As an experienced pathologist who specializes in large-bodied animals, you have considerable discomfort about the
monumental efforts, expense, and uncertainty involved in the care, maintenance, and management of cloned
dinosaurs. Anyone who knows anything about modern ecosystems appreciates that boundaries are diffuse and that
ecological "osmosis" takes place across invisible or non-existent borders. In other words, captive animals are not
completely protected from outside influences and vice versa. Dinosaurs would probably need to be fed with
genetically altered plants from which the deadliest toxins have been removed. Angiosperms have experienced
enormous evolution in the last 60 million years, and dinosaurs would not have adaptations to aid in the digestion of
plants they never encountered in the Mesozoic. Didn't somebody once propose that dinosaurs became extinct after
suffering severe digestive disorders shortly after the evolution of the first angiosperms? Modern viruses could
wreak havoc on the immune systems of the dinosaurs as well; even new experiments to boost the immune systems
of endangered species have not been able to save all members afflicted with a deadly virus. You're also worried that
Mesozoic diseases that died out with the dinosaurs could be reintroduced into the modern world. Cloning
dinosaurs could possibly recreate a dangerous pathogen and contaminate other animals in nearby habitats.
Mosquitoes and other insects are known vectors that transfer diseases among species. You're fearful that many
birds and crocodiles, already threatened with extinction in many parts of the world, might suffer even greater
losses as evolutionary relatives of the dinosaurs that are susceptible to the same diseases. Finally, you plan to end
your testimony with an image that the judges will be unable to forget of a five-ton Triceratops with meter-long
horns charging towards a bus filled with tourists... Dinosaur cloning is better left alone! |
