Ms. Adams
English Honors
14 November 2017
Why De-Extinction Should Not be Pursued by Scientists
De-Extinction should not be pursued by scientists. De-extinction brings many risks making de-extinction precarious. These risks include animal welfare and health. Politics is another thing needing to be considered with de-extinction. For example, de-extinction possibly will change priorities for medical researchers. This would not be good because these researchers will be worrying more about bringing back already extinct animals, rather than worrying about keeping alive humans and animals already living today. De-extinction remains unnecessary. Although it possibly will provide a few benefits and seeing a real live wooly mammoth or …show more content…
Hank Greely says in his ted talk, “We are making animals that didn’t exist before, if we caused them intense and unjustified suffering, that is not an ethical thing to do.” This quote is true. People say that scientists will be bringing back extinct species, but really they will be creating a new species by using DNA from the extinct animal as well as another animal close to it. If scientists create this animal and it cannot live in it’s environment and suffers, it will not be right. The process of attempting this can also cause unnecessary suffering, which already happened. According to the article “The 10 Minutes When Scientists Brought a Species Back from Extinction” by Alexis C. Madrigal, In 2000 when the last bucardo (a wild native goat native to the Pyrenees named Celia) died, scientists preserved her cells. “They then injected the nuclei from these cells into goat eggs emptied of DNA, then implanted fifty seven of these into goat surrogate mothers.” Only seven of the goats became pregnant and out of those seven, six delivered miscarriages. Once that one goat was born, “she struggled to breathe as her tongue hung grotesquely out of her mouth.” After ten minutes of trying to help her breathe, the clone died. The suffering that animal endured was unnecessary and not …show more content…
As stated in the article “5 Reasons to Bring Back Extinct Animals (And 5 Reasons Not To)” by Breanna Draxler, “De-Extinction possibly will change priorities in fields of science, such as medical research.” This will not be good at all. These scientists receive billions of dollars to research for cures for cancer, HIV/AIDS, alzheimers, etc., and now they will be looking for ways to come up with extinct wooly mammoths and pigeons? Once again, this proves to be unnecessary and wrong. Scientists need to be worrying about keeping alive things actually living today rather than trying to bring back already deceased animals who lived their time on earth, and died