Opinion: Wild and woolly science
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Too late for Michael Crichton, scientists reported this week that they have recovered a good deal of the woolly mammoth’s DNA from tufts of hair. Before you could say ‘Jurassic Park,’ journalists were speculating about the possibility of reviving the species by tinkering with the ova of elephants to replicate the mammoth’s DNA sequence.
John McCain didn’t like the federal government paying for research involving bear DNA, but even he might warm to the idea of bringing back the mammoth for a mere $10 million in federal funds. Stampeding mammoths probably wouldn’t be as terrifying as a flock of velociraptors. And the Treasury could recover its investment by nationalizing Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.
Still, is this trip really necessary? It isn’t just that scientists have better things to do. A successful quasi-cloning of a mammoth would tempt scientists to try the same thing with other extinct species, including Neanderthals, those hunky hominids whose possible interbreeding with humans has figured in prurient speculation for years.
On its blog, New Scientist magazine notes: ‘With a rough draft of the Neanderthal genome due around Christmas season, some reports speculate on the prospect for a Neanderthal-human hybrid or the more ethically palatable chimpanzee-human mashup.’ New Scientist provides this quote from genomicist George Church: ‘The big issue would be whether enough people felt that a chimp-Neanderthal hybrid would be acceptable, and that would be broadly discussed before anyone started to work on it.’
Enough people? All it would take is a few mad (or mischievous) scientists and a rich patron, a la ‘Jurassic Park.’ Then, when the resulting Neanderchimp reached marriageable age, all the speculation about human-Neanderthal mating could be put to the test, perhaps on the Maury Povich show. Creationists could picket outside the studio, joined by PETA and the SPCA.
On second thought, maybe the mammoth should be allowed to rest in peace. With global warming, the hirsute beast would probably go extinct all over again.