The Mammoth Cometh Analysis

Many Americans’ dreamt of flying cars that would captivate and set a path for the future. As we have entered the twenty-first century, cars that hover above us are no where to be found but in fictional stories. Fifty years ago, no one would have imagined that technology could excel past flying transportation. In the last few years, scientists have become intrigued by the idea of combining DNA in order to further our species medical technology. By researching this topic, we’ve stumbled on a creation called “chimeras” which are animals that carry human DNA, resulting in the growth of usable human organs. The article, “The Mammoth Cometh,” by Nathaniel Rich, discusses the use of these chimeric experiments to bring extinct animals back from the …show more content…
In addition to the fear of cognitively functioning animals lies the fear of breaking the natural order of nature, where the evolution of the world’s species would be dictated by humans, not the ecosystem’s natural order. (Yu). The natural order is formed by the boundaries of specification of different biological species such as homo-sapiens and other creatures. By creating a completely scientific species, it destroys the barrier that we’ve logically set to distinguish humans apart from animals. David Haussler, a cofounder of the project to bring back extinct animals, stated, “There’s always this fear that somehow, if we do it, we’re going to accidentally make something horrible, because only nature can really do it right. But nature is totally random. Nature makes monsters. Nature makes threats” (Rich, 2014). I find this important because although there are fears about the creation of something dangerous, harmful organisms are most likely created every day in a natural …show more content…
Deadly diseases such as HIV, the Swine Flu and the Bird Flu all originated from animal origins. By combining human and animal DNA, the chance of disease increases due to the fact that it could be transferred into the human DNA, making it nearly impossible to not be contagious to mankind. The fear of an outbreak has brought the attention of the Center of Disease Control and Prevention, who is now pushing for laws to regulate the boundaries of experimentation. Their main law that they are enforcing is that the specimens must be contained in a Biosafety level four facilities, which is only called for to protect against deadly diseases like the Small Pox and the 1918 Spanish Flu (Yu). While there are reasons to fear an outbreak, the chimeric research is also being conducted to get an understanding of human illnesses such as HIV, Alzheimer’s Disease and Autism. Along with this, advanced drug testing options would be brought to the table because we will have viable partial human animals to test the medications on. I believe that these trials could shine a bright light on the future for those who are sick and still haven 't found something that will assist them on their journey towards