Scientists may be able to reverse extinction
About Michael John ScottMr. Scott is the owner and publisher of Mad Mike's America. He is a U.S. Army veteran, career law enforcement executive, and dog trainer. He is a university professor, and criminal justice consultant, holding several degrees, including a master's in criminal justice and human services. He has completed the requisite coursework toward his doctorate, and is still working on his dissertation.
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People have been destroying entire species since man first walked upright, and there’s no evidence that they’re stopping anytime soon. Countless species have been completely annihilated over the last few hundred thousand years.
If unlawful hunting of elephants for their ivory continues at its current pace they will be extinct within 50 years. Pic courtesy of thesaintonline.com
Good news may be on the horizon, however, as researchers now believe that some of those species may not be gone forever, reports the New York Times. Are we talking about cloning? Well yes and no.
Cloning requires an intact cell, but advances in technology mean that it could be possible to bring back an extinct species by using genetic material to create hybrid cells to clone from a closely related species. Researchers using cloned cells have already tried to bring back the Pyrenean ibex, though the baby animal created survived just minutes. Efforts to bring back Australia’s extinct Southern gastric brooding frog have so far yielded only embryos that failed to survive.
The efforts to reverse extinction raise many ethical questions, and it may not be desirable to bring back some species, including the huge flocks of passenger pigeons that used to carpet American cities in an inch-deep layer of guano, says the director of the Stanford Center for Law and Biosciences. But ethical questions aside, he is among many scientists who would love to see mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, and giant ground sloths roam the world once again. “We are not talking Jurassic Park,” he says. “We are talking Pleistocene Park, 100,000 or 200,000 years ago,” and “there are an awful lot of cool things that died within the past 200,000 years.”
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James Smith
March 20, 2013 at 7:29 am
Saber-toothed tigers? Current tigers have enough problems surviving without competition from a larger, more efficient predator. Maybe if the Saber-tooths agreed to only prey on the giant ground sloths? OK, I’m being snarky again.
Michael John Scott
March 20, 2013 at 8:51 am
Yeah but saber toothed tigers are seriously cool
Marsha Woerner
March 20, 2013 at 12:40 pm
What a can of worms we are potentially opening! I love elephants, and I don’t want to see them go extinct. And I think that woolly mammoths would be really cool. But let’s just think about it, shall we? woolly mammoths went extinct. Sabertooth tigers went extinct. We killed off passenger pigeons. There are billions of bacteria, and there are a fair number of diseases – not the least of which is smallpox – that we have seen fit to annihilate, either intentionally or by accident. And the less known animals that we have wiped out are also a consideration!
Who are we to decide which species “ddeserve to” be reanimated? How will that affect our planet? Do we know the appropriate balance between carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores? Bacteria that we consider helpful and therefore would like to bring back could be terrible for the current environment!
Oh, the whole idea is just scary; and it’s not just scary in the Republican fashion (you know, those who are scared of everything), but scary in a real fashion! There is the old tired anecdote that if a butterfly flaps its wings on one continent, it could make huge changes in weather on a different continent in a different time. I think of reversing extinction in the same way! There are so many considerations!! I can’t even touch on it!
RickRay
March 21, 2013 at 11:46 am
As long as we don’t ever clone Rethuglicans we have a chance.
Michael John Scott
March 21, 2013 at 1:29 pm
A butterfly flapping its wings…..chaos theory. A big fan here.
Bill Formby
March 20, 2013 at 2:27 pm
This process is a for real process. I have been following it for a while. If anyone is interested in more information here is a link to the Revive and Restore Web Page. http://longnow.org/revive/candidates/
They have some really cool ideas and there are some serious scientist behind the process.
Norman Rampart
March 20, 2013 at 7:15 pm
…and life goes on mate.
Humanity may be more a virus than a lifeform on the Planet Earth but we are here and here we will stay.
As a result many species will become extinct because of Ivory traders and seal clubbers and Rhino horn poachers et al.
That’s the world old bean.
I don’t like it, you don’t like it and all sane/reasonable people don’t like it but that’s the way it is.
If you ever fancy popping over to Africa to hunt and kill a few poachers I’m your man!
…long as you can teach me which end of the bloody gun will kill the bastards!