New advances in genetic engineering are on the cusp of bringing
extinct species back to life, but nobody explains how difficult, risky,
and expensive this is--especially given the high percentage of failed
attempts before a successful live birth is achieved. For example, some
molecular biologists estimate that one out of every 1000 attempts will
result in a fully formed, live dinosaur hatchling, and then there's the
challenge of preventing high rates of infant mortality. Problems with
verifying it's really dinosaur DNA and changes in DNA over the past 66
million years can't be ignored, either--you're concerned about the possibility
of creating a "Frankenstein"-like hybrid that will be out of control
and beyond the limits of nature and natural selection in the Darwinian
sense. It still isn't clear how a dinosaur clone would be created--for
example, would the clone be a bird-dinosaur or crocodile-dinosaur hybrid?
Or would the "clone" be just a chicken walking around with some dinosaur
DNA as part of its genetic make-up? After considerable expense, it's still
unknown if the hybrid would be fertile or sterile and which dinosaur
would be resurrected--T. rex perhaps? Which dinosaur-related species
would provide the donor eggs, and which species would be the surrogate
mothers? Now is the time for scientists and society to acknowledge that
it is justifiable to use new techniques and scientific advances to solve
today's problems but wrong to add new problems. You plan to explain to
the court that dinosaur cloning is an improper use of scientific technology
that shows little regard for the animals being brought back into a world
unprepared to receive them. Is it really desirable to clone dinosaurs
with the express purpose of making them into living drug factories for
pharmaceutical companies? If dinosaurs are cloned, what's next--cloned
trilobites? Cloned ichthyosaurs? You even heard mention of a report that
someone wants to search for frozen sperm in the mummified Ice Man, Ötzi,
and clone him 5000 years after his death in the Italian Alps! It was a
mistake to attempt the cloning of the mammoth last year, and cloning even
older forms of life would only create more problems. You hope to convince
the judges that we have absolutely no right to play God!
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