The Responsibility Project^®. Exploring what it means to do the right thing

On Cloning Extinct Animals

65 Comments

June 16, 2009 by Kathy McManus

The book is a classic.

The movie was a blockbuster.

But are we ready for scientists to clone a real-life Jurassic Park?

Significant genomic accomplishments in the past year have increased the possibility of bringing back to life two extinct creatures: woolly mammoths and Neanderthals.

“I laughed when Steven Spielberg said that cloning extinct animals was inevitable,” said an expert on ancient DNA who consulted on Jurassic Park. “But I’m not laughing anymore, at least about mammoths. This is going to happen. It’s just a matter of working out the details.”

The genetic details of the woolly mammoth—yielded from carcasses buried in the Siberian permafrost—have been painstakingly decoded by scientists who have now unlocked 70% of the animal’s genome, including much of the data needed to clone one.

The genome of the Neanderthal—driven to extinction 30,000 years ago--has been completely reconstructed. According to a leading genome researcher at Harvard Medical School, a Neanderthal could be brought to life using current technology for about $30 million.

But questions of ethics and responsibility nag at the nucleus of changing science fiction to non-fiction.

If we cloned our relatives the Neanderthals, asked one expert, “Are you going to put them in Harvard or in a zoo?” And woolly mammoths, notes a paleontologist, were highly social animals. “Cloning would give you a single animal, which would live all alone in a park, a zoo, or a lab—not in its native habitat, which no longer exists. You’re basically creating a curio.”

A science writer asked his readers, “Should we try to resurrect a Neanderthal? And if so, what kind of precautions should we take, and what kind of lives should we help them lead?” Many respondents expressed concern about a cloned Neanderthal’s quality of life. “What kind of life is that?” asked one, to be “raised from birth with the knowledge that they exist solely for the sake of a scientific experiment.”

“They’d have more important lessons to teach us than what we’d have to teach them,” wrote another, worried that our egos “would not see the wisdom in a species who are perhaps uglier, slower, and clumsier than us…They’d be miserable. Leave ‘em be.”

“How about making another Einstein or Bach or Rembrandt?” suggested another. “Wouldn’t that be more challenging and more scientifically useful?”

Tell us what you think: Is cloning an extinct animal responsible?

65 Comments

What do you think? Leave a comment

• June 16, 2009 by Nusrat. S

  I don't understand why scientists are wasting their time and tons of money on these kind of projects like cloning woolly mammoth, creating harmful weapons/things etc when there are more important things to do in the world like saving lives, finding cures to diseases, stop killing great numbers of animals and marine species that we already have, or simply helping make the world a better place. How is this cloning the long gone animals that we don't need now going to help the world or us? This is not being responsible.

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  • June 20, 2009 by Angry

    This is wasting time and money? No it's not, the only time we are wasting us not firing this cloning process up, and money? That's not a problem at all. This is making a world a better place by advancing further and gathering knowledge and maybe if we get good enough at cloning we could clone prehistoric sharks and learn how they became immune to every disease (including cancer).

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    • May 18, 2010 by hehe

      By resurrecting the extinct creature never going to have any positive outcome. All scientists can do is to work on their hypothesis. How did you know the sharks were able to battle cancer? Do you have a well founded evidence? If they had outwitted the cancer, why couldn't they have outlived their extinct? Do something useful and help the world you're living today, rather than trying to explore your fantasies. Do the exploration with your own money, but not with the students, parents and taxpayers money.

    • October 28, 2010 by king

      aww that stupid if you ask me thank for leting me comment

  • November 17, 2009 by robert walker

    Life is not only a result of living. Life is a quality of life. In general terms what do we learn by cloning a extinct species. We learn about that species. we learn about the genome and in fact all genomes how to manipulate it safely. This would result in the improvement of all lives on this world. What about the species that we this century have made extinct. Do they deserve to live. I recognise that a Neanderthal is not a monkey, but in this perspective the monkey is slower and less intelligent so should we exterminate all them because they are not us? That animal like us lived and most likely we as humans directly killed them until they were gone. What responsibility do we have to them. LIFE. not stuffed shapes in a museum. Further in some future where the genome can be controlled and defined where the result is known before it is grown. The result of a modified life will be a tool for our use. What cost is their to do this, will this cause destruction like a atomic bomb, open sterile pits called strip mines, citys of concrete and steel? a tree grown to be a house, a car that you ride to work, genetic manipulation is better that what we do now. get you heads out of the bible and your asses and think for yourself. personally i have a desire to get to know a Neanderthal. I would speculate that the roots of our religions come from them.

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  • February 11, 2010 by Terry Pinaud

    A great deal of technological advances came from fighting wars, the sort of things that we take for granted now. Is recreating an extinct creature any more horrible and wasteful than wars? Exploring DNA and genomes can lead to uncovering secrets to maladies that can benefit humankind far more than cell phones and radar. I say: Go full-steam ahead, scientists, not just for curiosity's sake, but for applied use.

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• June 17, 2009 by Miss CaliGirl

  I would actually like to what other animals indeed where like before our time. I think it’s the best history lesson, however, I do believe that their social environment should be taken in effect. Also the type of diseases they would possible bring that would be harmful to humans. I do believe it’s a waste of money as well though. However, so is war. I rather spend money on science instead of war.

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  • July 24, 2009 by Jason Carlson

    Obviously cloning one of these species wouldn't introduce any new diseases into the world. We're cloning the species, not the disease, after all. And any diseases that were solely dependent on the species were wiped out with it, and any that weren't are still around in other species. Disease with regards to us should be the last thing we should worry about. The species we clone, however, could be very endangered by new diseases that they weren't exposed to in their natural lifetime.

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• June 17, 2009 by x

  Hmmm, yes please. Do make a few. That could help. And a few Chopins, Copernicuses and maybe a Tolkien.

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• June 18, 2009 by Leona Sue Turner

  In both of these cases cloning would be irresponsible and unfair. Neither the neanderthal nor the mammoth could be happy or productive in a world which has become so unlike the world he/she was created to live in. The whole idea is selfish and unwise.

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  • June 20, 2009 by clownz

    Those are two terrible points to make. They pretty much have nothing to do with this discussion. First of all, the creatures aren't gonna be happy, because that is a human emotion that they lack. Second, they aren't gonna be directly interacting with our everyday lives; they would be in artificial habitats being researched, not roaming the streets or exploring the world. I wish i could see one person come up with a good reason against the cloning.

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    • July 1, 2009 by Candace bravo

      Do you really believe that animals lack the capacity to feel "happy"?. I would certainly hope not as it has been proven multiple times that many of this worlds other species is capable of emotions, including happiness. Out of all the emotions "happy" is one of the least complex. That being said I would like to ask if your argument for the cloning of life would be ok to do, is indeed really that said life would be lived in " artificial habitats being researched"? Perhaps one should ask whether a deceased loved one should be brought back to life for the sole purpose of "researching" them in a lab. Lives of all things living that have been lost is hard to accept but that is what we must do. Accept it. Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should. While I too think it would be interesting to see real dinosaurs or meet Einstein what they had to offer to the world has been offered and life has continued. We need to learn from the past as we move to the future, and I believe we are doing that well enough without bringing the past back to life.

    • July 4, 2009 by andrew

      Here's a good reason not to start clowning, money. The world has enough economic problems as it is without spending 30 million dollars on a mammoth. They should clone Franklyn D. Roosevelt and see if he has ideas for the economy. With all kidding aside, the idea about cloning sharks to understand how they were immune to all diseases is good, but not if we need to spend millions of dollars before we can even get to the root of the experiment.

    • February 11, 2010 by Meg

      How can you say that 'happiness' is just a human emotion? Animals have emotions as well. Your comment just shows how uninformed you are...

• June 18, 2009 by Sunny Singh

  Responsibility can be taken here. Remember how they recreated a dinosaur's habitat in Jurassic Park? This is the same concept, except it takes just 30 million bucks to clone only one mammoth. I mean that would be wasting money, and until I know what we will learn from it to help people and current life, then I do not recommend doing so.

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• June 21, 2009 by Curious

  Analogies: Why clone insulin producing bacteria; it's trying to be a god. Why try to understand chemistry or electricity. We do fine in our 17th Century social paradigm. Why do thing that are unnatural, we might create ammonium nitrate and city states will destroy each other with munitions; Man in his evil nature will use electricity to kill people or manipulate people to buy thing they don't need. Why spend millions to have an astronaut hit a golf ball on the moon. Wouldn't the millions spend pay for a lot of college tuitions for needy students? Why try to save animals from extinction. Extinctions are natural recurrent events and preventing extinctions with genetic manipulation is playing as a god. Why bring back a Neanderthal. He will only be the most popular and probably the richest man in the world when the lawyers and accountants show him PR and merchandizing tricks. He will be famous, popular, he'll have the best psychologists and doctors at his beckon call. He'll have invitations to ports of power, influence and anything his Neanderthal heart desires. Yes, it's better to keep him dead. He will not be able to adapt to the life I enjoy, overworked, underappreciated, and exploited by lawyers, over aged, divorced and ignored by my family. Undereducated, outsourced and unrepresented in my republic. I even lost my seat at the local bar. I have no self esteem, no money, no representatives, ...essentially no life. Yes, the fate of the Neanderthal would be worse by virtue of the probable events listed above? Does anything really make any sense? Is there really any meaning in this vale of tears we call life other than what we choose to project into it? Really? Does cloning a Neanderthal really that outrageous considering the present state of others in our species? Have you asked a disaffected Palestinian on the West Bank refugee camp? A prisoner in China? A dockworker in Africa or a starving child in Ethiopia or North Korea? Where do our moral imperatives stop? At mankind? At animal rescue centers? If animals have rights are they human rights? Do plants have rights? What about rocks and dirt? Are there mineral rights? Does a Neanderthal have a soul? Does a dog? What about a parakeet or a goldfish? A bacterium? Where are values universal and where do they stop - far beyond the Neanderthal issue. Look around.

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  • February 11, 2010 by James

    Well said

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  • March 18, 2010 by anonymous

    Extinction in nature is a natural and benevolent process and a part of natural selection, however, massive and unending extinction caused by man's ignorance is obviously harmful, as it causes extinction unrelated to ability to survive, only position to man. So while it MAY be harmful to resurrect naturally extinct species, it is a whole different story with animals going extinct because of man, such as the Carolina Parakeet, once the second most populous bird and only native North American parrot, which became extinct to mass killings by the hundreds when a roost was discovered. And they were just killed for fun, as they actually ate harmful insects. Natural extinction is much different from human caused extinction. And don't give me anything about how humans cause natural extinction, not artificial. They don't. Period.

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• June 21, 2009 by KimberlyAnne

  Survival of the fittest is a key and fundamental concept for the evolutionary growth of any and all species. Acceptance of this is natural. With research, discovery and ingenious minds at work we have, as a human race, come a long way. I can't quite grasp the consideration of putting these qualities to waste. Cloning in a lab setting is understandable, if only to understand and observe. But don't undermine the Darwin theory. Don't you agree if you let things happen, what is meant to be will be. At the same time you can make anything happen. Keep it simple, stupid.

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• June 25, 2009 by Gregg S Hasenjaeger

  I would love to see them clone Leonardo Da Vinci. His contributions to science still baffle scientists today. It is proven his design for flight was well beyond it's time and works. Not to mention some of his other works.

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  • March 18, 2010 by anonymous

    Just because people have the same DNA doesn't mean that they will be exactly the same, or even have the same interests/job. Many environmental factors apply. Just ask identical twins. Also, even if you cloned Da Vinci, he would be a different person and probably have no clue what Da Vinci 1 did.

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• June 26, 2009 by Geena

  Normally, I would be all for moving forward in the advancement of science and technology, but this time I think I'll have to pass. The woolly mammoth, as a species, failed because it could not adapt to a rapidly changing environment. Now, as the environment is changing once more, the mammoth would have very little chance of survival because its thick outer coat as well as several layers of skin would only cause complications and, eventually, death. I believe science is a wonderful thing, but I also believe that now is not an appropriate time to attempt to bring back a genotype that failed.

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• June 28, 2009 by Jeff S

  First, I'd like to say Curious is a genius. As for the cloning, I say go for it; clone them all. And by the way, who said they would bring back a disease? They just clone the mammoth and Neanderthal - not a disease. Curious...you are brilliant......what insight!

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• June 29, 2009 by Stephen R

  A neanderthal would be a sentient human person. As such you would have two choices -- let him free to live as normal a life as he could manage with his limited intelligence and freakish appearance, or keep in a lab or "habitat" of some sort -- in which case he would be a slave. I have less of a moral issue with bringing back a woolly mammoth; that action is on par, for better or worse, with *any* animal experimentation.

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• July 1, 2009 by Sophia Del Core

  This is amazing! I was really afraid of dinosaurs when I was a little kid but this is AMAZING!

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