Woolly mammoths, coming to a petting zoo near you!

Do we really need to cross-species clone a woolly mammoth?

That is precisely what some scientists intend to do in a $10 million project.

The New York Times reports that a science team from Pennsylvania State University points to enough mammoth genome to regenerate or clone these animals that fell extinct over 10,000 years ago.

One of the largest problems with "regenerating" the mammoth is the degraded state the DNA is found in, and thus makes cloning extinct animals an even more daunting task. This also adds to the high probability of failure.

I'm always fascinated by the bio-ethical questions journalism poses, but never answers. We are constantly bombarded with the positive aspects of how much "progress" we have made in science.

At the same time, the progress we have made in stabilizing the economy or bettering our education system stands still.

Most articles do touch on the negative side, but it is either trivialized or never taken seriously (I think this may be partly because we think of these projects as controlled science and assign a notion of sterility).

I came across an oped piece, “Resurrection Science” that posed the many questions I have about these experiments.

Olivia Judson asks why should we be spending time and energy on recreating extinct animals when we clearly have problems keeping many of the endangered list.

“And yet. No matter how much I enjoy thinking about the science of resurrection — and I do — I have to admit that the absence of mammoths isn’t exactly a pressing problem. What is pressing is the number of species we are currently in danger of losing … Let’s get our act together. Let’s prevent that first.”

I think it is harder for journalists to answer these questions. The whole idea of remaining objective and allowing the public to come to their own opinion may not be the best when it comes to cloning and other bio-ethical issues.

Erin