Since you were a kid, you've been absolutely fascinated with dinosaurs.
By age five, you knew all the names of the saurischians and ornithischians
and pointed out with glee as often as possible that birds are really "feathered
dinosaurs." (You must have read the Jurassic Park book a dozen
times!). Your favorite dinosaur sites are in Argentina, where hundreds
of sauropod eggs and some embryonic dinosaurs were discovered at the end
of the last century. As much as you would love to see, hear, smell, and
touch a living dinosaur, you realize that we are at a profound crossroads
in the history of our planet if the judges allow cloning of extinct forms
of life to proceed. Scientists are still debating if dinosaur DNA is fossilized
intact or if it has survived in good enough shape to be used in cloning
experiments. But it's only a matter of time before the technology will
be developed that can replicate an entire genome from scraps of fossil
DNA. It's no longer a question of technology but rather a question of
what's right. The Mesozoic world of the dinosaurs no longer exists--many
of the dinosaurs' cohort species, including multituberculate mammals,
archaic crocodiles, Archaeopteryx, pterosaurs, as well as early
species of cycads and even primitive angiosperms, went extinct millions
of years ago. Even Pangea and the climatic conditions that prevailed on
Earth during the "Age of Dinosaurs" no longer exist! It would be unfair
to the dinosaurs to bring them back into a world that no longer has a
place for them. Their time has come and gone. You've joined with a prestigious
group of fellow scientists to urge the judges to ban dinosaur cloning.
Robin Forster, Columbia Ph.D., vertebrate paleontologist
and signatures of other Scientists Against Cloning (SAC): |
