extensive Shadowrun gaming) but I can't see much of a downside.
This is probably just blatantly trollish, but here goes:
FRAGILE MY ASS! Our ecosystem is about as fragile as a 30 ton boulder. Why must every wacked out Environmentalist flunky spout off about how "Fragile" our ecosystem is?? It's a PLANET people, No matter WHAT we do to it, it WILL recover if we kill ourselves off, and if we don't kill ourselves off then who cares what we do to it? If you want to keep some Rhino's around for aesthetic purposes, go ahead, I want to eat Rhino steak for lunch every day for a month. Rhino's as a species aren't that important, neither is any other species really... The Earth will recover eventually, and if it doesn't then who cares? It's just one planet out of an unlimited amount. The only motivation we have for keeping it up is that we'll die if we screw it up too bad. The universe isn't going to end if we blow the planet to pieces. We're a insignifcant speck in the universe, get used to it.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Doen't seem quite apposite any more.
...and that is the rejects. As with any "artifical" process you will have defects along the way. Heck, even nature isn't pefect, but it's pretty close when it comes to reproduction. As of now, the success rate for cloning is very small, so you end up with all these geneticly fuct animals. Now, it's nice we have the chance to reverse a stupid mistake of ours, but what do we do when New Zealand Huia bird population is 80% retarded?
hrm...looks like we are getting closer to making jurassic park a reality. yikes!
Mosquitos are good, they take resources from large animals, and return them to a fairly low level of the food chain.
::;;)
Anyways not all mosquitos are bloodsuckers, only the females. The males drink nectar.
Oh, and they perfer certain people, the trick is to bring one of the unluckey as a distraction. And don't where blue (or is that sharks?)
For the record spiders are of the class arachnida not insecta (hexapoda). So they are spiders not insects. Oh and the lady bug is not a bug it's a beetle (Order->Choleoptera). True bugs are members of the order Hemiptera.
Now a fun fact
There are more ants by mass then there are mammals.
Now back to the topic: If they succed the breeding population will be tiny. There will be genetic problems..
This is a good way for us to understand life, and ageing , just don't let em touch my insects or spiders.
Oh yeah. That Huia hat craze in the '20s was an entirely natural phenomena.
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
While they are at it, I hope they clone the Woolly Mammoth, the Wolly Rhinoceros, and any other "Woolly" animals that lived during that Woolly period.
The sheep of the world must be getting pretty pissed that they alone have to provide all the wool for the world. Just think of the wool you could get off a mammoth! Damn! Of course they would also have to genetically alter sheep dogs to be bigger, because a mammoth sure as hell ain't going to get herded by no freakin collie.
Of course, the other advantage to this is that I could finally fulfil my dream of opening a Wet and Woolly, the world's first water park/woolly mammoth petting zoo. It would be a hit with kids aged 6-12, and would be located on the island of Guam because it has a cool name.
99% of all species are already extinct. By all means, we should take steps to preserve those species we deem important. But opposing all extinctions is [ note the clever and accurate use of the singular here ] ahistorical.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Presumably this would result in a species with a small and undiversified gene pool. Isn't this bad? Doesn't it make the species susceptible to extinction again?
Yes, species go extinct all the time, but not at the rate at which we are causing it to happen. I think cloning represents the best bet yet that at least some of the species that are currently disapperaing very fast, will be around for our grandchildren to see ...
...
Diversity of an ecosystem is important if you want it to be stable. Witness the Linux hydra which is constantly developing in unforseen ways
>The warming of the planet is a process, whereas the extinction of a species is an event.
Once the planet is too warm the situation is analogous to the species being extinct. However, if you prefer a different example :
Activist : "That man's hand was chopped off. Let's see if we can reattach it."
Passivist : "No. He must live without it - there are things in which we Must Not Meddle."
Exploring the distinction between a hand cloned using cells taken from the original and the true original might be interesting. A hand cloned from a cell sample taken 10 years ago would be 10 years younger than the rest of you...
Hey, I resent that remark about grave-robbers!
This kind of experiment can and will work eventually. All the people yapping about Jurrasic Park can just shut up already... it's difficult enough to reintroduce wolves to the wild without people spreading nonsense FUD!
:-/
These animals did not die out for natural reasons; we slaughtered every last one of them. One could argue this is still Darwinism, and because the remaining Huia's couldn't shoot back or breed fast enough they deserve to die, but this arguement is flawed. That kind of environmentalism means there's no room on the planet for anything but humans, cockroaches, rats, ants, and e-coli.. not very good company.
We can also bring back the dodo, and the whooly mammouth, and there's talk about that too. Restoring parts of the ecosystem we unbalanced is good overall, the problem is we're only going to restore prey not predators, so we'll still be tipping the balance.
Taking this restoration a step further there is evidence that Neanderthal man died out not by natural means but by homo sapiens moving in and killing for territory. If that evidence is true, should we restore neanderthals? I'm not suggesting a yes or a no...
Lastly, what's the point if the boundless appetite of the world just chews them up again?
I live north of Boston, MA... a lot of towns *mandate* new homes built must consume 2 acres of land, presumably to "preserve open space" but really to exclude economic undesirables (they don't say "darkies" in New Hampshire anymore). As a result of the home building boom, most of the land in this area is gone... mile after mile of suburban sprawl. Where's the habitat? How about the environmental damage every time people take their SUV 4 miles to the nearest convenience store .
Save the animals? There's a bigger issue people miss. Like a virus, we consume the planet and slowly kill it.
I'm not heading to the hills like some hermit or advocating anyone else do this (but we could reproduce a little less often - PLEASE). I am saddened that it will take several MAJOR ecological disasters to catch our attention for longer than the average commercial.
I'm just thinking this is so much waste given our habits. Of course, some insensitive redneck will just accuse me of being an unpatriotic anti-capitalist treehugger with no values.
What about domestic cats?
I'll bet that you'd find most species would kill unneccesarily, if they had energy to waste.
kill all the animals. who needs em. pigs and cows and hydroponically grown vegetables is all we need. put out that stupid sun too it hurts my eyes. we got electric lights now who needs it. I say its high time we as humans assert ourselves and take control of this solar system. oh yeah and chickens.
Moreover, you are assuming that suppressing the technology will head off the evil effects, which is patently untrue. It's been over fifty years since the last time a nuclear bomb was detonated in anger; yet millions of people today still know the ravages of war. And people have been causing extinctions (both through hunting and through habitat destruction) for a long time now, even without the excuse of reintroducing clones later on. It seems to me that these problems will be solved not by suppressing new technologies, but by addressing their root causes, which in most cases have little to do with technology.
> 1. Drop human population levels down to 2
> billion or so, which could easily be done in one
> generation, and
Yeah! bring on the death camps!
> 2. Figure out someway of keeping superstitious
> asian men with small penises happy. Viagra
> donations, anyone?
Oh, that's easy. Just castrate them all. That'll also help take care of #1.
</SARCASM>
---
DNA just wants to be free...
Don't fight the Mother Nature.
Following that line of logic, we should stop:
birth control (if mother nature says you're gonna have a kid, you should have that kid regardless of the quality of life you can provide for it).
any sort of medical research (cancer, aids, alzheimers...who needs to know anything about that anyway?).
any sort of medical ethics (i.e. pulling the plug, Kevorkianesque euthanasia).
everything else that would advance humankind's knowledge of itself or that has a chance of making the world a better place.
Save the children; quit overparenting!
mosquitos pollinate more flowers than bees.
After all, it's only natural to be fashionable.
This isn't what would scare me. Hitler sounds like he had the potential to be a really cool guy. The problem I see is that someone might try to raise 1000 Hitlers.
Nature vs. Nurture... I think that Nature is what gives us potential; Nurture is what focuses us on a particular path. As in, you're born (and even clones are born, today anyway) to be any of a million or billion possible individuals. You're nurtured to be exactly one of these.
Hitler's genes didn't lead the Nazi to war- it was his personality.
-Matthead
>Of course, all the Huia-specific parasites and diseases died out with the bird, so they'll now run rampant and take over the biosphere
Umm, we're not cloning the parasites and diseases. If they went extinct, they'll still be dead upon the recloning of the bird.
Now, maybe the Huia bird was only prevented from "world domination" because a disease or parasite kept it in check, and that species died with the Huia. In that case, we're in big trouble... but somehow I doubt it.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Any complaints may be directed to the brick wall to your left
Woah, you're eerie, how did you know there was a brick wall to my left?!
*looks around for those hidden wal-mart cameras*
Kintanon PH33Rs 13373 Wal-Mart H4X0Rs Now.
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
The main problem with this is that people aren't learning the lessons. Extinction rates are still increasing exponentially. Poachers don't have any guilty nights over the animals they kill - most of them are doing it to get money to take care of their families. Most people don't even know when another species goes extinct, so where's the lesson? There are many problems to be addressed - but I don't think that the way to address them is by closing off a possible avenue to bringing them back. I honestly don't feel that it is immoral to keep a species alive in zoos, and would wholeheartedly condone places that keep species alive in controlled environments - because it's a step in the process to bringing them back. Only one step, but progress.
:) I'd suggest checking out the Wildlife Preservation Trust - founded by Gerald Durrell. Their work is excellent, particularly their captive breeding and reintroduction program.
With such a limited genetic pool, it is unlikely to be feasible in the near future to actually reintroduce a species with any success. But then again, although the cheetah went through a genetic bottleneck (all cheetahs are genetically similar enough that you could graft skin from one to another without a rejection problem), they are still here. Even with the limited genes and the homogenous population, I still say it's better to have the animals/plants than not.
Some problems to be addressed are: habitat destruction - where can we put these animals, if they were driven to extinction by lack of a habitat to survive in; the human factor - if people are hungry, if they need firewood, if they need money, they will continue to hunt these animals and destroy their habitat; then there's that genetic problem - limited genes make for a less healthy population. So they're problems - they can be solved! Maybe not right now, but then again I never thought I'd be around when cloning finally became an option for extinct species - and yes, I have been waiting.
For more information on captive breeding and reintroduction (and maybe a little less dogma
Wildlife Preservation Trust International
Leilah
~ Leilah
How will the 1920's bird genes stand up to 1999 diseases? Wouldn't it be cruel to 'recreate' an animal whose immune system can't cope with modern illnesses?
Um, what he said. I agree completely. Ever hear of a fellow named Heisenberg? He came up with this neat idea that You can't observe something without changing it. (paraphrased).
He was talking about particles at the time, but I think it applies to more than quantum theory. We're not just oberving Earth, though, we're part of it. What's done is done, and until somebody finds a way to affect the past, we're stuck in the now.
Technology isn't going to go away. Especially not something that attracts as much attention as cloning. I think the best we can hope to do is use it responsibly. What, I ask, is more responsible than cleaning up your own mess? If we don't succeed this time, then somebody will try again, somewhere else, with another species. You can count on it.
As someone pointed out earlier, Australia's done fine without the bird for years. So if this attempt fails, we won't have done any terrible damage.
If it succeeds, then we know more about the technology. The next time we use it, we'll know more about just what we're doing. We'll learn more about how species integrate into an ecosystem.
How is this a bad thing?
-Matthead
> If we start cloning things now, birds, sheep,
> etc. even to fix a mistake on our part, whats
> to prevent us from having made to order humans
> in the future?
If we *don't* start cloning things now, what's to prevent us from having made to order humans in the future?
In any case, we can't *start* cloning humans and animals now, as we have been doing it for many years already. The big discussion you probably remember from some time ago was about cloning *adults*, not cloning in general.
Cloning is a well established technique, in particular for plants.
According to this reasoning, we should immediately stop trying to find cures for diseases. It's a natural part of evolution. By curing diseases we are trying to interfere with evolution.
An organism can adapt to a changing environment via phenotypic plasticity. No genotypic change takes place, this is quite common.
...Linux!
--
"You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
-Calvin
its amazing to me how you all want so badly to believe man is an animal. like if you could boost an ape's iq a few notches then they'd have skyscrapers in the jungle. there is a distinct difference and you have to try very hard to ignore it.. but you all manage. to say that man's actions are "a part of nature" is to say that when a bird craps on my car its the same as when some punk kid comes by and breaks the windows. the bird is an animal; a biological machine that acts completely on stimulus/response. the punk kid is a human, a sentient however dimwitted PERSON with a mind and a set of morals, however underdeveloped. its amazing that the general masses today have all accepted a system of beliefs that is so fragile it disallows its followers the ability to even acknowledge thier own superiority and greater position in our planet's heirarchy than the creepy-crawlies at thier feet.
here here !!! ... finally someone who sings my song ... forget the animals ... with all the billions and billions of stars with all their planets and possible animals and ecostructures, who cares about some damn bird? ... when we hit new planets are we going to start cloning their old stuff? ... maybe just to study it ... but beyond that, who cares? ... i could see reserecting something we want to study, but not to have it "enter back into the chain of life" ... blah blah blah ... whatever ... and i'm even one of those celtic type tree hugger dips ... i'm more concerned i'm going to have sex and contract death ... mmm aids ... tastes like chicken ... forget the birds, how bout a cure for cancer
-
if knowledge is power, the internet is god - me again
Is it just me, or is the extinction of the Huia an example of European (rather than American) excess?
For all the carping Europeans do about us, you'd think they never did a bad thing in all of modern history.
Sheesh...
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
I would be curious about your plan to drop the population of the earth to 2/5 of its current population in one generation. I think you have been reading too much of Carol Lay's "Story Minute" comic.
Perhaps you are asking for a condom drop over the Vatican. Or hoping the Chinese will 'request' that three of every five citizens 'volenteer' to off themselves.
Or maybe you are thinking of the REALLY easy way of just nuking large areas of the world. Of course, that has some other side effects that doesn't help the situation.
Anyway. It would be perferable if the world didn't have 5+ billion people but dropping it to 2 billion in one generation I don't think is fesable.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Why? Because I think science fiction has people convinced that everything written about in science fiction novels, etc, will be proved true. So, while I hope people would be pretty excited at intelligent life on Mars (or, horrified if they looked like those things in Mars Attacks!) they'd be pretty bored by the concept of blind Martian cave-fish. Or cloning extinct birds as opposed to say, velociraptors or Tyrannosaurus Rex, which would probably be page one news (I hope).
Hope I'm not too off topic here. Any thoughts?
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
There can be 2 genetially identical humans, its just a matter of probability (not including identical twins), that 2 humans will be alike. If i do recall correctly, its something like 20billion humans will produce the same person.... (:. so it's only a matter of time until we have 2 identical non-twins. that and finding them, tee hee.
Pz
I think the idea of a cryogenic, genetic Noah's Ark is a good one, though for a different reason.
Eventually (I hope) we're going to be heading out to other planets and colonizing the universe. Assuming that there isn't already an atmosphere and life there, we're going to have to terraform the planets we want to live on. Which means we're going to need to take along our own ecosystems. And bottling up a square mile of rainforest will kill your cargo space pretty quickly. Instead, we should take genetic samples of everything on earth. Then we can pack a cloning lab and cases of genetic material in our colony ships, so that they can create the flora and fauna when they get there. Much more space/mass efficient than "cold-sleep" or anything of the sort.
Of course, there are a few problems with this.
1. We don't yet understand too well how everything in nature gets along. We'd have to create all of the appropriate bacteria and fungi and all those other microscopic lifeforms that we don't normally think about but which are a crucial part of the ecosystem.
2. Learned behavior would be lost. But how many animals have a significant amount of learned behavior in the first place? Instinct would be preserved, but we would want to find some way to teach the learned behavior.
2a. How appropriate would earthly learned behavior be on a planet with, say, 3 times our gravity? I imagine getting birds to fly in such an environment would be much harder than just teaching them.
"But certain facets of evolutionism are exaggerated, for instance, if Man were once Ape, then why are Apes not continually in the process of becoming Man? " - you said that
Well, they probably are, just they won't end up just like us. But then, it's tough to come up with proof, unless you will live 2 million years or have a camera that will watch...
You might want to avoid eating Bald Eagles. They're the top of a food chain. Plus, they're really just slightly more attractive buzzards. A Bald Eagle prefers to eat carrion, or drive another animal away from their kill, to hunting for it's own food. They're road-kill eaters. I always think about that when I see some hyped up "Eagle" logo on a patriotic or athletic display.
I read in Scientific American long ago that one of the great cats (cheetah, IIRC) had such a limited gene pool that it must have been narrowed down to as few as 17 individuals at some point in the history of the species. Maybe it wouldn't take but a dozen or a score of the birds to reintroduce this species.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I believe people here are getting caught up in their own definitions and opinions about what is "unnatural" and "natural." Consider: we are the only species who pumps oil out of the ground, refines it, and makes cars out of it and drives them everywhere we bulldozed all the trees down. Are bulldozers natural? Well, they are certainly man-made. We use tools on a scale unlike any other species on earth, due to our opposable thumbs and advanced brain. This is why people classify the actions of humans separately from animals...we have evolved a very complex socail, political, and economic system that does not exist ANYWHERE ELSE IN NATURE ON EARTH!!!
Politicians say, "lets make jobs by pumping oil out of the arctic," and soon, you've got oil spills threating species with extinction left and right.
I think its quite obvious the difference between man-made and natural activities. Of course, the speculation on whether the cloning should be done or not still stands...however, whatever you people say will have no impact whatsoever on whether the Australians will decide not to do it.
Secondly, this is all just speculation; scientists do not even know about our environment to know what the ecological impact of a reintroduced species would be. I suggest looking at other species reintroduced to their previous environment. Wolves, for example.
That assumes _natural_ extinction. When a European
;D
fashion craze wipes out an animal, that's another
story all together.
I certainly have no problem with trying to fix a
mistake that we made. Bringing back, say, a species
of dinosaurs, well...their time has come and gone.
(What we consider a "natural" extinction is debatable
too, I suppose, I mean WE'RE part of nature too.)
Oh hell...bring the damn bird back.
-- www.bteg.com | bleh.n3.net | hac47.dhs.org
Mosquitoes are a vitally important part of many food chains. Ask anyone (who knows a tiny bit about what he is talking about) in Southwest Florida.
Massive spraying for mosquitoes kills the larvae which live on the surface of the water among mangrove roots. Many fish feed on these larvae as one of their primary food sources. The massive killing of the larvae caused a precipitous drop in the numbers of these fish. Those drops were blamed on commercial fishermen, and netfishing was banned. Lots of hard-working Floridians were suddenly left without livlihoods.
Worse (in the minds of some) sportfishing declined somewhat as the number of snook and other popular quarries declined. Now, to eat snook commercially, one has to import it from Lake Victoria in Africa.
All because mosquitoes are annoying.
Of course, I'm not complaining too much. They are nasty vectors of disease (I got malaria in Africa from one of the buggers), but is is incredibly arrogant of humans to feel that they can meddle with links of systems that have been in existance for millions of years without causing profound imbalances in those systems.
My two bits.
-awc
Mistake of ours, as in humans. The bird itself might
not be "important", but the things we'll likely learn
from doing it ARE.
I could go on about how you "feel no remorse", but
I'm already pretty sickened by your egocentric
"oh well, it's not MY problem" attitude. I'm sure
they showed the same sort of feelings about the Huia
when they were slaughtering them for their own enjoyment.
-- www.bteg.com | bleh.n3.net | hac47.dhs.org
90% of all the species that have ever existed are extinct. Basically human arrogance, once again, wants to grab nature by the short hairs and tell her what's what. So someone explain to me why it is okay to clone an extinct animal but not okay to clone something that already exsists in the billions?!
The Bald Eagle was taken off the endangered species :)
;P)
list a month or so ago, suprisingly.
The arrogant "i'm more important than some dumb bird"
attitude really will be the downfall of our own species.
(Although, perhaps that would be for the best.
-- www.bteg.com | bleh.n3.net | hac47.dhs.org
Humans are part of nature and can facilitate natural evolution (whether or not nature is a good thing is another topic). Part of this birds or any animal's genetic domanance that will allow it to survive/resurface may very well be that it tastes good to us (or was cute in this case). Besides, how are we to know till we try? If we think better of what we did we can always dine on them back in to extinction. =)
In the words of the great thinker Homer (Simpson). "We don't need a thinker, we need a do-er! Someone who is willing to take action without considering the consequences!"
--Help me hack root on 127.0.0.1
--panZ
--Let's hack root on 127.0.0.1 --panZ
What particular variety of idiotic ideology-driven propaganda are you refering to by misnomer of "the actual facts"?
Evolution doesn't happen - Oh yeah? You don't believe in antibiotic-resistant bacteria then? Doesn't matter, they believe in you.
Why don't you try some real facts. Try looking for books by Daniel Dennet or Richard Dawkins.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
If anti-biotics could kill of all the germs, it would lead to the extinction of the germ species. Even smallpox hasn't been rendered extinct. Improvements in medicine eradicated it as a disease, but they keep some living samples on hand in storage.
It's also been suggested that parts could be
grown on their own in cultures
Or that they can be grown inside the body of the person who needs the spare.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
90% of all the species that have ever existed are extinct. Basically human arrogance, once again, wants to grab nature by the short hairs and tell her what's what. So someone explain to me why it is okay to clone an extinct animal but not okay to clone something that already has a population in the billions?!
There are other easier ways of dying. There's more purpose in making things that will help people out. There's no shortage of toxins or other potential problems humans would have.
The man you want is Pickens! Slim Pickens! Of course, Slim Whitman's probably been known to say "Waaahoooo!" on a few occasions as well...
...that Huia birds taste like chicken. I can see it now....Kentucky Fried Huia! Extra crispy! Yum!
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
As a little bit of an off-topic aside... scientists have found ways to modify DNA as to aviod the shortening of telomeres that usually occurs in replication. And this is also teaching them how to turn the shortening back on - as this is one of the problems with cancer.
Once proper delivery systems have been developed, we may be looking at a new weapon (and a potential cure) for cancer, plus the large-scale increase of life spans. I think they've already had mice living twice as long with the proper genetic changes.
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
It wouldn't (shouldn't) trigger cancer. Adding telomeres only allows the cells to divide more times, not faster/more often, etc.
It's really a pity that scientists can't generate a selective virus that only kills off the most nihilistic.
Michael Chricton wrote the book. I think I spelled the name somewhat wrong, sorry.
That life mirrors science fiction (or art in general) is only true to a limited extent. The less understood the science in question the less accurate the statement is. Jurassic Park only made use of dribblings of science fact mixed in with a lot more fiction to propel the story along. That's ok, its fiction, it isn't an essay.
Suppose tomorrow we find out somebody has reproduced dinosaurs on an isolated island in the south pacific. Also suppose that these people abandon it for whatever reason. If certain predators such as the velociraptor were as efficient as portrayed in the movie the population would quickly die out. The birth rate of what the velociraptor consider foods just wouldn't be fast enough to maintain its food supply. The large herbivores would defoliate the island quicker than new foilage could grow.
The point is that the book was written with a goal in mind: Dinosaurs run amock due to the capricious actions of scientific man. A certain amount of science fact to make the recreation of dinosaurs plausible was added. A whole lot of abuse of science went on to not only let the island run away but generate a sequel (or is it at 2 sequels now?)
These extinct birds are a lot more understood than dinosaurs as well. Details such as its diet, flight range, mating habits and any special dietary staples may well be known. So for instance if it prefers to dine on an insect which is also preferred to be dined on by a 'modern' avian then it can be taken into consideration. Hopefully this is being done otherwise these people aren't scientists.
Speak for yourself.
It's important to remember that Jurassic Park, like many science fiction movies, started out as a book. And the book, like many other by it's author (whose name escapes me at the moment), was written as a possibility. It's possible that something along the lines of Jurassic Park will happen. Would you pay to see a zoo full of "extinct" animals. Most people would, and they would assume that it was safe. And I'm not talking about dinosaurs, either. Just extinct animals.
Fact is, many science fiction books (and movies) mirror life very closely.
Do the obvious to e-mail me.
I think this idea would open up a whole new type of crime -- Clone Murder. If you wanted to snuff someone, why bother killing them? just torch their clone and wait a few years until one of their essential organs gives out.
That's exactly why I think the human species has ceased to evolve. 10,000 years from now (if our species survices that long) this is going to fuel the Creationists' opinions; "If evolution exists then why haven't we changed in the past 10,000 years?"
While I think its great that we're finding cures for diseases and we have all sorts of medical treatments, I think it has essentially stopped human evolution. Nature would (should?) have killed off a whole lot of people if we didn't have the medical technology that we do. Is this bad? Guess we'll have to wait 10,000 years to find out.
Just some (more) thoughts...
They (some scientist group) claim that all dogs originate from one set of parents. Often there are problems with genetic bottlenecks, but I wonder if it would be surpassed by whatever seemed to work for the dogs.
Also, I wonder what would happen to Dolly's children... Do you suppose they'll start with genetics that are older, or will they actually receive a fresh start. I suppose that phenomenon would carry over into whatever else might be cloned.
Just my 2 cents...
geisel
But as a general principle, "leave nature alone" is simply not an option. Unless you decide to execute 80% of the population, we have to tamper with nature, or nature will execute those people the slow way. Our only option is to try and understand the complex system we are living in a minimize unwanted side-effects.
You may want to check this out:
E.6 What is the population myth?
It gives some interesting insights about how population growth is a direct result of the growing lower class. If you've noticed, in economically prosperous areas, families usually stop at two or three children.
It's my fear that we have come upon a dangerous era in population growth. Countries in economical distress have populations which have large families (partially due to religion, partially due to culture, and partially due to the necessity to feel "human" when your society takes that from you), and conditions are such that they can't be taken care of, but yet aren't so bad that they die (which is what kept populations in check in earlier years, and was the reason for having large families).
What's needed to keep the human population in check is education, contraception, and women's rights.
But most importantly, it's freedom. Economic, political, and social freedom. -- Michael Chisari dominion@beyondtheweb.com
Research HAS to go on.
I can echo your sentiment for the most part, but progress is not necessarily a purely linear thing.
Many people who are the most shrill about how Research MUST go on are really talking about Tenure and scientific grant funding, etc.
What I'm afraid of is genetic variability. It's okay to clone a sheep, as there are a _whole_lot_of_sheep_ out there (try driving through rural England if you think I'm lying), so it has plenty of other sheep with which to mate.
When this bird is created, how many different combinations will there be? Or will we have a whole lot of 'mentally challenged' or otherwise inbred huias flapping about in circles?
-awc
or the Carolina Parokeet. Or the Great Awk.
I hope those NZ researchers can try and find some DNA of a Moa (make ostriches look like capons).
This story goes along with the people going around Siberia looking for Wooly Mammoth corpsicles to clone them...
Actually, not having babies is participating in evolution too.
So is killing babies that don't look like you.
So is sneezing in the maternity ward.
So is Teletubbies... er... oh whatever....
I wonder whether it will ever be possible to release the neo-Huiua back into the wild? We're finding out that many species have a 'culture' that is passed along by learning, and which includes many things that are necessary/helpful for dealing with the environment. But the NH will only have what comes on the chassis.
It may be possible to cross-foster them with other birds, but that might mean that the NH does not behave like the original.
At any rate, it will be educational to the extent that it shows us how much of that species' behavior is purely genetic.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I'm just wondering how raising an animal without parents will affect it. For many 'simplier' creatures it won't matter. But imagine trying to recreate a more 'social' species like ants or chimps. What would the first ant do by itself? How would the first chimp learn to act like an chimp? There is a lot of 'stuff' which make up a species but is not contained in its genes. Learnt behaviours would be lost.
...it probably ultimately won't help the cheetahs, which I read somewhere are incredibly inbred (or genetically homogenous), and even if environmental pressures on them disappeared, they'd probably be doomed to die in a human generation or two anyways...
OK, folks, this sounds all nice and noble, but it is a damn bad idea. Some of these points have already been made; others have not. But here goes:
1. If the attitude becomes "don't worry, we can always clone 'em later," we'll have no reason to protect endangered species anymore. This is bad, because
2. At the present time, cloning is not sufficiently advanced to be a truly viable replacement for reproduction. And seeing as how there's only that one cloned sheep running around, has anyone checked to see whether or not Dolly is capable of reproduction? We could be pseudo-breeding a bunch of sterile animals, and have to keep cloning them, in which case the quality of the genetic "copies" will degrade in much the way that a copy of a copy of a copy etc. of an audio tape does.
3. Introducing a species into an ecosystem, without full knowledge of how it interacts with the stuff that's already there, is a BAD IDEA . Cases in point: the Australian feral cat problem, chestnut blight, and even some attempts to reintroduce captivity-bred endangered species into the wild.
4. That reminds me, do cloned animals have the same "survival instincts" that their normally-bred counterparts do? The whole thing could become a big old exercise in futility if not.
I understand the nobility of the instinct. But you know what is paved with good intentions
"The bats are doing just fine. There are hundreds of them. I have a terrible feeling we're in trouble." -Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
I hear it's resulted in the widespread infection of many people by nihilism.
of human interaction is true; to say that it is unnatural is false. Humans are a form of life on earth that is outcompeting many other forms.
While I think it's sad, I also think that bringing these creatures back would be doing them a disservice. They were naturally selected out.
You might think that dogs are stupid because they die in accidents; I can tell you that I've seen dogs looking both ways before crossing the street! The stupid dogs are dead. Who's to say that animals aren't adapting right now? They are gaining the ability to survive in a human dominated world!
I will say this though... if they are going to do any cloning, then the subject of the cloning should rightly be an animal that humans have caused to be extinct. If the animal were to escape captivity, multiply and survive then it has earned it's right to survive.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
I am truly surprised by the amount of negative reactions from the /. community to this issue. I would have thought a much more positive response to this application of technology (shows what happens when you ASSume.)
Not that the cautionary post are without merit. It is always good to consider the ethical AND potential adverse ramifications of new technology.
Yet I would like to address some of the issues raised.
1. The money should be spent on saving the species we have/the money would be better spent elsewhere.
Well, I agree to this argument (saving the species we have is of crucial importance to the quality of life on this planet imho.) BUT people and organizations attempt all kinds of projects all the time. While I might question the priorities-ITS THEIR MONEY. If it is to be publicly funded I might have a bigger problem with it (but i'm not an Austrailian). If the funding is private then it is a nonissue-they can spend the money however they please.
2. Jurassic Park argument: Man should stop f***ing with nature. we've done enough damage already.
Again, this is extremely reasonable and I DO believe we should be VERY CAREFULL. The reality is however that we "f**K" with nature ALL THE TIME. in fact we CANNOT HELP IT. MANKIND IS A PART OF NATURE. Everything we do causes a positive or negative impact on the creatures/ecosystem around us. It is crucial for humans to stop believing that they are not a part of nature.
With the above in mind I think that bringing back species via cloning is a worthwhile project (although I would rather see the technology applied to revitalizing current species on the endangered list.)
The two most important issues/problems in my mind (assuming the actual cloning could be successfull) would be
a. The fate of the individual animals and
b. the dangers or reintroducing a formerly extinct species into thew wild.
All care should be made to assure that the cloned animals have an excellent quality of life.
The issues involved with reintroducing a "reanimated," poulation into the wild are the most tricky. That kind of thing requires EXTREME caustion but HAS been succesfully accomplished. I am thinking particularly of successfull reintroduction of the red wolf in the eastern United States.
All and all i'm for the idea, and feel that cloning ccan be an extremely positive tool for preserving current species and understanding the living history of the planet.
Nature will take care of it. If 80% of the birds are unfit, they will be eaten, fly into tree trunks, etc, and be quickly replaced by the most competent of the remaining 20% and their offspring.
:-)
This has worked well in the past.
Has any species anywhere ever become extinct because of a loss of "genetic diversity"? The usual result (walruses, cheetahs) seems to be the development of species superbly adapted to their roles, and disconcertingly robust despite predictions of disaster by geneticists.
The wolf population on Michigan's Isle Royale illustrates the principle quite well. Since a single pack colonized the island in the 1950's, each major drop in the population seems to have caused the experts studying them to pronounce them doomed.
The wolves (currently on the increase), apparently refuse to believe the predictions.
Item: aquatic blackfly larvae in northern climates often make up the majority of food that trout fry and other fish consume at certain ages.
Item: It is becoming increasingly popular to dose bodies of water heavily with a bacterium which kills blackfly larvae along with other insects, to prevent tourists - often mainly sport fishermen - from being annoyed by these incredibly irritating flies.
Can anyone besides me see a stunningly stupid mistake being made?
Hmmm...if you're from the US, then they're not in the least bit related to what we commonly call buzzards (turkey vultures), which are classified with the storks. On the other hand, if you're from the UK you're in the right order, anyway, as they use "buzzard" in reference to buteos.
While bald eagles do eat carrion, they also hunt and fish. In the winter, they often eat dead or dying waterfowl in cold parts of the country. I can think of one computer-using species that also eats refrigerated meat, so I'm reluctant to criticize baldies for this behavior...
The cheetahs were doomed, all agreed; in fact, they had been doomed for millons of years, as far as anyone could tell. Any day now... well, any eon now... :-)
Worse! The things are grown using radiation from the largest nuclear reactor in the solar system! Eieeeee!!!
heh. right on! That was fscking funny. :)
Yes, if an endeavour makes money it helps me, but only under circumstances such that it doesn't hurt me.
When I am in doubt as to wether somthing hurts me or not, it probably doesn't - and if it makes money, it helps me.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
some people are going to say thus and reason that this is why they should not be brought back to life. But with that reasoning then I tend to say hey then there must be a reason we have the ability to bring them back...
I'm waiting for a saber tooth tiger to gaurd my lawn
-eric
well, if some of those species were the urban sparrow, the city pigeon and the trash dump sea gull, Hmm...that would be a tempting choice to make...
But I guess I deal with them. I don't feed them. I wish people would not feed them. They wouldn't be around if they were starving. Oh well.
The Subject already says it all. I think, THAT is what cloning can be good for. What do we want to clone humans? Even if the DNA is all the same, there never will be two absolutely same humans! Growing up, learning things, experiencing things etc. is what builds the personality. You simply can't clone that!
On the other hand: Why clone extinct animals? Maybe evolution wanted this race to disappear? No-one really knows. Mankind already dug too deep in the business of nature. I hope, we all won't regret it one day.
CU, Ventilator
--- If OS were buildings, then the first woodpecker to come around would erase 95 % of civilization.
...yeah, but what about all those marsupials in your nearest neighbor, Australia?
Even if we caused the extinction? We've already interferred with evolution and this is potentially a method to reverse the damage...
It really isn't practical to save them all. There are so many species in danger of extinction that it would be impossible. I'm not saying that we shouldn't try, but rather that we should start with the ones that taste best.
Mosquitos are good, they take resources from large animals, and return them to a fairly low level of the food chain.
Oh, I get it.. like Socialists.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
"You'll have pie in the sky when you die, sucker."
p.s. You're not going anywhere, anytime soon. You'd have to drag a whole biosphere with you, and you've obviously clueless to what that even means.
One large problem they'll face is trying to clone enough of the different subspecies of the bird in order for the species to be genetically viable. This may be jumping the gun a bit (if they clone one, I'm sure everyone will be excited), but without a wide varied number of specimens to clone the species will eventually die out from genetic stagnation anyways. Perhaps they're just scraping off cells from those high-fashion feathers. There should be enough of them floating around that the feathers used will all come from different genetic samples (different birds).
Salis
Favorite
Bad idea? Everything we do and take part in is evolution. How can humans (animals) alter evolution in any way that it should be altered, because we are a part of the "web". If we kill off a species -- that's part of evolution. If we re-create them again - evolution again. I dont see how we can mess it up too bad... it's natural no matter how I look at it.
-- Bryan
Posted by Red_Chaos:
I think it is kinda cool to try cloning it, but I think it may set a precedent for those that hunt without care, that they can hunt all they want without worry because "Oh that's okay, shoot all you want, they can just clone some more" This could be bad. I do think it is cool that they are going to try to clone some extinct species though.
I think cloning to reintroduce extinct species is a good idea with one or two drawbacks:
1) The cloning material must be of a wide enough DNA diversity to stop any potential freak mutations or dangerous inbreeding occuring in the future of a species. i.e. wide DNA sampling = good genetic dispossition in species
2) If I remember correctly the Dolly the cloned sheep had the problem of her cells aging at 6 times the normal rate. If this problem is isn't sorted out it brings about the problem of when should DNA be taken from the original species for use in cloning? When the animal is an embryo?
3) What happens if the ecosystem which lost the now extinct species has compensated for it's loss? Should the species still be reintroduced?
I think that the idea of cloning extinct species and then reintroducing them has a great deal of merit when we(man) have actually caused their extinction but I also think that any reintroduction should be considered very carefully not only for the sake of the reintroduced species' future but for the ecosystem that it will dwell in as well.
In other words don't get carried away in your enthusiasm and think very carefully about ny repercussions.
It might not work for all creatures (for instance the carrier pigeon which needed great numbers to survive) but at least we can possibly get back some of the critters we've killed off over the years.
Wouldn't it be something to get back the dodo?
Naturally they should not try to bring back *every* species, that would be impossible. They should only try to bring back extinct species that were large and carnivorous. Then something can go horribly wrong and it'll be up to a rough and ready team of bickering biologists, a journalist, and maybe a plucky grease monkey from brooklyn to save the world.
Of course, with the tendency that Man Playing God With Nature has for going horribly wrong, we can go ahead and assume this will happen with any cloned extinct species. A scourge of angry, man-eating passenger pidgeons does have a certain appeal.
The university thinks i'm a physics major. Actually i'm a physics minor, and a bad movie major.
Another damned comic
+++ NO CARRIER
What is wrong with biotech? And what's wrong with the products thereof?
I don't see any problems with disease resistant plants. And I would have no problems with being disease resistant myself ('cept that they can't use the same methods, for many and varied reasons). While I suppose it is possible for the crops to become weeds, if it's done right (which requires research and experimentation), then there will not be problems
I also have no problems with experimentation on animals, and yes, humans. Being a furry and a transformationist, that's actually one of the things I look forward to in the next few decades (I wanna new body!).
Experimentation on humans also has major medical benefits. If your kidney was becoming disfunctional, would you rather they grow you a new one from your own cells (or DNA at least), or have to wait and, maybe, get one from a donor? I'd rather have the first, myself.
Knowlege is a valuable thing, and all stopping the research will do is slow down the increase in knowlege. It won't stop it, as illicit research will still continue, but it will make it be in the hands of those who would use it to do exactly what those who wish to stop the research are fearing. And we will have no defense, no way to counter it.
I'd say biotech is one of the best things to happen to us this century. Without it, many of the advance that proponents of nanotech envision would be impossible (particularly medical nano). Without it, we would be unable to grow skin for burn victims, and, according to some reports, soon entire new organs.
Rhys Dyfrgi
---
END OF LINE
Disease resistant plants are fine. But, then, so are anti-biotic resistant diseases. It's all a matter of point of view. Remember, diseases are animals too, often enough.
And humans are a damned tough species. The epidemics now raging in parts of the world (AIDS, etc.) might be needed to make us stronger. Don't try telling that to humans who are hurting from the diseases, however. We're talking about the 'big picture' ethics here.
Weather the species in question went extinct directly as a result of us, or as a matter of natural selection makes no difference. Fundamentally every time we have tried to tamper with nature it has led to unexpected consequences that we end up regretting. I feel this is a very bad idea
I believe that Dolly had a lamb (named Polly?). Is she aging at a normal rate?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
>We should let them lie in peace, and learn our lesson from their absence
That's a losing strategy. If we have the ability to correct past mistakes then we should attempt to do so. If the attempt fails then we should find out why and have another go.
Passively accepting the consequences of dumb moves (like accidentally genociding a species) is a recipe for disaster :
Activist : "The world is heating up and the ice caps are melting! Let's see how we can fix things."
Passivist : "No, we'd better not do anything - we might make it worse, and we deserve it anyway."
Hah!
OK, so I can perfectly grow a sack or five of spare parts, and have no fear of ruining my body, because I can just pop a new liver, set of lungs, or whatever in?
Yeah, sure. I bet the tobacco industry would just love that. *smirk*
Of course, this logic falls apart at a few critical points: how bad does your quality of life due to the malfunctioning organ have to degrade before it's time for a replacement?
Also, even if I can just pop in a new heart after a few too many five-egg omelettes with lots of nice greasy bacon, that's not going to fix my blood vessels. Do we have to clone those too?
And of course, eventually folks will run out of quality replacement parts, and whatever bad habits have been established are going to be even trickier to break (smoking, too much alcohol, too much caffeine, too much fat). It's not going to make us immortal.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
with Gödel or such paradoxes if you'd just :))
admit you were God
Zen Master Flash.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Otherwise, we'll likely wind up with brothers and sisters mating, which isn't a recipe for healthy critters.
The solution is not as simple as just cloning the extinct creatures. You have to solve the question of "Why are they extinct?"
As man takes over more and more natural habitats and destroys the homes of these creatures, we are killing them and the only way of life they know. Will cloning them stop that destruction? No.
The Great Panda is going extinct from this destruction and the fact that they don't mate all that often. The only thing that kept them around before was a large enough space to have a large enough population to overcome the slow reproduction rate. Is cloning going to solve the space issue?
In the case of the Huia bird the reason they are extinct is that man hunted them down. Cloning might work in this case... but it won't in all others.
Persnickity
- Persnickity
the problem is that there won't be enough bird samples. they will start out with a very limited population, and they will have to inbreed. after they start inbreeding genetic disease will start poping up, and in a few years you'll have toothless bango playing birds.
dont_forget
Being a furry and a transformationist Ignorant question time....What are a furry and a transformationist?
It will be most interesting to see how the animals actually turn out after they have been successfully cloned. It may give some interesting insight into instincts...
Just my $0.02.
-- K
We are a part of nature too! So if we interfere, this interference is part of natural evolution. Many people seem to believe that man made stuff is unnatural, as if we were something special next to nature.
Consider this: :)
This bird has of course an evolutionary advantage, as it is able to be cute enough in our view to motivate some effort to genetically restaurate it (as much as this is possible). You can bet that some ancient 10ft tall slimy hairy monster creature that went extinct won't get this privilege.
(I assume that billg or some other weirdo with bucks is not a big fan of ancient 10ft tall slimy hairy creatures
Assume Noah did do his Ark thing.
Assume the civilization that got wiped
out was very advanced.
Did he collect animals or dna samples?
If our civilization nukes itself tomorrow,
will there be wild stories about an ancient
civiliztion flying in space 10 thousand
years from now?
Just something I wonder about.
As I understand it (and this ain't exactly my bag, baby. my ex-girlfreind was more into this) if a population doesn't have sufficient gene diversity, it doesn't matter how many of them exist. That's one of the problems with species that are "virtually" extinct. You can't rely on inbreeding, or (in this case) cloning a species that can't continue it's own existance without our help.
The ability to clone extinct species is a noble one. And somebody, I hope we can recognize when a species is endangered, and propogate their species without letting them become extinct.
But in the end, we can't allow these advancements to distract us from the problem of why these species are being destroyed in the first place.
--
Michael Chisari
dominion@beyondtheweb.com
Perhaps passanger pigeon? Thought the carrier pigeon was still around crapping on statues and whatnot.
;-)
"I believe the children are our future: nasty, brutish and short."
Man was not once Ape. Modern apes and man share a common ancestor.
Nitpicking aside, evolutionary theory doesn't predict that all life forms will converge into a single species, man or otherwise. The notion that human beings are the pinnacle of evolution in this sense does not exist in biology. We're certainly the most intelligent product of evolution, but not necessarily the most successful in evolutionary terms. Among other things our species, being young (very young if you believe creationists!) has not stood the test of time.
What you are saying sounds nice, but it's a WAY too simplistic view of the situation. You have to think a little deeper than "we killed'em so it's our duty to bring'em back".
Steve
Clone away - I hear they taste great, AND they're less filling.
I know many of the extinct animals out there are only extinct because humans decided that it would be fun to put bullets into as many as possible of them. What does that have anything to do with nature? If anything, we are the ones who screwed up, and why not use are ALL GREAT technology to actually do something right for a change, and not worry about money, or publicity, or whatever drives the world today, but bring back something that we have destroyed. Do you tell people who want to work on protecting the O-Zone arrogant? This is the same thing, bringing back something that human's natural stupidity destroyed.
Hmm... but a cabbit that can turn into a space battlecruiser would be the most fun, and I think that would require really advance nano-tech, not cloning... I guess I'd have to ask Washu how she did it...
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
No text.
Evolution doesn't happen. Species adapt to environments, but thats as far as it goes. Get the actual facts.
*awaits the flames*
--
Dave Brooks (db@amorphous.org)
http://www.amorphous.org
Take a deep breath and take your lithium dad.
.02
my
quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
So, the position that I see in a number of the messages here is that this technology will enable humans to engage in behavior that is unethical, irresponsible, and/or downright stupid.
Need i point out that humans were doing stupid, irresponsible things without technology?
Creating new technologies (biotech to replace a ruined liver, for example) is simply a cheap (and temporary) fix to the problem. Society needs to grow up and think about some implications.
Heck, there's nobody twisting your arm to make you eat that bacon and omlette, nor to hunt animals for trophies.
Some would argue that massive (and often incorrect) ad. campaigns and an entire culture are pretty big pushes in that direction though.
I mean, if the only thing stopping us from seriously soiling our own nest is that we lack the technology to do so, then we are in real trouble.
Yes, i think this is true. look at what happened with the atomic bomb and the nuclear buildup that followed it. (a pretty big step towards 'soiling the nest'). our hope is that we get scared -- we do eventually understand the ramifications (detente). For the Cold War, it took Russia disintegrating...hopefully next time we'll stop before that (NOTE: I'm not saying russia dissolved because of the Cold War, i'm saying the Cold War stopped because of Russia)
New technologies are always being invented, and many of them carry the potential for abuse. Must we suppress all of them too?
No, we must suppress the abuses. And if we are incapable of that then yes, the technology should be stopped because we aren't ready for it. Raw capability gets us nowhere as a species.
One effect of Biotech not mentioned in this thread is that it often favors the rich. (high cost means only the rich can pay to fix their 'mistakes')
That's a pretty short sighted view of things.
If us killing them was a part of natural evolution, then us bringing them back is too.
The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient... - High Road to China
Dolly's cells were not aging at times normal, they considered them aging abnormally because they acted like cells that were 6 years old (or whatever the age of the mother was) instead of cels however old she was.
:P. Genetic Engineering is the marketing of the future.
Oh and about the cloning and such, I can't wait till companies decide it would be great to patent a creature. "Get your Pepsi Cabbits!", heh. I want a cabbit damnit. Forget beanie babbies, how about living ones that are that size
SPAM openly welcomed. I do charge a 500$ proof-reading fee though. Any complaints may be directed to the brick wall to y
Most species are becoming extinct because of sprawling humanity. Not because mother nature thinks it's a good idea.
?TimB
I sure hope the DNA sequences are released as open source. I want to contribute.
Has anyone looked at the impact that this will have on the ecosystem? What are the natural predators of this bird? What is their food source? Will they slide right back into the food chain? You can't just reintroduce a species unless you have looked at its impact. Sure, it's nice to bring a species back to life, but will that upset the already fragile balance of our ecosystems?
What a boon for countries like the USA, where laws protecting endangered species impede so much human activity. I've always been mildy amused by the value judgements involving what constitutes a species worth saving. There are quite a number of microbes, for instance, that we would all be quite happy and guilt-free if we could wipe them off of the planet.
As for the cute and cuddly ones that we fuss over, a cloning library is just the ticket.
But, back to species and habitats. A biologist once taught me that they are inseparable. And it's the habitat, not the species, that humans need to be self-interested about.
So, how do you clone a habitat?
What better way to say "I'm sorry I clobbered your species to keep my wife happy" than to bring them back from extinction, and it would appear to have broad popular appeal, BUT I'm a little skeptical about the ability to find intact DNA after 70+ years of non-optimum storage (in what, formaldahyde, taxidermy?). it's a complex molecule, needless to say - one may be successful but hopelessly disfigured, etc. (not sure how much 'error correction code' DNA uses).
But then PETA will start griping about the Huia farms that spring up when the birds are raised for their feathers and economicaly exploited.
Chuck
Don't Panic!!!!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Kiwis live in a different niche to the Huia. Anything that did fill the Huia's niche would be an introduced species, and they're not rare.
Maybe we're the way life has found to come back. Just a random thought that smacks of determinism, but perhaps nature's way-finding skills are far beyond the mere feat of temporary gender-toggling, and include the patience to allow a species to advance to a point where it can clone the other species.
And, as I have asked in a previous message, what's wrong with JP anyway? If you'll recall, all of the problems on the island were caused either by Hammond's attitude (aren't these fun toys?) or Nedry's greed (let's turn off the safety system so we can make a few million). The cloning of the dinosaurs simply made the punishment for their errors swift and harsh. I think that if someone a little more down-to-earth had been in charge of JP (perhaps the Australian (?) hunter guy) then things would have gone much more smoothly.
I do not have the ref. handy, but there *already is* a repository of sperm and egg cells in a freezer some place. I think its wicked cool. One thing I learned in "Out of Controll" is that evelution itself evolves. We as a species have simply upped one on the current state of what evolution is. Think of cows, and most of our food sources. They are not evolved in the typical sense. We are now old enough and responsible enough to start stewarding evolution. Infact, we already have started. As a sociology proffessor once siad "You can turn fish into fish stew, but you cant turn fish stew into fish" meaning, the way I see it, "Pandora has left the building", ie: We have no choice but to continue to take matters in our own hands. Sad to say, but true, we are now in charge of shaping this planet, and if we choose sentimental aethestic reasons for breading / reincarnating species, so be it, so long as our intentions are good, and we do not delude ourselves about the new and grave role we play in the continued propigation and deversification of life.
After all we killed the damn species, if we choose to bring it back and it waxes us some how later down the road, (giant attack birds! oh my!) we either: a) deserved it, b) did not pass the mustard. Are we gonna get species edipal?
(note I dont have ispell installed on my browser, just read FeNetIcaLLy)
- Joe Bob
OK, you clone the bird. But then you have a bird with no living parents.
Is flying a learned behavior? I don't know.
Food gathering? I suppose that's something humans could teach.
What about courtship rituals? Learned? Instinctive? both?
I don't know much about birds, but I do know that quite a few kinds of mammals don't develope correctly without at least a little interaction with, or at least observation of, members of their own species.
Still, cloning is better than extinction.
As far as the argument that people will think cloning makes extinction OK, I doubt it. Cloning puts a very specific - and high - dollar value on an extinction. That will get through to people who can't see the value of something without a price tag. Many people, particularly in business and govornment, who aren't willing to act on something that they can't put a number on. The fact that you can't put a price on the extinction of a species without economic impact prevents these people from taking extinction seriously. "Oh, it'll cost $50 mil. to clone a spotted owl? Maybe it's cheaper to just let them breed."
Fear my wrath, please, fear my wrath?
Homer
We apologize for the inconvenience.
(dark, eerie voice:) All they wanted to do was bring an extinct species back to life.. All they wanted to do was to give nature a second chance.. .. and now they're back .. The flesh-eating Huia birds from hell! Buahhahahahahahaahahha..
But something went wrong. Something went very wrong in the laboratory, which had fatal precussions.
From director John Woo. Starring Bruce Willis as a farmer from New Zealand, and Gary Oldman as the master of the Huia-birds.
Coming soon to a park or forest near you.
What does intelligence and superiority have to do with being an animal or not? We just happen to be the smartest animals on the planet. Or at least the only ones with hands and a voice box with large enough brains to do the stuff we do.
The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient... - High Road to China
IIRC Dolly's offspring have normal length telomeres, as they were produced via sexual reproduction. But although Dolly's telomeres are shorter, I do not know if she is actually aging faster. Time will tell, I guess.
Ethically, I think it makes perfect sense to undo damage that we have done. From a purely species-centric standpoint, more biodiversity makes for a more beautiful planet, as well as a healthier environment for us, overall. From an altruistic standpoint, our arrogance and shortsighted selfishness caused the extinction in the first place, and if we have the opportunity to undo our actions, we should.
Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from
Kythe
Unless you decide to execute 80% of the population, we have to tamper with nature, or nature will execute those people the slow way.
We are nature, no less, and no more than the mouse I stepped on this morning on the way to work. If I hadn't so carelessly destroyed that rodent, a stray cat might have attacked it for food. Is the cat more or less natural than I am because she doesn't wear loafers?
Even if we do slaughter 80% of the population*, then the impact of several billion bodies that must be buried, burned, shipped off of the planet into the sun / distant part of the galaxy of your choice, is (drummroll, please)NATURAL and will effect change on the planet. There is nothing that we can possibly do to reduce our imact on the world around us. The only difference between our impact and the impact of so much Anthrax, is that humans are aware if their effects, and the microorganisms responsible for Anthrax are (believed) to be unaware.
*(not recommended, I detest hate crimes, don't use this against me,I'm not really a homicial maniac, all thoughts are mine and not my employers, disclaimer, etc)
This screams of Jurassic Park, and i think that the consequences may end up being the same as we saw in the movie. In addition, anyone ever hear of Gattica? You know the movie were people with any sort of defect were considered less than human? If we start cloning things now, birds, sheep, etc. even to fix a mistake on our part, whats to prevent us from having made to order humans in the future? we have to start thinking with more than just intellect, and start listening to that little voice thats saying "Hold on a second! Do we REALLY want to do this?"
My understanding is that Dolly's genes have shorter telomeres than would be normal for a sheep of her age, which could explain the more rapid aging. But I'd guess that her offspring would not have this problem (babies don't inherit their parents' shorter telomeres). So even if a cloned bird has a shorter life, its offspring might not.
While I think it would be cool to resurrect some extinct species by cloning, that will never be as effective as stopping species from becoming extinct in the first place.
I'd flame you, but it appears you're expecting me to, so I assume you already know what I'd say if I did. So it's not worth my time to do so.
I do have a question, though...If adapting to an environment isn't evolution, then what is?
Although I strongly believe that we are forcing way too many critters into extinction long before their time, there are certain problems with cloning extinct species.
If a particular species of creature dies off, it is generally do more to a change in its environment than over hunting or the like. Bringing back that species into an ecosystem that is not the same one that it previously existed in could be very dangerous. Cane Toads in Austrialia, or Zebra Muscles in Lake Champlain are examples where a single species of creature got moved into a foreign ecosystem and very bad things are happening because of it.
Although the ecosystem where these things are being reintroduced may not be that different than the one that they left, (Having been gone for only 80 years) we should be very careful about bringing back such creatures, lest we make an already screwed up ecosystem even worse.
There is no silver bullet. Plus, werewolves make better neighbors than zombies or vampires anyway.
But to be honest, to bring back something that was in no way NATURALLY selected against ...well, I don't have much problem with that.
my .02
quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
Posted by Solar Jetman:
If a man hunts something to extinction, that's natural. If our farts cause a certain plant to wither and die, that's natural. If we kill a bird to extinction because a few million bead-swinging freaks think that the feathers are funky, that's not natural.
Sadly, it is natural, if you want to get technical. Humans, like animals, have reproductive instincts. Just like birds with pretty feathers tend to reproduce, so too do attractive humans -- only we're so smart, we've designed customizeable "feathers" for ourselves to make ourselves more attractive. Thus wearing the whatever-bird feathers, as well as platform shoes or Tommy Hilfiger shirts, is a natural, if rather twisted, result of our reproductive instincts. So we slaughter other species so we can make more of our own -- doesn't that just brighten your day?
Which from a evolutionary point of view is a perfectly good reason as it gives you an increased chance of mating with women of objectionable ethics.
We should
1. Drop human population levels down to 2 billion or so, which could easily be done in one generation, and
Of course you're volunteering to be one of those who are "dropped", right?
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
Yeah, sure. I bet the tobacco industry would just love that. *smirk*
The mortality rate of humans is still 100%. Everyone eventually dies.
Choosing to eat fatty foods or smoke cigarettes may well for some people improve their quality of life enough that the benefits to them outweigh the costs. That's all there is to it. Living an "unhealthy" lifestyle is not immoral, it's simply a choice. Like choosing to cross the street.
The ability to clone organs no more contributes to immorality than does the ability to take antibiotics. Every bit of medical progress lets people live longer and healthier lives and this should be celebrated.
So smoke 'em if you got em... :-)
I play Nerd-Folk!
Here's the thing. In theory, resurrecting an extinct species is a Good Thing. Because of this, the idea of cloning an extinct species seems to be the ideal solution. In reality, however, this is hardly the case.
First, you see, you need to find intact DNA of the birds. Considering how long it has been, finding intact DNA of a Huia bird is going to be exceedingly difficult, particularly since you need to find the DNA of more than one (at the absolute least you need one male and one female).
One male and one female, however, is hardly enough. You need to find hundreds. Why? Well, consider this: if you clone two birds and mate them, the offspring will all be siblings by definition. Who, now, do you mate these with? Your only choice is to mate them with each other. This leads to an entire species of inbred birds, which (because the birds would inherit every single recessive gene which the parents posessed) would be devastating to the gene pool (even more so than unrestricted hunting, which is why cloning animals of an endangered species also would not work).
Our technology isn't at the point where engineering the necessary differences into hundreds of clones is a feasible thing. We haven't even mapped out the Huia bird genome yet; that alone will take years (if it's even possible, given that the species is extinct so the effects of the various genes cannot be observed).
That's the thing. This would be a great idea, if it could be done. But with our current technology, it can't. We're simply not at that point yet. It's a good dream to have, but for now that's all it will remain: a dream. Any attempts to do this now will result in nothing but millions of wasted dollars, money better spent developing the technology that will make this dream actually work.
That problem may be solvable by cross breeding with a similar bird, and then selectivly breeding the offspring back to the original genome. That is already being done with a few species where it wasn't possable to find enough breeding pairs to produce a robust gene pool.
The result isn't exactly the original species, but it is close, and has enough genetic diversity to be viable.
Maybe those scientists should wait 25 years (or more) if their goal is to "restore" the Huais (sp?) into the ecosystem.
Why wait? In the ~70 years since their extinction their (former) habitat may have already changed enough in their absence so that it no longer supports them. The longer one waits, the less likely success will be.
If the first few tries fail (due to the limits of current technology) by all means keep trying. But to just give up and wait for technology to catch up is pointless.
The technology used to put men on the moon was pathetic compared to what we have now. But if we'd waited, we'd never have done it. Despite improved technology, humans haven't walked on the moon in decades. And (Ross Perot voice here) that's just sad!
Pardon my digression - I just watched "From The Earth to the Moon" again.
What do they plan to do with these newly revived birds once they 'make' them? Are they going to be re-released into the wild? No doubt in 70 years the ecosystem they once lived in has changed so that reinserting them may prove harmful to either the birds, the land, or both.
Man, I wish scientists would actually be a little more broad-minded about what they're doing.
By getting babies we constantly interfere with evolution - so is it a bad thing? But seriously, if man destroys an animal for stoopid fashion reasons would you call that natural? I call it sick. If Biotechnologies will be use in an ethical
sound way they can do a lot of good. Very similar to other technologies we have gotten used to.
Well, in the extremely UNlikely case that this situation were ever to occur, I'd allow the research. I would not, however, run screaming through the media saying "this is the greatest thing since the wheel and sliced bread!" unless I was VERY sure that it was that good.
...]
... and yes, RU486 has uses other than abortion.) But I'm tired. G'night. :)
As I've seen posted online elsewhere "If I invoke the deity Electricity, it doesn't matter from its perspective whether I use its power to light my house or electrocute my neighbor. The society I live in will have definite opinions on the matter, however."
Nothing wrong with progress or with scientific research. Lots of things wrong with progress-for-its-own-sake. I'm also VERY "iffy" on genetic-based science thanks to my experiences in the les/bi/gay community. Find us a conclusive "gay gene," and folks will start aborting genetically gay fetuses. OTOH, find "straight" folk with the "gay gene," and the fundies get more proof that we're a bunch of perverts who can change if we really WANT to. Damned if we do, damned if we don't. It sucks.
I'm not sure what the answer is. Disallow "abusive" uses of new technology? "Abusive" by whose standards? Like I said before, we can't just "implant" a moral code of any kind into someone's brain. [See the previous paragraph for one very obvious way in which this fails
The thing that you can't ignore, however, is the very real extent to which politics drives scientific and medical "discoveries." (Compare the history of Viagra with the history of either the Pill or RU486 sometime
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Anonymous Coward wrote:
.02
"Species go extinct constantly. It's a natural part of evolution. By cloning an extinct species, we are just trying to interfere with evolution."
Evolution did not play any part in the bird becoming extinct. Back this one up.
My
quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
As a sociology proffessor once siad "You can turn fish into fish stew, but you cant turn fish stew into fish"
That sounds much like what was explained to me as the First Rule of Tinkering. i.e. keep all of the pieces.
Humans have, thus far, done a lousy job of hacking the planet. We've lost far too many of the pieces, and we're losing more. If we can rebuild some of the ones we've (inadvertently or deliberately) destroyed, we and our world will be better for it.
As with much tinkering, it's a good idea, before proceeding, to consider the consequences of ones actions. No one considered the consequences of destroying these birds. Is anyone going to consider the consequences of restoring them? What's the point of bringing back the extinct birds if there's no longer any suitable habitat left for them to live in?
IMHO this problem needs to be attacked on two fronts. Sure, clone the extinct critters. Stockpile endangered species' eggs and sperm in freezers. But at the same time, work to preserve habitat so that there will be a place for them to live should these efforts succeed.
So we do interfere too much. The best thing we can do is shut up and stay home. Do nothing.
/. about that one), and stop cloning/ experimenting of all animals/ humans.
Now you guys probably think it is a sad thing the bird quit. Would you take the risk of wiping 1000 more species just to try to have 1 back. Why not take our loss and say NO MORE. You now say it was stupid, let's do it again.
Biotech is the worst thing occured to us this century. We must do all to stop genetic foods (I never hear
Ever since we learned to farm, we Humans have found loopholes in nature.
Since farming? It's been longer than that. Humans have been hacking the planet ever since they began controlling fire. Maybe longer.
It doesn't make them apart from nature though. Hacking the planet is what humans do.
Fish swim.
Birds fly (most of 'em anyway).
Dogs lick their balls.
And humans hack the planet.
Just wish they'd get better at it, so they wouldn't mess it up and break things so often.
Who knows... maybe the Cosmic SysAdmin will get tired of their destructive antics and restrict their priveliges one of these days!
The problem with this type of approach (apart from the lack of genetic variability etc.) is the choice of species used the scientists involved-the huia and the moa (they want to clone a moa based on an emu template--perhaps they'll get an e-moa??) are all very nice, but they sit quite far up the food chain, while many of the species that they fed on, or cleaned up after them have been extinct for just as long. This 'science' where the choice of subject is decided by its future marketibility is daft, as even if they manage to overcome the problem of sparse genetic information they have to begin with, the birds may well endup extinct again very quickly, especially as their habitat has been severly depleted-something which is ont stoping as the government has decided that to ensure New Zealand's clean-green image continues they sould log an extensive area of ancient native beech forest on the outskirt of our largest national park...
Personally I think the people involved in dreaming up these ideas should redirect their funds into something a bit more constructive, such as conserving the rapidly diminishing number of native species still surviving-and not just the cut/cuddly/scary looking ones, but also the creepy crawly slimy ones, as they matter just as much...
just my NZ$0.04 (=US$0.02)
It won't do any good to bring the bird back if we don't also take out it's number one predator, opposums. Since it is a marsupial, hence very different from all desired animals in New Zealand, it should have a very different immune system. If we could develop three seperate viruses that would be very fatal to marsupials and release them all over New Zealand at once then the opposum population should plummet to a level where they cannot find mates locally and die off. Not that this would solve all of NZ's wildlife problems but it would help one heck of a lot. You'd probably have to remove all captive kangaroos and wallabys etc. first.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
Just a note to let everyone know I spent some time as a docent for Henery Doorley Zoo in Omaha they are freezing genetic matterial from several endangered species (Tigers, Gorillas, Elephants, ect.) this is not to provide for cloning but for artificial insinmation (they have already done this wioth tigers and gorrillas). The problem with cloning is that in order to have a large enough gene pool to support a spiecies you need appx. 900 different genetic specimines, this is a lot of feather boas.
Public opinion shouldn't relate to what scientists can work on . . . funding and a will to do something should be the ONLY things that affect a scientific project, unless that project would result in harm to others, which returning some stupid bird species from extinction most assuredly* wouldn't do.
Very simply, if other people make a species extinct and this won't affect me and it's not on my land, then I couldn't care less.
If people want to scientifically bring species back from extinction, for whatever reason . . . good for them, if they make money on this then they help the economy which helps me in the end.
If something doesn't affect me, then it's not my problem, and it would be better for the world if everyone could agree to not try to cause or prevent things that don't affect them.
Think about the problems caused by "Save the Children" groups who are trying to save other peoples children from 'problems' which the children and their parents don't see as problems, and which will never affect, for good or ill, the members of the "Save the Children" groups . . .
Footnotes:
* The probibility is astronomically small of such a thing causing general harm.-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Biodiversity requires more than a few birds. The problem with maintaining current populations of endangered species is that there isn't enough diversity in only a few animals to maintain a species without the development of disease and disability brought on through inbreeding. Without some variety, and quite a bit of it, the species won't survive.
Andrew Gardner
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read.
Why don't the scientists use their skill to produce a line of disease resistant trees?
They're trying as fast as possible. Give them an extra 50 million or so, and maybe they'll be a little faster.
I hope the next bird selected for restoration will be the Passenger Pigeon.
Not likely. Trying to return a bird with flocks that big would be very difficult.
Your box dies, disk is dead, CPU melted, it's extinct. Fortunately, every precious instruction and byte of data is stored safely on a dat tape. You methodically rebuild something in the image of your box, and by injecting your dat drive, you can hardly tell the difference (except the cpu is now 10mhz faster, and you replaced the irksome ide drive with a scsi one). When you power on, it's an old friend.
Unfortunately, a living animal is more than just the sum of it's DNA, and a community of animals is much more so.
Since they don't have parents to teach them Huia behavioural patterns (diet, feeding habbits, migratorial patterns, nesting places, etc), they won't behave like Huia, except as much as humans have a record of them.
The net result is that they won't *be* Huia birds for very long. It is also very likely that being re-introduced this way will force their genetic line to drift towards a different niche. Instead they'll be "Huia bird 2000".
I think the other point about the degradation of DNA over generations within an organism has already been made.
Oliver
-- A change is as good as a reboot.
First, the article says that this is a result of a bunch of high school kids who decided to have a 'conference' on the subject. Great for them, and it looks like they even have a few financial backers, but I would be pretty surprised if this project still exists in a few years time.
Second, if this thing does work, it will be very interesting to see how they plan on reestablishing an entire species population from one (or a few) cloned birds. There is a common problem in genetics called a bottleneck. Every animal of a species contains specific genes for certain traits. When the population is reduced so greatly, the genes for some traits are lost forever. (Someone with some experience in genetics can correct if i'm (likely) wrong here). Some genes are lost forever. So the species that will result from this cloning project won't be a nearly as diverse as the original.
Anyway, I know this has been a problem for species like the California Condor, when its population dropped so low.
Third, Dolly the clone is having some serious genetic problems right now. She is not a normal sheep. She is aging quicker, because her very first embryonic cell was not a fresh cell like a normal embryo, but an already aged cell from her
"mother." I wonder what effect this will have on the birds if their entire species is founded this way...? Will they only live half the normal life-span of their original counterparts?
Anyway, I like the idea. I don't have any ethical problems with it, but I think there a lot of practical problems that need to be addressed, and I wouldn't expect this species to miraculously reappear in New Zealand, healthy and unchanged from its original.
LL
"If you are falling, dive." -Joseph Campbell
I can just hear it..heh
give em a fighting chance!
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
it still happened, and eco-systems have adapted over the last 70 years without them. Bah, stupid humans go messing with this kinda shight all the time.
I only take a drink on two occasions - when I'm thirsty and when I'm not.
Brendan Behan
How can you argue that cloning a species to bring it back from extinction is any less natural than hunting it to extinction for hats?
When dealing with ecological issues, we have a tendency to think "this is good because it's natural," or "this is bad because it's un-natural". It's important to keep in mind that not all ecological damage is caused by evil scientists in laboratories. Slash and burn farming and reckless land development have had catastrophic effects on ecosystems worldwide. A single village pissing in a stream can have a signifigant ecological impact downstream. It doesn't take a PhD. to mess up the planet.
As far as I'm concerned, saying that this experiment is "interfering with evolution" is a straw man of an argument. The question we should be asking is how to we keep from unbalancing the systems we have. Cloning the bird isn't likely to have much of an effect, since it's unlikely they'll ever restore the population to viable levels, but it's an interesting experiment.
If you cast Clone on a monster that's only alive because of an Animate Dead enchantment, you end up with a dead Clone.
"if Man were once Ape, then why are Apes not continually in the process of becoming Man?"
At some point in the past, man and the apes shared a common ancestor, but since then we've gone our different ways. You might as well ask if my younger brother is in the process of becoming me (he's not, unless he plans to lose a few inches in height, change the colour of his eyes, etc.).
=DIVIDE BY CUCUMBER ERROR: REINSTALL UNIVERSE AND REBOOT=
"We are a part of nature too! So if we interfere, this interference is part of natural evolution. Many people seem to believe that man made stuff is unnatural, as if we were something special next to nature."
If a man hunts something to extinction, that's natural. If our farts cause a certain plant to wither and die, that's natural. If we kill a bird to extinction because a few million bead-swinging freaks think that the feathers are funky, that's not natural.
I don't have a problem with us going about our day-to-day business (building houses vs. owls) and animals becoming extinct for the precise reasons you cite, but there is a rather distinct line twixt the two.
my .02
quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
This is a great idea! Now we can eat spotted owl, bald eagle (as a sign of nat'l pride), dodo bird, and wooley mammoth (if we can find their genes somewhere)!
;)
Maybe I will open a chain of McSpecies. Everything will be served rare! Get it? It's a pun!!! Laugh!
Corndog
Umm...dolly is aging "faster" because here telomeres are shorter than normal (because she is a clone of a middle-aged animal). Wouldn't that suggest that clones of any species X would gradually see their lifespans decrease? And wouldn't this mean that human lifespans should be almost nil now? Or is the answer "No dummy, telomeres are restored to normal length upon sexual reproduction"...or something like that? I don't know...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
call me a bigot...but I could do without mosquitors...damn bloodsuckers...take all those damn insects...except maybe lady bugs and spiders (which eat all the naturally-god-made-disgusting ones).
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
So when will the white-tipped black feathers become available?
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
By saying that it's okay to clone previously-extinct creatures, we would be condoning even more widespread unnecessary slaughter of creatures. Poachers would feel even more justified in their actions because the scientists could just clone up some more. Farms of once-vanished creatures would spring up to stock hunting preserves.
We should let them lie in peace, and learn our lesson from their absence. Destroying creatures for any reason besides preservation of our own lives (either to serve as a source of nutrition or in self-defense) is an abhorrent practice. If learning that means we have a few guilt trips from time to time, then so be it.
I've noticed that whenever a contraversial scientific discovery or application of a technique is brought up in the press the same thing happens. Everybody points to Hollywood science fiction movies as some sort of proof that the scheme will be the doom of mankind. These are just stories, they're meant to entertain and occasionaly enlighten. The emphasis is entertainment though.
The public loves to see science gone awry and so science fiction authors and script writers use scientific cause and effect hyperbole to make money. This is a shame because in reality science and the scientific method has helped mankind more than its harmed it. Plagues were dampened in the bad old days by the scientific method: A statician noticed a correlation between disease outbreaks and proximities to contaminated water. The scientific method kept our ancestors alive: Eating berries from this bush makes us ill. Science brought us vaccines, analgesics, anti-inflamattories etc.
This doesn't mean blindly accept all scientific concepts or endeavours, but don't point at by-and-large poorly written science fiction as evidence.
Exactly...Unlike monkeys in nature, we intentionally kill animals for reasons other than our own survival.
There are other cloning plans about too...Panda's in China have been approved to be cloned, the Dodo Bird from Africa will be cloned soon so the Dodo Tree doesn't go extict. The European Lion, which was hunted to extinction in the Roman Conquest, is also on the list of animals "People have killed them, we should bring them back".
~Donald / Just RTFM
How do we determine when acts are natural and when they are not? Do we vote? Do we have a supreme authority? Should we form a committee? Are there criteria for evaluation? What defines one case as natural and the other as unnatural? Is there a set of natural set of behaviors?
Do you fundamentally regret having food to eat? What is the difference between us and natural selection?
The wilidlife in NZ became extremely specialised, due to its long isolation. Until man arrived, the only mamal was a fruit bat - all other creatures were birds or reptiles. The birds especially became very specialised with many losing the ability to fly (Kakapo, weka, kiwi etc.). The role filled by small mamals in most other places was filled by some fairly large insects (Weta for example)
I doubt that re-introducing the Huia will disrupt the ecosystem that much. There may be a problem that some of its food sources are now scarce though, which could make its continued survival difficult.
NZ has some really interesting (many extinct) animals. Some would be 'interesting' to clone - the moa, which was bigger than the emu, and an eagle that could hunt moa - now that had a seriously big wing-span (imagine if that crapped on your windscreen)
BTW, there is some serious searching going on at the moment as there may be evidence that the Huia is not extinct. A similar thing happened with the Takahe, which was believed (until fairly recently) to be extinct. Also, blaming its extinction on whites is being somewhat politically correct - the Maori played quite a large part in decimating this bird too.
In my mind, it's ok to bring back animals that we destroyed. The only reason the animal is extinct is because we killed them. It's our moral duty to undo that.
The problem is, once we do that, what's to stop up from bringing back other animals? All humor aside, this brings back memories of Jurassic Park. Some animals are better left gone...and like Malcom said: "Life finds a way." We may claim to have things in control, but in reality, nature rules us all.
I just hope that this doesn't spark a huge "Let's see what animal we can raise from the dead!" race.
Do the obvious to e-mail me.
You'll walk into your local pet shop and place your order for your man-eating lion. Two months later you come back to pick it up, take it home, and let it eat your annoying neighbours. Cool...
Granted, this case of cloning birds is silly. This is being done as a PR stunt for the cloning industry to show the positive uses of cloning. Since it's politically correct to help animals, people will have a hard time arguing with this.
But as a general principle, "leave nature alone" is simply not an option. Unless you decide to execute 80% of the population, we have to tamper with nature, or nature will execute those people the slow way. Our only option is to try and understand the complex system we are living in a minimize unwanted side-effects.
Tampering with nature does produce unexpected consequences, but if we do our job right, the benefits outweigh the consequences. Penecillin saved millions of lives (perhaps even a billion), but it generated some drug resistant diseases. Do we regret penecillin? No. Someday we might, but as long as we can stay ahead of the bacteria, we'll be okay.
Or how about the plow? That gave us agriculture, (which gave us cities, etc.) but also indirectly helped cause the overpopulation problem we have today. Do I regret being well-fed? No! I have faith that we will figure out a way to deal with overpopulation.
So, you're right that "every time we tamper with nature, it has led to unexpected consequences." It has also led to some expected consequences which are often beneficial to us. The only decision we have to make is which is more significant.
I have mixed feelings about this whole subject. On the one hand, I don't like seeing species dying out due to human actions... ecological accidents (oil spills, etc), greed (whale hunting, over-fishing, wholesale deforestation, etc), or what have you, and I think that cloning has a chance of at least repairing some of the damage that we cause, intentionally or through ignorance.
:^))
On the other hand, this whole cloning business, for some reason, makes me wary that this is just another mechanism for humans to avoid taking the responsibility for their actions. I think that (in America at least... can't speak for other countries), we already are impressing upon our children that it's OK to foul up almost anything and continue on as if almost nothing had happened. Shoot someone... well, you'll get out in 3-5 (unless you're rich, in which case you'll be home by dinner). Screw up your life on drugs... well, just go into rehab (and/or onto the cover of Time). Watch too much TV and forget how to think... well, everyone else is doing it too (Must-See TV my ass!). Destroy a bunch of birds or elephants or what have you... well, just clone up a new batch (and be their custodian, no doubt!)
I think that humans have a tendency to over-control their environment as it is, for the sake of aesthetics, or profit, or just plain stupidity. Sure, I enjoy the conveniences and gizmos of modern life, and a certain amount of reality-manipulation is necessary in order to bring these about. Likewise, I can think of several uses for cloning (replacing destroyed limbs, engineering less-perishable/healthier food, blah blah blah), so I don't have a problem with cloning per se. However, cloning exerts the ultimate control over life itself, and can compensate for, nay, negate reckless behavior, simply by re-creating what existed and was destroyed. Reckless behavior shouldn't be coddled, and I think that cloning can be another mechanism to do just that.
If you want to approach this from an ethical slant, how are future generations supposed to understand what is "right" and "wrong" if there are no lasting consequences of their actions? I mean, (and I hope it NEVER gets this bad) I can envision a time when, cloning being employed fully, a man is murdered by another man, and the murdered man is simply re-cloned into existence. There is no indelible mark on history, no permanence to an action... just hit "Undo" a few times, and it's all better, Johnny. Substitute "species" for "man", and I think where I'm going is apparent. Further (and this is going WAAY out on a limb), suppose that there is some sort of karmic balance to the universe. Is cloning now a tool with which undermine that? Are we, in effect, actually BECOMING the gods that we worship, or disdain, or deny?
Obviously, I have no idea where we are going with cloning, but I think that before we rush off and do something because we can, we might want to take the time to consider whether we should (thanks, Michael Crichton!
Just random musings, don't mind me..
Thanks for your time,
NULLphoenix
KFC is going to love this. :)
Origional, barb, etc
--
CodeRed, the lower user #. No relation to SirCam.
I think having babies is participating in evolution.
#include " userfriendly.h"
Yes he is, except that Crud Puppy is not 10ft tall. ;-)
How about when humans become extinct? Should
the next dominant species on Earth clone us?
You are exactly right. However by that logic, our re-introduction of the species by cloning is ALSO part of the natural process. Welcome to Godel's world.
Hmmm... let me see here...
An environment changes a bit; a species adapts to fit it. Then, a while later the environment changes again. And the species adapts again. Then, a while later...
Wait a minute. Isn't that evolution? ^_-
Ce n'est pas une signature automatique.
This certianly has raised some interesting ethical issues. Should humans use their knowledge of cloning to reverse the damage done to the environment/ecosystem by them? Part of me says yes! go for it! we need to make amends for the damage we have done...but another part questions whether this is really nescessary.
Many posters here have argued we should use this technology to reverse our "interference" with the natural order and evolution. But this is premised on the idea that human interference is "outside" of the natural world and the forces of evolution. I would rather point out that, even in the heart of the most concrete of our urban jungles we are still and intergal part of the environment. Human activities in this sense are the agents of change and evolution, not the opposite. Any study of anthropology will show that this is nothing new. Mastadons and Mammoths are extinct, in large part, to being hunted by stone age humans about 12 - 15 thousand years ago. Should we then clone these animals and bring them back? After all we did cause their extinction too. Evolution is an ongoing process which is very simple - adapt to changes in the environment or die out. Humans may be the agents of change for the environment, but evolution determines if animals will die out because of it. Mammoths could not reproduce fast enough to avoid being hunted to extinction. Panda's seem to be going in the same direction. In the face of a drastically changing environment, they were and are being selected out. What casues the change is truly irrelevant...hunting, global warming or a 6 mile wide asteroid hitting the Gulf of Mexico...surviving and adapting in the face of that change is evolution at work. Cockroaches, and various forms of bacteria have thrived and evolved quite quickly due to these same, "man-made" changes. Are they as life forms any less deserving of the attempt to survive and evolve as a passenger pigeon or dodo? Think about that next time you take anti-biotics or use a roach motel.
That is not to say we shouldn't be more careful in the way we act. Humans as one of the most powerful agents of evolutionary change on the planet (I think a six mile wide asteroid is the only one that might be more powerful) also have a reponsibility to do as little damage as they can. But to think we will do no damage is absurd. Every animal and plant on the plant will do damage in some way or another. We as the human animals just happen to have the intellegence to control how much we do.
So given all this, should we clone? IMHO only if we can find a case were a species went extinct or eveloved into another species and then re-evolved back to close to its original form could cloning be warranted (and barely) I would find cloning to be the short-circiuting of evolution, not the cure for it.
PS. The evolution of whales come close to my criteria above but not quite.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
People who believe in protecting our planet and our ecosystems forget that we spit in nature's face every day. Ever since we learned to farm, we Humans have found loopholes in nature. Since nature has been here for billions of years, the fact that we have almost reached nature's raw power (only things such as earthquakes and hurricanes are beyond our control) in a few hundred thousand years of evolution shows how powerful we are. Nature's well being really shouldnt be a consideration for us as long as we are sure that humankind will survive. In a few hundred years Earth will probably only be a place kids read about in their history books anyway. The real question here isnt whether this is morally right, but is it worth our resources to learn a little more about genetics. I think it is, and only that can really be argued.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Biomed ethicists do for biology what Microsoft does for computers-- attempt to undermine progress, feed FUD to the public, and when they absolutely can't hold back a new development one second more, they take credit for it.
What ethical issues can this raise? It's not exactly a velociraptor we're talking about here. Yes, Dolly might be aging faster than normal, but that's a technical (and probably fixable) problem, not an ethical one. I'm glad they're going ahead with this, I hope they learn a lot of new stuff that will someday save/extend our lives, and I'm glad that the oversight of allowing ethicists into the discussion didn't kill the project. Be more careful next time, kids.
Doing nothing lies somewhere between completely impossible and utterly impossible. The home in which you advise staying has an impact. Your death will impact other organisms. How much is too much? How can we determine what is allowable?
Why is it sad that the species went extinct? Why do you phrase the risk as you do? Bringing back a species could provide new ecological openings. Do you know what the consequences will be?
I hope you don't like eating. Nearly every crop resembles wild plants little. Livestock are very different than related wild animals. The genetic techniques are new, but the idea of modifying organisms to give us more food is not.
Things die. That's just how it goes. It's unfortunate that a fashion trend should lead to an extinction but like it or not human beings are just another part of the global ecosystem. Nature has taken it's course and the system has spent the past 79 years adapting to the loss of Huia bird. Any change that humans deliberately make now will throw a heavy wrench into the works of the delicate eco-balance.
Many of us in the technical community are so enthusiastic over the miraculous results that we lose sight of the results of our actions. The far reaching effects on systems like the global eco-system are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to predict. It is a far different thing to prevent the slaughter of a species than to revive one long since gone.
The same is true for many fields of science. As medical science extends the life expectancy of humans and we continue to pop out offspring at an ever increasing rate, what will happen to our resources? Where will we all live? What do Huia birds feed on primarily? How has the comunity of Huia food bugs adapted to the extinction of the birds? What else feeds on Huia food bugs? What will happen if the Huia returns?
It really is about survival of the fittest. Just be happy that you're among the most fit to survive.
All in all this is an interesting project, but it and others like it will have no affect on the eclological future. Huuumans(note Ferengi accent) are making a mess of the pond they live in and destroying large numbers of niche specific mutations at a rate that is rivaled only by mass extinctions caused by cataclysmic geologic events and impacts of extra-planetary objects.
Life will continue to exist, what forms of life dominate, and the complexity and diversity of their forms can vary in the extreme. When we speak of 'saving the world' and 'preseving bio-diversity' what we are tryng to say is that we wish to maintain a static view of/stable condition within a dynamic system as a matter of self preservation. We wish to have our cake and eat it too. There is no need to preserve the snail darter, there are plenty of organisms that will fill that ecological niche an more will mutate/evolve to fill them. The real need is not to micro manage individual species (regardless of their esthetic appeal) but to stem the tide of extictions in general lest the neccessary relationships needed to maintain the ecosphere which suports us become unvilable and consequently so do we. The only ways to do this are to either
stem the growth of human population expansion or to migrate off the planet into artificial environments where 'bio-diversty' is defined by the fauna and flora in each individuals gut.
morturii
Some people have voiced opposition to this cloning because the reintroduction of these birds to the wild may cause problems. Do their predators and prey still exist? Is their ecosystem in general still intact?
:)
I say, forget about their ecosystem. Forget the idea of reintroduction all together! Who cares, when all I want is a white-tipped black feather farm!
John
JURASSIC PARK. Apologies for those who think I'm an AOL user with a caps key...
Another item is that different evolutinary periods have different optimal aspects. If our ancestors would have been less cruel, the whole planetary life might have evolved to nothing more than some green weed.
The ecosystem might not be able to support this specific lifeform anymore (I know, it was there, and was beaten up to a pulp, but things change.) Bugs that were eaten by this feather-ball might not be there anymore, or it might feed off something that is used by another animal. If we clone them to stick'em in zoo's, there is no problem, but otherwise, I think that re-insertion is not a viable plan.
The thing died. Let's leave the dead where they are.
Sun Tzu must have been running Linux...
- Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him. (Sun Tzu, The art of war)
Marriage is considered capital punishment for the theft of a goat in some third world countries...
Folks, really,
Cloning something that we've either driven into extinction, or that has died out on it's own, is playing God.
I strongly believe in Darwinism, and if the animal died out for natural reasons (without humans being the accountable cause) then we must leave nature be.
If the animal died out as a result of direct human abuse, then by bringing it back we are openning the door to further exploitation of that animal. This would not only be cruel to the reanimated species, but to all others, since the sense of human responsibility vis a vis the environment would diminish.
Once we see that we can be irresponsible with life, simply because we have the means to reverse extinction, we will be less willing to stop ourselves. Consider pachyderm hunting. It is now illegal to kill elephants and rhinoscerosesusesi for tusks and horns. It still happens, but the governments forbid it. If governments had the means of assuring that the animal will not go extinct, then the hunting bans would be lifted or relaxed, or at least, bribing officials would become even more common. In either case, the animals would be slain left and right.
We may be able to bring back the dead, in terms of species, but we'd be less respectful of the lives of individual animals (for one) and the welfare of entire species (for another) if we knew that all we have to do is splice some genes, and prosto chango!! We can all have a pet do-do bird, carrier pigeon, or velociraptor.
This is all just my opinion, but we get one chance at life after all. If we die (you, me, individually) we may be cloned as individuals too - but it won't be 'us' anymore. We only get one chance through this world, and if we screw it up, it's a lesson we have to learn, and a consequence we - and those who follow - must face.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
If we clone all the animals that we, being the intelectually superior beast that we are, chose to kill for one reason or another, greed, greed and oh... probably greed, where are we going to put them. The world is having problems with taking care of what is there as it is, with no help from us. What about the mountain lions in the US? You think that farmers and people in the burbs, and perhaps even the city would enjoy a bunch of cloned mountain lions dropped on the doorstep?
Animals that have been hunted to extinction were done so because they were either more valuable dead, in the way, or accidentaly a byproduct of another stupid choice that we have made. Undoing our mistakes will only cause us more problems. Unless we create enough for zoos. Then, we are abusing our resources. What would the point be, creating an animal that is just for display?
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
Why clone extinct species? Why this love of organisms that prove unable to survive in this day and age? What's so redeeming about the Huia bird that it deserves another chance to prove it's fitness? Cloning is one thing, but continuing to mess w/ the work of evolution only crowds the planet ...
Very interesting--there's a couple of very important questions in there.
That this sort of a thing can be used to right wrongs that man has perpetrated in the past, such as hunting an animal to extinction, definitely sounds like playing God. We already have the power to make a species extinct; should we have the power to bring a species back?
Assuming it is even possible. Just because we can create a Huia bird physically--cloning the DNA and have one grow to maturity--is a totally different question than whether we can create one that can function in the wild. Since there are no Huia birds left in the wild, how would the cloned bird develop its instincts? How would it mate? How much of these things are ingrained in DNA,and how many of these things to animals develop by watching and imitating other animals of the same species? (basic nature vs. nurture question)
Though there may be nothing wrong with "playing God," it raises some practical questions. What if the Huia bird cannot function without an established "Huia culture" (or whatever--I'm sure there's a technical term for what I mean) from which to learn? Is the Huia bird going to go down in history as the species we caused to go extinct twice? Or will it be the first of a class of "welfare species", that the various governments involved will have to support through specialized personnel and habitats (e.g., zoos and preserves)?
This definitely has interesting possibilities, whatever the ramifications of them are.
(darren)
Spielberg and Hitchcock, together at last!
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
I believe there is an effort underway to store large amounts of sperm and eggs from endangered animals. This is obviously better than cell samples, as complicated cloning is not necessary. You just fertilize the egg and implant it in a similar species.
Genetics is only part of the species. Equally important is the role that they play in their environment, instinctive behavior, and learned behavior. Specialized species may not be able to survive if their niche has been destroyed. Instinctive behavior is inherent in brain organization, but the feeding instincts of the young are evolved to complement the parenting instincts of the adult. A discontinuity in this chain could have unpredictable effects - a very literal chicken and egg problem.
One thing that can never be restored are the learned behaviors that each species aquires. Chimps seem to have a form of culture, and while lower animals of course have much simpler traditions, there is still information there that could be lost. Killing a species' meme doesn't even require killing the species - just those members whose brains host the meme.
To anyone who doubts the worth of these more nebulous aspects of a species, I suggest you take a closer look at the amazing interplay of life in the coral reefs. They are disappearing, and when they are gone, no amount of cloning will be able to replicate the intricate web of cooperation and competition.
Well said. Mind you, cutting the population by that much so quickly sounds a bit optimistic.
The current rate of extinction is a symptom of what we're doing to the planet. Has anyone worked out how long before there's no 'natural' landscape left? The UK probably has very little natural land as it's nearly all been farmed or deforested for house and ship building.
Would having your telomeres longer make you start growing again and sprouting fresh new organs? Look, I'm 9'11" and have four arms. Let's play some basketball! Sounds like it could possibly trigger cancerous cells.
You're correct about the bottleneck; however, there's not much of a difference between reviving an extinct species, and restoring one that's almost extinct (in the case of the California Condor). Either way, the bottleneck exists. Your second point about the premature aging of the sheep is explained thusly: there is a strand of DNA called a telomere which dictates the cell age; it shortens each time the cell divides. The reason Dolly seems older is because she began life with pre-shortened telomeres in her DNA. However, any offspring that she, or any other similarly cloned animal, were to have would have normal-length telomeres (assuming a "natural" birth).
There's an interesting book called The Human Body Shop that discusses lots of biotech issues. One of the uses for cloning humans that has been proposed is maintaining a clone (genetically altered to not grow more than a brain stem) for each person, so that if we ever need an organ transplant, we'll just rip one out of our clone. Perfect donor, no rejection.
Of course, the scientists don't mention where we are going to keep all the clones (apparently, the Earth's population hit 6 billion on Sunday). I imagine this will be a service for the Very Rich only.