Senate the De-extinction of species

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015...inserted-into-elephant-cells/?intcmp=features

Very interesting article, but it brings up a few thoughts:

1) is it ethical to bring back these extinct species?
2) is bringing them back a good, or bad idea?
3) where do you stop bringing them back? Do we continue with dinosaurs and get a real Jurassic Park?
4) do you think it can/should work?

discuss.

 

I tried to explain this in my Pleistocene Park thread. Of course we want to bring mammoths back. They're delicious. Also neanderthals, because they're probably nearly as tasty. Our ancestors lived on a diet that included both mammoths and neanderthals. They also interbred with the neanderthals, so we contain a respectable amount of their DNA. I don't think that should necessarily stop us from cloning neanderthals for food.

There will be no dinosaurs, because there is no dinosaur DNA. DNA doesn't last very long - a few tens of thousand years in the very best case.

 

You shattered my dreams.

 

maybe you could play with a bird's genome, switching certain genes on and off until you got something that resembled a dinosaur. That could be fun.

 

As an outdoorsman, I advocate conserving the environment as much as possible. I'm by no means a greenie. One thing that blows my mind is the amount of waste we as a society produce at the moment, I think that will be the next big challenge after climate change.

This however, is stupid. I'm fine with saving the DNA .. but maybe lets devote the minds and money who are working on stuff like this to researching cures for real diseases that plague our society like cancer and MS. Or would the big pharmaceuticals not like that?

Maybe some time in the not so distant future we'll have a better idea of how bringing some of these animals back can be managed (and be useful). In the meantime, maybe lets focus our scientists on saving humans and conserving the species that aren't yet extinct.

 

They are already trying things like this: http://topinfopost.com/2014/03/30/s...ecreate-dinosaurs-by-manipulating-chicken-dna

 

Well, as a creationist, I have to wonder about this in the sense of humans trying to 'play god' etc.
Ever moreso, if these species died out, according to the survival of the fittest principle taught by evolutionists, these species
were selected to be removed from the chain for a reason: the couldn't adapt or were wiped out for a reason.

If we bring back even one species, what does that do to the ecosystem that Earth has created for it's inhabitants?
It would invariably change to a degree.

 

Mmmm dino chicken meat.

 

Obligatory Jurassic Park post

 

The natural process includes catastrophic events. Right now, we're in the middle of a great anthropocene extinction event, killing off all kinds of species. Bringing back mammoths is the least of the ecosystem's problems. Also, if Chicxulub took out the dinosaurs, that's the kind of "reason" that could just as easily apply to us. If we survive as a species long enough, something like that is guaranteed to drop on us. I don't think it could be said that we were "wiped out for a reason" except in a very mechanistic sense.

 

What if we brought back the dodo?

 

Was that really necessary? I mean, he mentioned Jurassic Park in the opening post.

 

can you imagine how much a restaurant could charge for fried dodo?

 

I"d bring back the blue footed booby.

 

Now I want a dodo burger. A dodurger!!

 

I vote for the Caribbean monk seal. Sometimes I cry when I think that no human will ever again be able to club a baby monk seal.

 

They'd never reclaim their former position in the ecosystem, because you're right, there's a reason they're gone, be it humans changing their ecosystem or not. So best case you are looking at is zoos IMO.

 

I hope we can bring Neanderthals back, so then they can run for Congress.

 

let's save the neanderthal civil rights movement for the 22nd century. Why should we have all the fun?

 

I'm more interested in using cloning and other technologies to save the rhino, tiger, and other endangered mammals.

 

agreed. If we can archive their DNA and bring them back from extinction at some later date, then really we're free to do whatever we want in the short term. Imagine how much someone would pay to eat the last northern white rhino.

 

How I know not to take someone seriously

 

How I know that somebody is quite judgmental.

 

I assumed you were an evolutionary creationist. That's defined as someone who believes that the earth was seeded with life by an ancient race of spacefaring beings who intended to use the planet as a big farm, but for whatever the reason have not been able to return for the last 3.6 billion years, thus inadvertently allowing their farm produce to mutate into unusual forms with time and environmental pressures.

 

No, I do not think this would work. Man is not God.