I find this disturbing

[Neko-chan]

...

 

[Wannabefree]

So what if the embryo is too large to be birthed by the elephant? What if elephant milk isn't good enough for a baby mammoth? This is a really stupid idea...are scientists so bored with trying to find a cure for cancer that they have to stop and go clone a stupid mammoth just for grins to see if they can do it? There may be a very good reason why they are extinct. I guess we'll have to wait a few more years and the Mammoth Flu will be the next bird flu scare, only it'll probably kill us all. I hope it fails miserably and they don't have enough funding to do it again :/

 

[patandchickens]

So what if the embryo is too large to be birthed by the elephant? What if elephant milk isn't good enough for a baby mammoth? This is a really stupid idea...are scientists so bored with trying to find a cure for cancer that they have to stop and go clone a stupid mammoth just for grins to see if they can do it?

Or, "so what if your garden fails? What if you give yourself E coli poisoning with all that manure you're using as fertilizer? What if you get some disease from your chickens or parasite from your hogs? What if the economy doesn't collapse but an asteroid lands on your farm and it turns out you would've been 100x better off moving to a city and becoming a stockbroker instead? This is a really stupid idea, this self-sufficiency/homesteading thing.... are people so bored with trying to contribute to society that they have to stop and go live like other stupid people they've heard about just for grins to see if they can do it?"



No.

Really, amazingly, there are actually some fairly good REASONS why scientists do these things, even if those reasons are not immediately apparent to someone looking in 'in the middle' from the outside.... just as there are some fairly good reasons why YOU do all the things YOU do even if those reasons are not immediately apparent to others who don't know as much about the subject.

Pat

 

[Wannabefree]

So what if the embryo is too large to be birthed by the elephant? What if elephant milk isn't good enough for a baby mammoth? This is a really stupid idea...are scientists so bored with trying to find a cure for cancer that they have to stop and go clone a stupid mammoth just for grins to see if they can do it?

Or, "so what if your garden fails? What if you give yourself E coli poisoning with all that manure you're using as fertilizer? What if you get some disease from your chickens or parasite from your hogs? What if the economy doesn't collapse but an asteroid lands on your farm and it turns out you would've been 100x better off moving to a city and becoming a stockbroker instead? This is a really stupid idea, this self-sufficiency/homesteading thing.... are people so bored with trying to contribute to society that they have to stop and go live like other stupid people they've heard about just for grins to see if they can do it?"



No.

Really, amazingly, there are actually some fairly good REASONS why scientists do these things, even if those reasons are not immediately apparent to someone looking in 'in the middle' from the outside.... just as there are some fairly good reasons why YOU do all the things YOU do even if those reasons are not immediately apparent to others who don't know as much about the subject.

Pat

I STILL think it's a stupid idea.

 

[FarmerJamie]

So what if the embryo is too large to be birthed by the elephant? What if elephant milk isn't good enough for a baby mammoth? This is a really stupid idea...are scientists so bored with trying to find a cure for cancer that they have to stop and go clone a stupid mammoth just for grins to see if they can do it?

Or, "so what if your garden fails? What if you give yourself E coli poisoning with all that manure you're using as fertilizer? What if you get some disease from your chickens or parasite from your hogs? What if the economy doesn't collapse but an asteroid lands on your farm and it turns out you would've been 100x better off moving to a city and becoming a stockbroker instead? This is a really stupid idea, this self-sufficiency/homesteading thing.... are people so bored with trying to contribute to society that they have to stop and go live like other stupid people they've heard about just for grins to see if they can do it?"



No.

Really, amazingly, there are actually some fairly good REASONS why scientists do these things, even if those reasons are not immediately apparent to someone looking in 'in the middle' from the outside.... just as there are some fairly good reasons why YOU do all the things YOU do even if those reasons are not immediately apparent to others who don't know as much about the subject.

Pat

Meh, I don't necessarily buy that argument. I can think of *several* notorious examples where bad things were done "for scientific progress". I'll stay away from some obvious 20th century examples, because I am not intending to get political.

So, how about that "Africanized Honey Bee" experiment in South America?

Some things just don't need to be messed with, my opinion, although my inner nerd is facinated by the actual science of it.

 

[Shiloh Acres]

Meh, I don't necessarily buy that argument. I can think of *several* notorious examples where bad things were done "for scientific progress". I'll stay away from some obvious 20th century examples, because I am not intending to get political.

So, how about that "Africanized Honey Bee" experiment in South America?

Some things just don't need to be messed with, my opinion, although my inner nerd is facinated by the actual science of it.

I think that best expresses my true feelings on the subject. My first major was biology, and I've always been interested in science (yes, "inner nerd" LOL).

But ... looking back, I just see time and again how science has rather arrogantly looked into things that turned out to have bad consequences. Sometimes through our own ignorance of not being able to see the possible outcomes. Sometimes through the ignorance of the scientists who could not forsee the "uses" to which unscrupulous people would put their research.

Yes, I'm fascinated by it all. But ... I think humans overestimate their ability to understand/control their "science" ...

Guess I better be quiet too, before I get all political. LOL

 

[Wannabefree]

Meh, I don't necessarily buy that argument. I can think of *several* notorious examples where bad things were done "for scientific progress". I'll stay away from some obvious 20th century examples, because I am not intending to get political.

So, how about that "Africanized Honey Bee" experiment in South America?

Some things just don't need to be messed with, my opinion, although my inner nerd is facinated by the actual science of it.

I think that best expresses my true feelings on the subject. My first major was biology, and I've always been interested in science (yes, "inner nerd" LOL).

But ... looking back, I just see time and again how science has rather arrogantly looked into things that turned out to have bad consequences. Sometimes through our own ignorance of not being able to see the possible outcomes. Sometimes through the ignorance of the scientists who could not forsee the "uses" to which unscrupulous people would put their research.

Yes, I'm fascinated by it all. But ... I think humans overestimate their ability to understand/control their "science" ...

Guess I better be quiet too, before I get all political. LOL

That is basically where I stand as well. I'm interested, but I can't see tinkering with something I know nothing about or that I have no clue what the outcome will present, especially considering this is a life they are messing around with.

 

[rebecca100]

I think their main motivation is the all powerful dollar. Just imagine how much they would make off that thing. Thousands/millions would come to see it if it were on display(and you KNOW it would be) and that would just be the begining. They mentioned the possibility of breeding in the article.

 

[lwheelr]

Ok, the breeding is where things begin to build implications.

To breed them, they need more than one. In fact, they need a diverse gene pool - several dozen clones, from as many different DNA sources as they can locate.

So the implication there is that if they are entertaining breeding, they are already planning MANY clones, not just one. And that implies that they are thinking of something much larger than just studying a single animal - or that they've just not thought out the logical consequences of their actions (either possibility is not very comforting).

The only alternative is to breed a mammoth to an elephant, which would almost certainly yield a mule - sterile, and unable to replicate.

Only two courses open then...

Populate Zoos, or repopulate a species on public lands.

In Zoos, I'm sure they'd be lucrative - expensive to obtain, expensive to keep, but lucrative until the thrill wore off (and eventually it would, though the costs would not). What happens to them when they become commonplace? And should any animal be reproduced solely for the purpose of living a life in a cage to be studied?

On public lands, they would displace existing populations, by quite a bit - I mean one mammoth is not just going to displace a few deer, or an elk or two, each mammoth would displace an entire summer herd. Enough mammoths to sustain a viable herd would displace multiple species within entire ecosystems.

This just feels an awful lot like a teenager who decides she wants a baby, but hasn't even thought out how she'll raise it or feed or care for it, what she'll do with the baby while she's still in school, etc. The burden for her choice may impact others around her in ways she never even thought about or cared about at the time - the responsibility she abdicates will fall on others who did not ask for it, and were not part of the decision.

The decisions those scientists make can have implications on the entire world - in how we think about life, the management of species, and the balance of life. Scientific experimentation can't quite justify leaping without considering who will have to pay the consequences.

I'm not worried about "what if"s, so much as logical realities of the situation. I don't fear antique disease, or other risk factors. The KNOWN probabilities and dangers are plenty enough to raise concern in any person who thinks about what mammoths, even one or two (which is not all they are entertaining) would actually mean.

The African Bee experiments are a good example. The Wolf Releases are another one (controversy aside, just consider this - virtually every person who champions wolves does NOT have to live with them, and people who live in areas where timber wolves have been introduced [NOT "re-introduced" because timber wolves never existed in the lower Rockies or Cascades, gray wolves, physically and behaviorally different did] have seen the changes they've wrought, in drastically declining herds of deer, antelope, elk, spread of packs into areas far distant from where they were introduced, and in cross breeding with coyotes which have resulted in an animal that has the size and pack mentality of a wolf, but the close association with human habitation of the coyote).

If you look at the facts in both of those situations, it becomes abundantly clear that messing around with species with cross breeding, or introduction to environments where natural predators and natural disease control does not exist, is simply a bad idea all around. In one case, a non-native species got out of control, and is now displacing existing species, presenting greater risks to people and animals alike. In the other, a natural species was extinct, and other species in the area filled the niche (coyotes, foxes, etc), so when a new more aggressive and larger species was introduced, there was more chance for cross breeding of species that historically did not come into as much contact with each other, more damage to herds already managed for numbers, and no natural climate, disease, or predator pools for the new species. In both cases, they are spreading out far beyond what anyone intended for them to do, and having effects upon regions that no one thought they would.

If you introduce a high probability of genetic mutation into the mix, logical potentials become even worse. Things not only CAN get out of control, they DO.

The science geek in me wants to know what can be done too - but the realist in me knows that the practical realities of a situation should trump the demands of curiosity.

 

[tortoise]

Soo.... what EXACTLY are they going to do with it!