Originally posted by Jonna
Animals went extinct for a reason. What life would they have outside of zoos that would be different from before? Would you want to be brought back
just so you could be caged and gawked at?
Trying to correct our mistakes of destroying a species sounds noble and all, but what is the real reason that we are doing it? Think about it.
Protect the enviornment and natural habitats that exist currently because if the animals of today are in decline because of it then the animals of
yesterday will surely be unable to adjust to them.
Just because we can do something does not validate that we should.
I agree that we should not clone simply because we can. There should be a purpose behind it. We should not randomly clone animals that went extinct
naturally (i.e. dinosaurs, mammoths, saber-tooth cats, etc). But this is an animal that did not go extinct naturally. This animal was hunted into
extinction (like so many other species) by humans. I'm of the opinion that there is nothing natural about extinction by human.
If this works, the lesson learned could be applied to animals that have not yet gone extinct, but are on the verge and could be saved.
One of the pre-eminent cloning specialists in the US has said that cloning should have rules. Rule #1 being - does the animal to be brought back have
a habitat. In this case the animal does. The habitat of the Thylocine has been virtually unchanged since its demise.
In this program, he didn't mention any other "rules." Anyone out there have any rules they think should apply to cloning extinct animals? If so,
what are they and let's see how they fare in this situation.