I’ve posted quite a bit on the futility of attempts to bring back the woolly mammoth via genetic engineering. In my view, it’s close to a scam that deludes the public about what the geneticists really intend to produce, which, as Dr Tori Herridge at the University of Sheffield calls it, is simply “an elephant in a fur coat”. For my posts on this debacle, inspired by conversations with Matthew Cobb, go here. But there are two other useful references that Matthew provided, with links:
An extract from his book As Gods: A Moral History of the Genetic Age
and
As I watched NBC News last night, I was upset to see that NBC had also bought the story, selling it as the program’s final “There’s good news tonight” upbeat story. You can watch it below, but do it today as they replace the news each day. Click on the screenshot below and start the segment at 18:29 (turn up the sound using the icon at the left bottom of the screen):
First, Colossal’s CEO Ben Lamm says that the company aims, besides producing mammoths, to “return balance to ailing ecosystems.” That is ridiculous. Is the tundra ailing because of the absence of mammoths, and, if so, will a couple of elephants in fur coats, not adapted to that ecosystem, cure it? Which ecosystem will the dodos “cure”?
He adds, misleadingly, “We actually took the genes that made a mammoth a mammoth, mapped them to mice, and then in only one month we produced living, healthy mice.” He doesn’t mention the huge mortality in this experiment, nor that they didn’t REALLY use mammoth genes, but mice genes that had a few DNA bases changed to the mammoth version (As I recall, they changed I think only three bases in seven mouse genes.) There was no attempt to insert full mammoth genes into mice, and they really couldn’t because they’d have to insert the control regions, too.
Lamm’s statement is flat wrong, and misleads the listener into thinking that they put mammoth hair genes into mice, making the mice “woolly.” In fact, as I pointed out before, the wooliest of all the mice had no mammoth-informed DNA in it. There is not the slightest indication that the lipid-related gene they put in the mice will increase their ability to withstand cold.
Lamm also neglects to mention the difficulty of getting entire mammoth chromosomes into the egg of an Asiatic elephant, nor the impossibility of constructing the Volkswagen-sized artificial elephant uteruses that would be needed to grow up the “mammothy” embryos to birth.
Finally, in view of the futility of this project, another Colossal officer says that their endeavors have inspired children to love science, and perhaps to save the environment. That’s the Hail Mary call of a dying project. Note that they project the production of the first mammoth (again, just an “elephant in a fur coat” for 2028. Only three more years! Wouldn’t it be cheaper just to put a giant fur coat onto an Asiatic elephant and then usher several of these garbed pachyderms to the tundra?
There are many changes–probably millions–necessary to convert an Asiatic elephant to a woolly mammoth, including those affecting behavior and metabolism. They will not accomplish such a conversion. Nor will they accomplish it with the dodo nor the thylacine. But Colossal talks a good game, as you see, and they’ve pulled the wool (pardon the pun) over the eyes of the public and of many credulous journalists. Shame on NBC News for not doing due diligence.
A shaggy dog story is “ is an extremely long-winded anecdote characterized by extensive narration of typically irrelevant incidents and terminated by an anticlimax.”
Seems that a “shaggy mouse story” is the same thing, only it’s a long-winded science anecdote.
Claiming that one can bring back Woolly Mammoths, the Dodo, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (too soon?), and other beloved characters from the days of yore, is surely a great way to generate research finds. No, they won’t be recreating these iconic creatures, but one can hope that the endeavor leads to some useful genetics and bioengineering. One does have to question the ethics of using projects like these to generate research funds.
With TEN BILLION DOLLARS they could buy up a lot of land to conserve. I think that’s a better idea than hoping there are some byproducts of this dumb projecft.
I appreciate your coverage of this vexing topic. Re species — we try to do our part to hang on to what we have.
I also heard it summarized incorrectly on NPR’s “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me” comedy quiz show.
At least it would have been accompanied by a joke and a moment of laughter. No doubt rather forced and overly exaggerated laughter, since comedians always do that for one another.
It is right up there with nuclear fusion as a practical source of energy, and human colonies on Mars. Always X number of years away.
As far back as the 1970s scientists and engineers used to joke: fusion energy is twenty years in the future and always will be.
But the difference is: Fusion is, and has been, done for billions of years, and has been done by man in a controlled manner for nearly fifty, so it is at least plausible that it can be used practically by man. Even if a true woolly mammoth is produced (not plausible, at this point) it will be nothing but a vanity project, serving no other perceivable purpose.
Even if they COULD produce a true woolly mammoth, this fails the “But, why?” test.
Not to mention that if successful (highly doubtful), the risk is that the tundra would be devastated, not helped, by such a drastic change to ecological balance. Yes, mammoths were there in not too distant past, but it does not mean they can safely reintroduce what would now be an invasive species, into this very fragile environment.
Full disclosure, I am not a scientist, just an interested layman.
I wonder how long it will be before unethical scientists somewhere and in some country try to create Neanderthals. Wouldn’t that be much easier than a mammoth or a dodo?
Richard Dawkins on one of his books asserted that the common use of the term “blueprint” to describe how genes build a body is not accurate…a much better analogy is that of a “recipe”.
The reason a blueprint is not the best comparison is that it suggests a one-to-one correspondence between particular genes and particular parts of the body…as in a highly detailed blueprint for a car where a particular bolt in a particular place in the diagram is intended to match exactly what the real structure will have.
In contrast, it seems that genes specify complex processes to build bodies. A recipe for a cake gets this concept across…you can’t take a crumb from a certain location of the cake and ask what particular letter or word in the recipe specified that crumb! Rather, the recipe describes the fundamental ingredients and the process of how they are expected interact with each other and the oven (the environment) in order to make a whole cake.
I think this concept of “genes as a recipe” makes it easier to see how bloody difficult it would be to recreate a mammoth, as its not just a case of swapping out a bolt here or there as you would in modifying a car. You need to specify an entire complex process!
Amazingly, the people trying to do this (and the popular press) might have the “blueprint” model of genes in mind…and therefore are in a conceptual straightjacket.
Anyway, it’s stuff like this that makes Dawkins, for me, the greatest science writer of all time.
Gell-Mann amnesia effect, per Wikipedia: a cognitive bias describing the tendency of individuals to critically assess media reports in a domain they are knowledgeable about, yet continue to trust reporting in other areas despite recognizing similar potential inaccuracies.
This kind of thing always reminds me that the media sources I consume are not to be trusted at face value, especially if they contain information that could benefit or harm some group or individual (in this case, the benefit is to Colossal).
One needs to remember that more reports than you can imagine are simply the regurgitation of press releases sent to the newsrooms by outside sources, and in the case of interviews, mostly due to the firm reaching out to media sources to give them the idea for the interview, including scope and questions to ask (even the so-called tough questions). I know – my company does this on a regular basis, and we gauge the effectiveness based on the percent of the key points we send in the press release that get reported as we want by the media, and it’s always in the upper 90’s. It’s the same with wooly mice as it is with politics.
Excellent points again Darryl.
D.A.
NYC
Add New Zealand’s Moa to the list of candidates for de-extinction:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018979201/american-bioscience-company-has-sights-to-bring-moa-back
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/as-scientists-work-to-resurrect-extinct-animals-a-paleogeneticist-warns-species-like-moa-need-to-be-trademarked/KG373GTWTJG73DF7FXD3NXXFOI/
It would be more feasible to bring back the Moa or the Dodo since it involves inserting a nucleus with artificial chromosomes into an externally laid egg. In the case of a Moa, it would require an Ostrich egg. Researchers are also quite capable of developing chick embryos entirely outside of their egg shell, in full view, so you don’t need a shelled egg.
It would still have huge odds against it, and is probably still impossible, but some barriers might be removed if it’s tried on an extinct bird. But Colossal is tellingly not interested in anything but the most splashy story.
Oh I’d LOVE to see moas come back. There’s a mock up using bones and emu feathers at the Auckland Museum which on my many visits there blew my mind as a kid. Like Jurassic Park level of thrill.
D.A.
NYC
Me too, but the Māori would probably just kill them all off again if we did.
These resurrection projects also lead people to believe that extinction is not final, that species can always be brought back. But It’s difficult even to keep threatened species numbering in the hundreds from going extinct because of the loss in genetic diversity in dwindling populations. So how is this cloning ever going to work without many genetically diverse complete clones produced? And then there’s the problem of why they went extinct in the first place. Those pressures are likely worse than ever. I’m with our host – put the money into habitat preservation for existing species.
The idea of ‘resurrecting’ the wooly mammoth is closely linked to the research of Sergey Zimov, the Russian scientist who first warned the world about the time bomb that methane trapped in the permafrost is for global warming. Another of his hypothesis is that humans driving large herbivores of the Siberian steppe to extinction cause the disappearance of this biome in Siberia. The boreal forest that replaced the former arctic steppe is a much less productive type of ecosystem and the darker shade (albedo) of the forest cover traps the heat instead of reflecting it back like a snow-covered steppe does, accelerating climate change. The Zimov family runs a long term experiment called the Pleistocene park to test this hypothesis (with herbivores like bison, musk oxen and horses for lack of mammoth substitute).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Zimov
https://pleistocenepark.de/en/
I agree that this idea of ‘resurrecting’ the wooly mammoth or any other extinct animal is a fallacy and kinda vain enterprise… Whatever they create, it won’t be the extinct wolly mammoth, and even if they could clone one back into existence again, the whole behavioral repertoire of this species that relied on cultural transmission and the other elements of the ecosystem that this specie evolved to interact with are gone forever.
That being said, I’m quite enthusiastic about experiments like the Pleistocene Park, the reintroduction of Prewalski horses in the Mongolian steppes or Rewilding Europe that partners with other organisations that attempt to ‘breed back’ a substitute to the extinct aurochs, for example. These projects have flaws and they face lots of funding and politic issues, but they’re so rich in potential scientific insights and they show a lot more promise (IMO) than the tech-optimist solutions to mitigate our environmental problems.
There’s this article on the MIT Press Reader website by the environmental historian Dolly Jørgensen that I can’t seem to get out of my head: «Grieving the Passenger Pigeon Into Existence Again».
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/grieving-the-passenger-pigeon-into-existence-again/
It captures the recurring historical pattern and our immature, foolish way to deal with the destruction that we cause so perfectly! I knew somewhat about the story of the passenger pigeon, but there’s a lot of this that I had no idea about.
When I was working in venture capital somebody would come in with a story – medical or tech – and some numbers – and we’d evaluate the idea: profitable or not, you think? – we’d ask each other.
Here I think the point of the exercise is more in the money raising, wealth accumulation, rather than the actual tech or natural/ environmental goals. And it is an excellent story.
D.A.
NYC
They’re also talking about resurrecting the extinct New Zealand moa, a large, flightless bird that makes the emu look like a mouse – woolly or otherwise.
Quite frankly i fine the idea of bringing extinct creatures back disgusting.
I wish someone would bring back the Daniel Patrick Moynihan species of Republican
politician. This, however, would be even harder than resurrecting the mammoth!
Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a Democrat. Resurrecting his type of Democrat is going to be quite hard. He wrote “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” which argued that the decline of family life was a cause of poverty. Can anyone imagine a Democrat making the same point now?
It is possible that real Woolly Mammoth DNA will eventually be found and used. So far, not so good. As some measure of actual progress in this field, real Spanish Flu has been created (it was deadly 100+ years ago, and still is) in a lab. The word ‘created’ is wrong. Perhaps ‘extracted’ would be more accurate. See “The Deadliest Flu: The Complete Story of the Discovery and Reconstruction of the 1918 Pandemic Virus” at the CDC web site.
Note that in your earlier post of 13march “Dawkins and Pinker discuss evolution”, Richard Dawkins explicitely says in that discussion on the resurrection of the mammoth: “I’m all for it.” (he does also say things that indicate he doesn’t understand what Collosal is doing)
As I said on previous comments, I think de-extinction of the passenger pigeon, or Carolina parakeet, would be a far more practical attempt rather than a large animal with equally large habitat requirements.