Should animals be cloned to save a species? To resurrect a species?

In the National Geographic article “Recipe for Resurrection” by Tom Mueller, Mueller discusses the idea of bringing extinct animals such as the wooly mammoth back to life through the cloning process. He talks about how the skepticism of having the ability to clone an animal that has been frozen for years was shattered in November of 2008, when scientists successfully cloned mice that had been frozen for 16 years. This successful cloning experiment brings back into scientific discussion the controversial idea of bringing extinct animals preserved in permafrost such as the wooly mammoth back to life through the cloning process.

Cloning is essentially the duplication of genetic material from the animal that is desired to be cloned being placed in an egg of  a similar animal to create a nearly identical genetic copy of the desired cloned animal. It is controversial because the possibilities of cloning are endless. You can in theory create a person that is exactly like yourself genetically, save endangered species, and even bring extinct species back to life. Scientists argue over whether this kind of power we possess to create new life from scratch is morally right and how it should be used.

Scientists have uncovered several frozen wooly mammoths, and have made considerable progress in mapping the extinct beasts DNA. "A group at Pennsylvania State University...published 70 percent of the mammoth genome, laying out much of the basic data that might be required to make a mammoth," writes Mueller. Mueller then quotes Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University, an authority on ancient DNA, saying "Cloning of extinct animals [is] inevitable… this is going to happen. It’s just a matter of working out the details." However, the details of cloning a wooly mammoth are daunting. First, "the remaining 30 percent of the genome would have to be recovered and the entire genome resequenced several more times to weed out errors that have crept into the ancient DNA over the centuries as it degraded" says Mueller. Then you have to actually turn that data into flesh and blood. The article titled "Production of Healthy Cloned Mice From Bodies Frozen at -20 °C for 16 years," says that, "the ‘resurrection’ of frozen extinct species (such as the woolly mammoth) is impracticable, as no live cells are available, and the genomic material that remains is inevitably degraded." The tasks to overcome in order to clone a mammoth are very daunting, but Mueller says, "None of these tasks appears insurmountable, especially in light of recent technical advances." Cloning extinct animals seems to no longer a question of technology; it is a question of time and money.

Some scientists are facing a less daunting challenge, the cloning of endangered animals. It has been argued that one way to kick start the recovery of an endangered species could be to clone the animal to provide more mates. The San Diego Zoo contains a "frozen zoo," a holding place "where the DNA of a growing number of endangered species is stored in tanks of liquid nitrogen at minus 320° Fahrenheit," writes Mueller. Some of these cells have been used to clone endangered species such as the Southeast Asian ox. Scientists also say that they may clone endangered giant pandas and Sumatran Tigers. "Ultimately scientists hope to re-create extinct species like the…Tasmanian tiger," says Mueller. "'The possibilities for zoos are enormous,' says Benirschke, a reproductive biologist who now is vice president of the San Diego Zoo," quoted in the article “Can Cloning Help Save Beleaguered Species? Oliver Ryder is quoted in the article as well, saying, "I think [cloning] is going to produce a paradigm shift. It offers the potential for a better safety net than we thought we had." Cloning "could possibly guarantee genetic immortality," Ryder theorizes.

The main problems scientists deal with today on the cloning of animals is less technical, and more ethical. Is it right to create an animal in a lab through unnatural means? Not to mention the ethical issue of resurrecting an animal that has been extinct for thousands of years, like the wooly mammoth. "Mammoths, like elephants, were intel­ligent, highly social animals," says Adrian Lister, paleontologist and mammoth expert at the Natural History Museum in London. "Cloning would give you a single animal, which would live all alone in a park, a zoo, or a lab—not in its native habitat, which no longer exists." My solution would be to the issue at hand would be not to clone animals that have been extinct for a long time, such as the wooly mammoth, because I believe that the resources and time required to do would not bring enough knowledge of wooly mammoths to the world to make it worthwhile. Also, I believe it is unethical to create an animal that does not belong in our time period and make it an exhibit in a zoo. I would condone cloning of endangered animals however, but because it costs so much time and money, I would only use it as a last resort, when all other conservation efforts have failed. I would never condone the cloning of a human being, simply because it is not necessary. Humans are not endangered, and there are thousands of children that need to be adopted. We need to know where to draw the line on cloning. Lister makes a good point when he says, “If you can do a mammoth, you can do anything else that's dead, including your grandmother. But…do you really want to bring back your dead grandmother?” In conclusion, cloning can be a valuable tool for preservation if used in the correct manner, and I think we will see cloning take a much larger role in conservation efforts in the future.

Works Cited

Mueller, Tom. "Recipe for a Resurrection." National Geographic. May 2009. Web. 22 Jan. 2011. <http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/05/cloned-species/mueller-text/2>.

Cohen, Jon. "Can Cloning Help Save Beleaguered Species?" Science 276.5317 (1997). Ebsco Host. Harold B. Lee Library. Web. 23 Jan. 2011. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?hid=104&sid=9fbf9edb-8418-4963-8b7a-3e9b24646401%40sessionmgr110&vid=1&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=aph&AN=9706166168>.

Wakayama, Sayaka, Hiroshi Ohta, and Takafusa Hikichi. "Production of Healthy Cloned Mice from Bodies Frozen at -20°C for 16 Years." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105.45. Ebsco Host. Harold B. Lee Library. Web. 23 Jan. 2011. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?hid=17&sid=9e6eced8-eccb-4872-bd8b-5930f0428707%40sessionmgr113&vid=10&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=aph&AN=35439036>.