Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum why not clone endangered species?

the title is rather self explanetory...

P.S. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Not much point in trying to Clone endangered and dead species, when we cant stop uor existing animal populations from dying out.
Strange we cultivate and breed as healthy animals as possible.
And yet we preserve as many 'born disabled humans' as we can. (See "Dreams of the Blind")

Now that we seem to have dispensed with marriage, prehaps our next step in evolution, would be to ensure all couples wanting children were free of genetic illnesses.
We keep healthy animals, lets have healthy humans.

My Step Father is a good man who is driven to do good in his community - counsellor, debt counsellor - represents people in court etc.

But he is disabled.

Is he one of the 'Unhealthy Humans' you are talking about? Or do you have a sliding scale and he just about makes it because he adds some value? Watch 'My Left Foot'.

This is the problem with the idea that the next step in evolution is for us to take it into our own hands and perfect it. Because you are right - that is logically where we go next - 'If evolution couldn't entirely dispense with 'Unhealthy Humans', then we can.'

Of course Hitler tried to wipe out 'Unhealthy Humans', it's just that he did it after they were born, whereas you will do it before they are conceived. Same questionable views about what makes a human valuable.

Regards,

Blacknad.

What makes a human valuable is;
1. What they do for society
2. How many people care about the human (family. friends etc...)
(my own thoughts -not proven)

Eliminating unhealthy humans at birth is only bad because it may make the family sad. Otherwise I think it's a great idea, provided that 'unhealthy' is defined to an appropriate degree. One other way to accelerate evolution is to clone exceptional people many times and let them loose on society.

Hitlers plan was flawed because he had no real scientific basis for his belief that jews were 'unhealthy humans' but if a new 'Hitler' was born that knew which humans were really holding humans back and managed to kill them ALL and rule as a vicious dictator for many years of the 'elite race', he would:
case 1, eventually die or get killed by someone
case 2, finally be embraced by the public -then die
Regardless, the people he hurt by killing their family members would eventually die. The next generation of humans wouldn't care that much. Future generations wouldn't care at all.(I'm sorry but I can't be expected to care if my great great great grandparents were killed brutally.) Then, in the very far future in a (arguably) much better society humans would look back on this individual as both a mad-man and the founder of the perfect society. (Hitler was actually mad, I forget which condition he had.)
(once again, that's just what I think)

I'm guessing there will be replies to this but can we please get back to the original topic soon. I wan't to get to the bottom of what's preventing me from having turtle soup.

you would end up with a limited gene pool.

We should not forget, that even disabled persons can have healthy ofspring. Also cloning doesn't work well, remember what happened to poor Dolly. Although the idea may be good, perhaps once Genetic Scientists have perfected the cloning technique to a point where it works.

"you would end up with a limited gene pool."

Thanks John - this is the real issue.

We watch the animal population vanish and gain some comfort from the fact that we can store DNA samples and use them to create those creatures again when conditions are more favourable. But the viability of such a small pool will mean we will have to continue to clone to sustain them. We could take many samples now to help alleviate this and obtain genetic variation.


- In order to bring back a rare Asian ox, the Gaur, Scientists infused a regular cow's egg with the genetic material of a living Gaur. While the egg was accepted by Bessie the cow's immune system, the Gaur calf suffered the same fate as all of the other cloned animals, and it succumbed to illness shortly after being born.

- Efforts are underway to clone the very recently extinct bucardo mountain goat, formerly of Spain. However, if this effort succeeds it will only produce female clones. Scientists speculate they may be able to remove one X chromosome and add a Y chromosome from a related goat species to make a male.


There is also a project to clone the Tasmanian Tiger - extinct for seventy years. If this thing ends up walking the planet again it will be an astounding achievement.


As for the question - Why not clone endangered species? Cloning does not address the root cause of extinction - the destruction of habitats. Preserving these is the most effective way of saving endangered species.

Regards,

Blacknad.

When I agree with John I equally agree with Rob. Why this issue of taking conservation to next level i.e. Cloning. It simply means a copy of the old animal. When an animal gets extinct it itself is selected by the nature to be eliminated unless it fights with its adaptive powers. I see no point in cloning an animal which is unusually unfit for survival. I also propose that if we end up making similar gene pools.
I feel that cloning is not a worthy way if we want to really make it usefull in future. if One say if we make the extinxt Jurassic Park..why whould everybody doesnt agree when it always have the chance (and has) ruled the world?

David

Can't we simulate mutation? By subjecting the animal whaen it is a single cell to radiation or something?

Justin David said - "I see no point in cloning an animal which is unusually unfit for survival."

- So we wreck an animal's environment and, when it becomes extinct, we don't reach out a hand to help and justify ourselves by claiming it was 'unusually' unfit for survival.

By the same thought process I could could keep a dog in my garden and never feed it and when it died I could claim that because it never adapted to eat grass it was 'unusually' unfit for survival.

Blacknad.

I say when the animal is brought with problems like rheumatoids and low survival rate (out of 1000 some 8 eggs do hatch..) and if you go deep into the problem the problem of repetition was lower even to Dr. Wilmut and many Koreans claim they have done cloning in humans but hasnt yet revealed the complete statistics of their experiment.
Cloning though promises all.. has its own success rate and need for high input money

Think about that one for a while...

If your great great great grandparents were killed at birth, how would you rate your chances of existance, let alone caring, at all?

I have thought about it. If I don't exist, I can't care. So there's no problem.

Ok, can we get back to the science regarding the question at hand, please:

"why not clone endangered species?"

I think you may have just convinced me of the veracity your argument.

I think we should definitely keep a stem cell bank of all animals. Both the ones that are threatened with extinction and the ones that heavily populate the earth...just in case the earth becomes largely inhabitable for many years. This includes all the races of humanity....keep them in with the seed bank in Norway. Pick the healthiest of humans to try to avoid reproducing genetic illnesses and disabilities. (But there will always be at least a small population of people with disabilities because of accidents and illnesses experienced sometime after birth)

Cloning esssentially requires a live animal cell of its kind whether differentiated or undifferentiated. I would liek to know what if an extinct animal doesnt leave behind its fossils from which one can 'ressurect' the animal possibly by cloning?