lower part of the body was underlying in
pure ice, and the upper part was found
in the middle of tundra,” said Semyon
Grigoriev, the head of the expedition
and chairman of the Mammoth Museum,
after announcing the discovery.
The question begs, is it possible
to create a clone of the mammoth in the
near future, much like
Wilmut created Dolly?
The answer, Wilmut
believes, is yes and no.
According to Wilmut,
“Cloning depends on
having two cells. One is
an egg recovered from
an animal around the
time when usually she
would be mated.” In
fact, Wilmut explains,
there would be a
need for not just one,
but hundreds or even
thousands of eggs in
order to optimize the
cloning
techniques.
This procedure is very
inefficient. In fact,
Dolly was the only
successful
sheep
to develop from 277
cloned embryos!
If we were to translate
this to the wooly
mammoth we would
face another problem
besides inefficiency. Since no mammoths
exist today, eggs would have to be
taken from its closest living relative: the
Asianelephant. As the Asain elephant is
an endangered species, Wilmut believes
that “it is clearly not appropriate to try
to obtain 500 eggs from elephants.”
Hence, cloning a mammoth in the same
way that Dolly was cloned is impractical.
However, there may be other
ways to bring the wooly mammoth to
life. In an essay Wilmut wrote or The
Conservation UK, he details two methods
to circumvent the “egg problem.” The
first method is to transplant the ovarian
tissue of an elephant into mice. Thus,
no eggs will be taken from elephants in
nature. This method is rife with obstacles,
both in the practical sense and in the
biological sense, so only time will tell us
if it is possible.
The second approach involves
the use of stem cells. Although there are
no stem cells in any of the mammoth
fossils, it is possible in many animals
to give adult cells four particular
proteins, resulting in a cell that has
the characteristics of a stem cell. As is
known, stem cells can be induced to
form gametes. So a cell from a female
can provide us with a mammoth egg
for use in research and possibly the
cloningor breeding of mammoths. Cells
taken from a male can in turn provide us
with sperm cells, making the fertilization
of mammoth eggs possible.
Though it may sound like
science fiction, the prospect of recreating extinct animals is becoming
moreand more of a reality. Today
scientists are researching the wooly
mammoth. Tomorrow it may be a
Tyrannosaurus rex. The possibilities in
this field are endless.
Imagine you are taking your
kids or grandkids to a zoo in 20 years,
and low and behold there is a giant wooly
mammoth staring you in the face. The idea
is certainly tantalizing to the imagination,
and one can see why so many scientists
are obsessed with making it a reality.
As far as the ethics of cloning or
breeding new species, Wilmut believes
that “If there are reasonableprospects of
them being healthy, we should do it. We
can learn a lot about them.”
Others maintain that an
animal’s physical health is not the only
concern that needs to be addressed.
Other questions such as “will the animal
be happy?” or “will the animal disrupt
the ecosystem it is placed in?” are
more concerning. Perhaps a mammoth
needs an abundance of land as well as
quietness in order to be happy, and will
thus be unhappy in the loud confines
of a zoo cage. And if the mammoth is
indeed released into the wild, perhaps
it will have an adverse effect on the
ecosystem as a whole resulting in other
animals’ harm.
Furthermore, some maintain
that using funding to bring animals back
to life while the money can be used to
help endangered animals is not ethical.
According to Dr. Martha
Gomez, a researcher at the Audubon
Center for Research of Endangered
Species in New Orleans, “Sociologically,
it is not right to bring back animals that
are totally extinct.We have to save the
animals that are still here and about to
disappear. Let us remember that the rare
animals in the zoos get old and die, and
if technology does not save them, there
will be no others like them.”
In the end, ethicists concerns
regarding the “re-creating” of animal
species will likely be ignored. Time and
time again history has shown us that
when there is a great enough interest in
a scientific endeavor, it will be pursued
in the name of scientific progress.
As the saying goes: “do first and ask
questionslater.” So if certain ethical
considerations aren’t fully thought out, or
if some animals might be inadvertently
harmed, then so be it, for the neverceasing march of science will proceed
at all costs.
Dr. Martha Gomez and several ethicists believe that
funding should be going to endangered species,
such as the black rhinoceros (top photo), before
spending money on resurrecting extinct species,
such as the Dodo Bird (bottom