In 2000, the Pyrenean ibex was declared extinct. In January, a clone--whose DNA was taken from skin cells from the body of the last Ibex to die in the wild--was born in a lab in Spain. It only lived for 13 minutes before dying of respiratory difficulties, but its brief existence rings hope for all endangered species teetering on the edge of extinction.

Obviously, cloned extinct species will be at a very clear disadvantage in the wild: not being raised by others of their own species, they will likely lack learned survival skills that would otherwise have been taught by their parents, and their gene pool will be extremely limited (especially if they are all cloned from the same organism) which may result in the emergence of recessive diseases. There are proposals to start cloning endangered animals such as pandas to maintain their genetic diversity while they are still with us, which is a very good thing.

But researchers have their eyes on more grandiose goals than using cloning to resurrect the recently extinct or pull endangered species away from the razors edge. In november of last year, a team from Penn State declared they had fully sequenced the mammoth genome. Paleontologist Jack Horner recently authored a book discussing the prospects of growing T-rex embryos in chicken eggs.

Frankly, as cool as it would be to see these animals walking around, they clearly don't belong in the wild. The introduction of a species that has been extinct for millions of years into the current echosystem would have unknown and possibly disastrous effects and the planet, and I doubt this is what is intended. Therefore, this is clearly a Jurassic Park scenario: cloning long extinct animals for the sole purpose of putting them on display in cages.

I don't need a hipster, chaos-theory mathematician to tell me why this is a bad idea; I need an ethicist. Don't get me wrong, I'm a meat eater. I wear leather. I've been to and enjoyed zoos and circuses. I have no problem with animals being raised for the sole purpose of serving us through their meat, skin, or entertainment value. But actually bringing an extinct species back from millenia of absence on this planet to be put in a cage is an insult to their dignity.

Nagel says we should fear death because it is better to be alive, so perhaps the above scenario isn't so bad after all. Maybe I'll change my mind definitively after seeing how delicious a T-Rex steak can be.

Published on January 1, 2009 in Science