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I am unconvinced that we know enough about life’s engineering to do something like this safely. I am doubly unconvinced that private industry will take the risk

I am unconvinced that we know enough about life’s engineering to do something like this safely. I am doubly unconvinced that private industry will take the risks seriously. This sort of project is steeped in classic misguided pie in the sky human thinking - let’s live on the moon or terraform mars instead of fixing our mess on this planet! Let’s resurrect an extinct species instead of saving the ones we’re about to make extinct! And then the idea that if the population gets out of control, well, we could just cull them. What, because we didn’t do a good enough job the first time?

huitzitziltzin 2y ago
What’s “safety” here? I don’t intend the question to be trolling. What’s the risk of bringing back a wooly mammoth? Sure it could die of a weird disease bc we didn’t have the full genetic code. And yeah I’m equally unconvinced from the article that we actually can do this, but it’s unclear to me what the risks are if we can and do? Scenario: Bring back one to one hundred wooly mammoths and… X worst case scenario happens. What’s X in your view for the wooly mammoth? I can’t think of any that seem actually bad but maybe my creativity is lacking?
- troad 2y ago
  > What’s the risk of bringing back a wooly mammoth? I imagine a big one is the needless and possibly intense pain and suffering for the surrogate mother elephant, and her experimentally-GMO'd calf. Elephants are highly social and by all accounts quite empathetic animals. Also the opportunity cost - elephant populations are highly endangered and every pregnancy cycle used up for this research is one less actual living elephant.
- doodaddy 2y ago
  As a few others have pointed out, animal welfare is one. As you point out, disease is annother. And another is the instabilities that can arise by introducing a new species to an ecosystem. Do we really have an understanding of where the mammoth fit into the food chain? How it fit into its environment? I’d expect the answer is a resounding “no” because we don’t even fully understand this dynamic for plants and animals that live today.
GuB-42 2y ago
> let’s live on the moon or terraform mars instead of fixing our mess on this planet! Why not both? We are 8 billion on this planet, we can fix our mess and do all these crazy things. And I don't think "de-extinguishing" species is particularly unsafe. Generally, the risk with messing with biology is that things can get out of control, but here, we are talking about extinct species, they went extinct because they were not adapted to the environment we thrive in. By far the most likely result if we screw up is that the specie become extinct again.
- remixff2400 2y ago
  That's the thing: we're _only_ 8 billion and amongst that we only have so many researchers and people who have the knowledge to do anything like that. We have limited capital to pursue any major initiative, so wasting it on unfeasible and non-beneficial initiatives like starting a Mars colony just wastes time we could do doing something more useful i.e. reforming deserts, stabilizing ecosystems, developing cheaper materials for various industries, etc. I'm not sure how dangerous "de-extinguishing" a species would be, but we've had numerous faux paus with destabilizing ecosystems by introducing non-native species (i.e. lionfish, as an invasive species). These cause extensive environmental damage and can be irreversible if not contained in time. The worst thing that could happen is losing control over the population of de-extinct species and damaging an ecosystem(s). That all being said, I'd be stumped if we somehow lost sight of a woolly mammoth... and I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to see one myself, so...

huitzitziltzin 2y ago

What’s “safety” here? I don’t intend the question to be trolling. What’s the risk of bringing back a wooly mammoth? Sure it could die of a weird disease bc we didn’t have the full genetic code. And yeah I’m equally unconvinced from the article that we actually can do this, but it’s unclear to me what the risks are if we can and do? Scenario: Bring back one to one hundred wooly mammoths and… X worst case scenario happens. What’s X in your view for the wooly mammoth? I can’t think of any that seem actually bad but maybe my creativity is lacking?

troad 2y ago
> What’s the risk of bringing back a wooly mammoth? I imagine a big one is the needless and possibly intense pain and suffering for the surrogate mother elephant, and her experimentally-GMO'd calf. Elephants are highly social and by all accounts quite empathetic animals. Also the opportunity cost - elephant populations are highly endangered and every pregnancy cycle used up for this research is one less actual living elephant.
doodaddy 2y ago
As a few others have pointed out, animal welfare is one. As you point out, disease is annother. And another is the instabilities that can arise by introducing a new species to an ecosystem. Do we really have an understanding of where the mammoth fit into the food chain? How it fit into its environment? I’d expect the answer is a resounding “no” because we don’t even fully understand this dynamic for plants and animals that live today.

GuB-42 2y ago

> let’s live on the moon or terraform mars instead of fixing our mess on this planet! Why not both? We are 8 billion on this planet, we can fix our mess and do all these crazy things. And I don't think "de-extinguishing" species is particularly unsafe. Generally, the risk with messing with biology is that things can get out of control, but here, we are talking about extinct species, they went extinct because they were not adapted to the environment we thrive in. By far the most likely result if we screw up is that the specie become extinct again.

remixff2400 2y ago
That's the thing: we're _only_ 8 billion and amongst that we only have so many researchers and people who have the knowledge to do anything like that. We have limited capital to pursue any major initiative, so wasting it on unfeasible and non-beneficial initiatives like starting a Mars colony just wastes time we could do doing something more useful i.e. reforming deserts, stabilizing ecosystems, developing cheaper materials for various industries, etc. I'm not sure how dangerous "de-extinguishing" a species would be, but we've had numerous faux paus with destabilizing ecosystems by introducing non-native species (i.e. lionfish, as an invasive species). These cause extensive environmental damage and can be irreversible if not contained in time. The worst thing that could happen is losing control over the population of de-extinct species and damaging an ecosystem(s). That all being said, I'd be stumped if we somehow lost sight of a woolly mammoth... and I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to see one myself, so...