uploaded July 21, 2013.
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I've been reading a number of journal articles about using similar species' genetic material spliced with samples from relatively recently extinct animals to recreate (and at some point re-introduce) engineered individuals of these currently non-existing species. I am as fascinated and charmed by do-do's, passenger pigeons (the bird in the painting), marsupial tigers and mammoths as any other science (and science fiction) geek- but didn't Jurassic Park touch on the "what could possibly go wrong?" question here?
It's been great to read all the other scientists weighing in on the issue (conservation concerns vs. disease vector)- but they don't say often enough that it was human action and policy that killed these creatures the first time, because we acted in the present for our advantage without a sufficient consideration of the consequences to the future. And we seem poised to do just that again. Who knows how similar or dissimilar these composite creations would be? I know that it was unnerving to read The Wind-Up Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi- and to realize that at least in fiction- someone is thinking through these possibilities...
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