Bringing Back The Wooly Mammoth: An Ethical Dilemma

back extinct animals is very controversial but we need to bring them back to restore ecosystems

In 1993, Steven Spielburg’s Jurassic Park introduced the concept of bringing extinct species back. In 2003, a team of Spanish and French scientists took Spielburg’s movie to the next level—they successfully brought back the Pyrenean ibex, a species of wild goat (93). With increasing rates of extinction, the scientific community is debating whether or not this process of de-extinction should continue to be pursued. Although it would be remarkable to visit an exhibit featuring a saber-tooth tiger or woolly mammoth, these animals went extinct for a reason; humans should not bring back extinct animals, but instead use the funding for more practical purposes.

These will explain the bad things that de-extinction will provide to the environment and history. In the article 5 reasons we should bring animals back and 5 reasons we should not it states, “Make people less concerned about future environmental destruction.” This means people will be less concerned about it as they know they can do the same thing that they did to make them extinct in the beginning. “Wipe out other species. Just because an extinct species once had a niche in the world, doesn’t mean it does today” \a species went extinct doesn’t mean it has to be brought back in this world. Nobody needs to play god and try and fix what we already did. “Is it our moral obligation to bring back extinct species that have died off as a result of human activities like deforestation?” As a conclusion, the actions that humans did became the consequences that helped the animals go extinct and who says that as soon as these animals come back that everyone who does these things is gonna quit. For example, are we gonna stop cutting down trees are we gonna stop eating meat are we gonna become vegetarians so that animals that already had a chance can come back again? “Is it worth the time and the money to bring extinct species back?” What was said earlier these animals already had a chance, should there be money going to this scientific research or project when we could be helping the homeless or the less fortunate or we could the money to

Scientist may be able to revive the animals and bring them back. But however if they do the dinosaurs, and all of the carnivores will kill the human species. The people will have dangers everywhere the walk. The human race will never be safe, even if the are in there house They will always have to worry about being killed by the animals, and the dangers. Some people might like to bring the animals back, but it would be stupid to because we would all get killed. That’s why scientists should not bring back the animals.

If scientist bring them back ,which they should not, they are just trying to reverse our mistakes. In the article it states “Just because we can bring species back from the dead, doesn't mean we should.” The society will not know whether they could resume its old ecological niche. The article states “ There's no way of knowing whether, say, a passenger pigeon would be able to resume its old ecological niche…”

Recent breakthroughs in biotechnology have now made it possible to materialise what once appeared to be purely fictional - the revival of extinct species.

It seems that genetic engineering is one of the only sciences that can pull the species out of the whirlpool of extinction for another 100 or so years, but it

The main ethical and moral issue comes with the out come of the extinct species enter the wild. Firstly, my view is that recreated extinct species equals alien species. My definition of alien species is plant, animal, or microorganism that is not currently living in a place but are transported into the area. This means, all extinct species are alien species to our current environment if we bring any of them back. They might be the most abundant species on the area when they were alive, for example, the passenger pigeon was once the most abundant species in North America. However, once they went extinct, the food chain and ecosystem began to not depend on their existence. Therefore, the question will be, what happen when we introduce there extinct species into wild? And does the happiness outweigh the risk?

(12) Next, the scientist would need to get the chromosomes into the nucleus and the nucleus into the cell, and of course, the cell into the surrogate mother. Giving birth to the correct species and having it live is just one problem though. Once the correct species has survived birth and is successfully growing, the habitat the species used to live in must be completely recreated. Unfortunately, habitats have evolved without those extinct species so now they will not be able to survive in that habitat. (12) Creating that desired habitat is another colossal task in ensuring the survival of the extinct species. Another problem is discovering the species in the first place. Once it has been discovered, the scientists and archeologists have the challenge of deciphering the DNA from the remnants of the area it 's been buried in for the years since its extinction. In the past, the common approach to placing DNA into an egg was first emptying of its own genetic material. (2) An electric shock was all that was necessary to make the egg start dividing.(2) After it successfully divided, scientists would take the developed embryo into a surrogate mother of similar species. Most of these pregnancies failed and the ones the went through resulted in the baby having health problems. (2) Nowadays, scientists have developed new ways to clone and revive animals using tools that are not as dangerous. Also, we now have the ability to “persuade” adult animal cells to

“The subject of animal cloning has provoked debate about the ethics of interfering with nature as well as about the danger of using laboratory means to accomplish what habitat preservation and other conservation measures cannot” (Gugliotta A3). Now there is talk that they are going to start cloning animals that have been extinct from ten to thousands of years ago. Scientists are contemplating the possibility of cloning a 20,000-year-old woolly mammoth from a block of ice in northern Siberia and are planning to use an elephant for it is surrogate mother (Gugliotta A3). This is just crazy, I don’t think that I need to remind every one of the movie Jurassic Park. Do we want to move into a world of genetically engineered animals? I definitely do not; these animals became extinct for a reason and who are we to say that it is time for them to roam to earth again?

There are many reasons as to why it is necessary to bring back extinct species. These reasons include, the achievement of gaining a greater understanding of the resurrected species, why they went

Reviving extinct animals is a mammoth task. De-Extincting animals can have major advancements, but also can have major setbacks while trying to bring back prehistoric animals. On July 30,2003, a team of Spanish and french scientist reversed time by bringing an animal out of extinction only to see it go back into extinction again. The scientist tried to revive a wild goat known as a Bucardo (scientific name is Pyrenean Ibex) which went extinct when the last female Bucardo died of natural

There are three main processes which can be used to de-extinct a species. The first process is called back breeding, which is a form of artificial selection, where traits are taken from an existing species which are similar traits to the extinct species. This process involves selectively breeding animals with a phenotype that resembles the extinct species. For example, scientists could attempt to mate two very hairy Asian elephants which have phenotypes that resemble extinct mammoths. This process of cloning extinct species is already underway

Have you ever imagined how it would feel when extinct species, like woolly mammoths and passenger pigeons, are brought back to the Earth? How would it be like to revive long dead species? Obviously, many would imagine it to be amusing and fascinating. There are numerous discussions ongoing that address the prospect as well as the impacts of de-extinction and cloning. I believe that de-extinction and cloning, though seem fascinating at first, are not really worth millions of dollars and hundreds of hours being spent for them. First, we should be protecting the endangered species so that they do not get extinct, rather than reviving those that are already extinct. Second, there are numerous problems with de-extinction like tiny market, ethical issues, and some more technical such as the complexity of resurrecting extinct genes, and then interspecies cloning. Moreover, we have heard about several scandals and cases of misusing genetic technology and cloning, due to which it has been a topic of constant public debate. As the saying goes ‘prevention is better than cure’, instead of spending limited resources for the research on reviving a few species wiped away by humans, conservationists should focus on preserving the endangered ones.

However, before taking this class, I had not understood the extent and the rate of species extinction. It was very interesting to lean from the video about the mitigation measures human beings are putting in place to reduce the effects of species extinction. The two most interesting measures were the seedbank at arctic and the idea of cloning of extinct animals from DNA collected from fossils. Such ideas beg one to ask, “What is the next technological idea?”