The Science and Ethics of De-Extinction
Should we bring animals back from the dead?
What if we could bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction? The question sounds like something out of a Michael Crichton novel, but it is a question that scientists are asking themselves even as this is written. With advances in reproductive technology, including cloning and gene editing, the idea of bringing extinct animals back from the dead has gone from science fiction to science.
There are a number of species being considered for what is being called de-extinction. One of the most recognizable and plausible is the woolly mammoth. Since scientists have measurable amounts of woolly mammoth DNA and the fact that the woolly mammoth is similar enough to the standard elephant, it is not inconceivable to think that we can one day bring them back. But that raises an interesting and hairy question. Should we?
The initial knee-jerk reaction is to say yes. Absolutely. Why not bring back species from the dead? Some people feel particularly strongly about species that were driven to extinction by human interaction, like the dodo or the passenger pigeon. But the issue is more complicated than that.
The Science
Recent breakthroughs in genome editing techniques have made the likelihood of de-extinction…
