I’m saying there’s a clear distinction between ‘artificially engineered’ and ‘naturally occurring’. Yes, there’s already been millennia of artificial breeding via animal husbandry, as you point out, but that doesn’t involve the direct molecular manipulation of genetic material so as to deliberately create mutant strains. So I think a distinction can be made there as a matter of principle. — Wayfarer

As an engineer, I think it's accurate to call animal husbandry a form of engineering. That doesn't mean I don't understand the distinction you're making. It's kind of the difference between designing an addition to an existing house and designing a development which involves the clear cutting of 500 acres and building new houses and condos. As a civil engineer I can tell you that the engineering and permitting standards for the latter are nowhere near adequate to prevent serious unintended consequences to nearby properties, downstream waterways, and local animal and plant life. That's something we see all the time. How much worse would this be for something as novel as the new genetic technologies. As inadequate as the current design requirements for civil design, at least there are codes and professional standards that apply. For genetic manipulation, there are none.

Mammoths and Mastodons both have been extinct for about 10,000 years. There's probably a good chance they could mate and produce fertile offspring with modern elephants. Dinosaurs, on the other hand, have been extinct for about 65 million years. Their closest living descendants are birds. — T Clark

Sure thing - the title was referring to the movie, Jurassic Park, with its theme of re-animation, not to the actual Jurassic. I’ve been interested in dinosaurs since childhood and well understand the timescales. Actually one of the ‘mammoth stories’ I remember from many years ago was the discovery of a wooly mammoth preserved in ice with food still in its mouth, as if it had been snap frozen. Must have been some cold wind, that one. :scream:

I think your comments on comparisons to building codes are spot on, although as I mentioned, when a Chinese doctor altered the genome of twins using CRISPR, he was sanctioned and ultimately jailed (mind you the CCP jails people for all kinds of reasons, he was jailed for ‘falsifying documents’. There’s a Wiki entry on the story here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Jiankui_affair ). I’m hopeful that these issues are subject to very searching scrutiny by regulators.

I think your comments on comparisons to building codes are spot on, — Wayfarer

I was thinking about that after I wrote it. Even if there were codes for genetic engineering, I'd still be worrying. The uncertainties and consequences of being wrong are too great.

Our goal is to have our first calves in the next four to six years," said tech entrepreneur Ben Lamm, who with Church has cofounded Colossal, a bioscience and genetics company to back the project. — CNN

Ben Lamm is out of his whamilibammilylammily mind!

Actually I think THE book to read about this whole issue is Walter Isaacson’s The Code Breaker, which profiles Jennifer Doudna, who was the scientist behind CRISPR gene editing technology. I’ve read many of Isaacson’s non-fiction books and they’re generally top notch. I’ll add it to the never-ending list of must-reads.

I get it now. People are worried about genetic engineering of the kind involved in hybridization of living and dead animals because it's a back door that eventually leads to human experimentation and that's opening a Pandora's box of what the perfect human is - is s/he white, black, with blue eyes, curly haired, and so on?

I suppose such experiments allow scientists to skirt around regulations and bans, allowing them to practice and perfect techniques which then, at some point, once fully mastered, could be used on people. There really is no difference between a space rocket and a nuclear-tipped ICBM, is there?

Have a browse of an online magazine called The New Atlantis. Has many thoughtful critiques and reflections on all kinds of issues of technology and society. (There's an essay on genetic engineering on the front page.)

@Wayfarer

The New Atlantis - Atlantis, a civilization that destroyed itself with its own highly advanced technology or so the story goes. Interesting!

A few salient points:

1. Gene therapy failed to live up to the hype. Scientists found out that treatments based on gene editing wasn't, after all, that simple.

2. Gene-based diagnosis turned out to be mixed blessing. They could diagnose the condition but couldn't treat it (the therapeutic-diagnostic gap). The classic case being Huntington's disease.

3. Designer babies - perfect humans, even mentally and physically "enhanced" - become a possibility but what are the costs?

4. Will clones be happy?

An aside:

The most tempting reason to engage in genetic engineering is to assert new kinds of control over our offspring, and to design children with certain desirable human attributes: children with high IQs, perfect pitch, beautiful appearance, remarkable strength, amazing speed, and photographic memories. Some might even seek to design human offspring with better-than-human attributes. — Eric Cohen (The New Atlantis)

Is the mind the brain? Can our minds be altered by modifying genes (physical stuff)?

Designer babies - perfect humans, even mentally and physically "enhanced" - become a possibility but what are costs? — TheMadFool

Projecting our (generally ignorant?) ideas of perfection onto individuals even before they are born, I fear it will be destructive beyond imagination.

Aside from potentially being able to avoid/cure genetic defects, I think this idea is very perverse.

Projecting our (generally ignorant?) ideas of perfection onto individuals even before they are born, I fear it will be destructive beyond imagination. — Tzeentch

You have a point. Evolutionary fitness is not exactly being the fastest, strongest, brainiest.

:flower:

In principle I am totally on board with this. We have used technology to create the biggest and most devastating mass extinction in the history of the planet, so I'm all for using it to undo it too. — StreetlightX

Yeah but what if Mammoths went extinct because of climate change from the end of the last ice age, and not because of humans? Then we'd be bringing back an extinct species into a world they didn't evolve for. I think it's interesting as hell, and if someone wants to cultivate a small herd in Siberia for the science, then fine. But I'm not so sure about bringing them back for ecological reasons.

Then we'd be bringing back an extinct species into a world they didn't evolve for. — Marchesk

Then we engineer them otherwise. Promethean dreams or barbarism!

Mammoths on Mars?

That's my other band.

What we can/want to do is not the same as what we should/need to do.

[...] But you cannot recall a new form of life — Erwin Chargaff (Epigraph of the book Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton)

Chargaff seems to have regretted his major contributions to the science of genetics as is clear from the tone and content of his quotes; you can be find them in his Wikipedia page (click the link for more). For him genetic engineering was mankind overstepping its mandate. His point was that humanity has no idea what it's getting itself into. A real-life repeat of Victor Frankenstein's disastrous experiment with nature's mechanisms, exclusively divine domain is a possibility that we can't rule out. We need to tread carefully, this is treacherous, unmapped territory. Even the smallest mistake can have undesirable consequences.

Maybe Chargaff is overreacting to the situation. I dunno! Only time will tell...as is always the case.