A mammoth replica on display at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, Canada

A biosciences company, Colossal Laboratories, has plans to bring back the extinct species of Woolly Mammoths to life. Recently, they have been in the news for bagging $15 million in initial funding from investors, who believe in Colossal’s vision. Something that was previously only possible in fiction, is being experimented on in real life. But a project, with many difficulties, be really feasible and if yes, what could be the potential consequences?

The project first made headlines in 2017, when George Church, a renowned geneticist at Harvard, presented the idea of bringing back Woolly Mammoths using their DNA, which was preserved and frozen. The frozen DNA would then be injected into an Asian elephant, which would then have similar traits to the woolly mammoth. The scientists also predict that a potential benefit of this project would be that it would help reverse the effects of climate change. But that claim isn’t completely supported by evidence and hence could be thought of as something which the scientists added to make their project more appealing. 

George Church, a renowned geneticist, working at Harvard

Once the first mammoth looks and behaves similar to the scientists’ expectation, they plan to clone it in a similar way to Dolly, the Sheep. And once that project is successful, which, as per estimates, might take about a decade, the scientists have planned to use the same engineering technology to try and revive other extinct species. It might also be that the same technology could be used on other animals to modify their genes so that they can evolve at a similar speed to what their habitats are evolving at.

But some questions about this project still remain unanswered. The main one being that is the project really worth the effort, time, and money. A decade worth of time and millions of dollars are being spent on reviving a species that really have no positive impact on Earth. Even without their existence, the current food chain and ecosystem are in perfect balance. But there is a chance that their addition to the current food chain, could cause an imbalance, which might take decades to correct. Another part is that due to the news being very appealing to a huge audience, it is being circulated at a very fast pace on various news sites and social media. The problem due to that is that majority of the people only know some part of the story. Many ethicists are concerned about the project being unethical due to various reasons(one of them being that the species might be invasive in the ecosystem and the imbalance can cost everyone, including humans). This might not only affect the scientists associated with the project, but it might also cause a financial loss to the stakeholders, who are involved in the project.

Some relevant points about the news story, which audiences need to be careful about are:

1. Historical results cannot be used as the basis for future projects. Just because a project, which used a certain process, was successful in the past doesn’t mean that the results for any other future projects, which use a similar process, would also be the same(fallacy of antecedent).
2. Unsupported, connected claims- Be careful about certain claims, which experts assert, that are connected with one another but do not have any strong reasoning or logic to support them(slippery slope fallacy).
3. Be sure to check the credibility of a person- Just because a person is an expert in a certain field doesn’t mean that their comment on any topic will be credible. For example, an economics professor at Harvard University isn’t credible enough to comment on the efficacy of Covid vaccines(fallacy of power).  
4. Perspective- Authors try to dominate the discussion by focusing on what they think is right. They can do this by ignoring counter-arguments from their writing. This influences your opinion, as a reader, and hence be careful of this point(framing).
5. Wordplay– Authors use certain words or phrases to affect the hearts of the reader. This is an easy way to influence the readers’ minds(pathos).

The addition of an extinct species, back into the ecosystem, might be something that is very exciting to think about. This project is proof that shows how science has evolved over the years and now is at a stage where we are attempting something which we never imagined we could do. So, I only hope that this project doesn’t end like Jurassic Park! 

Bibliography

1. https://www.deseret.com/u-s-world/2021/9/16/22675606/bitcoin-billionaires-woolly-mammoths-climate-change
2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2021/09/16/woolly-mammoth-extinct-science-dna/
3. https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/fall-2021/deextinction-revive-ancient-endangered-species-woolly-mammoths-passenger-pigeons