Ethical Concerns of Cloning Extinct Animals

Univeristy of Arizona |
Ethical Concerns of Cloning Extinct Animals
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MCB 404 Research Paper |

11/12/2010
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Expansion of the human race is increasing every day, as a consequence animals are becoming extinct quicker than they have ever before. Roughly 100 species become extinct a day. (Robert, 2000) According to Webster, extinct is defined as “no longer existing”, this term applies to mammoths, tasmanian tiger, dodo bird, ibex, dinosaurs, etc. Today, they exist in museums like the Smithsonian. Ever since the movie Jurassic Park with its spectacular special effects,   the thought of cloning extinct dinosaurs using their genetic material “DNA” have always been on our minds. Is it possible with our current technology? Cloning is no longer a product of science fiction that we only see in movies through special effects or CGI, it has become actual reality. In 1996 after many failures Dolly the sheep became the first successful cloned mammal to have lived after birth; she died in 2003. (Stahl, 2010) This substantiate that the genetic material from an adult cell could be used to cultivate a genetically identical clone. Unfortunately, cloning is very difficult with a low success rate of 1-2%. (Fiester, 2005) At present, we have successfully clone other animals such as cows, rats, cats, mice, pigs, and recently rats. However several attempts at cloning extinct animals have not yielded decent results. What are the possible uses for cloned animals? Conversely, there are several ethical and moral implication involving cloning extinct animals. To further understand these implications we need to look at cloning as a whole instead of on a subset of just extinct animals. Are we tampering with Mother Nature by playing god? Are there consequences for the environment? What about the welfare of the animals involved?
Cloning is the process of creating an identical copy of an organism or a part of the organism by using its genetic material “DNA”.   This means that the DNA...