3D Printing Might Save the Rhinoceros 163
GordonShure.com writes: San Francisco based biotech startup Pembient have released details of their 3D printing led method to derail the market for Rhinoceros horns. Presently the bulk of demand originates from China, where said horns — gathered in the wild by poachers who usually kill the rhinos — are revered for supposed medicinal qualities. The new firm intends to mix keratin with Rhino DNA, then machine the combination with a 3D printer in a way that their counterfeit horns are difficult to detect by customers and traffickers alike.
The company already mulls expanding its production principle to other, lucrative wild animal trades such as the claws of tigers and lions. Pembient is however a young company — for all their ingenuity, will their ambitions to take on such a colossal black market be realized?
The company already mulls expanding its production principle to other, lucrative wild animal trades such as the claws of tigers and lions. Pembient is however a young company — for all their ingenuity, will their ambitions to take on such a colossal black market be realized?
Love the idea (Score:3)
... but considering the type of people they're going up against, I hope they don't end up wearing concrete boots.
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I don't see the problem - the people they're up against will simply take the technology and start making their own rhino horn. After all, they understand profit more than most, so being able to make their own "honest guv, its real rhino, would I lie to you" 'medicine' without all the expense of paying some middleman poacher, you know they're going to go full-on in the fake rhino horn trade.
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... but considering the type of people they're going up against, I hope they don't end up wearing concrete boots.
3D printed concrete boots of course :D
Re:Love the idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Add to it the fact that it will probably not work - to those using it as "medicine" it's only the real deal or nothing.
That's the point, they're trying to make it so that you can't tell the difference between real and fake. The idea is that you make it so cheap that poaching becomes economically unfeasible.
If the fake is good enough, then the only way to detect counterfeits is to have a traceable source. If there's a traceable source, the poachers are liable to get caught.
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The idea is that you make it so cheap that poaching becomes economically unfeasible.
I had no idea that AK47 bullets were so expensive.
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The fact that meth is cheap to produce doesn't mean it's cheap to distribute.
Fake? Who said anything about Fake? (Score:2)
Let us be just a little bit realistic here.
The stuff the company aims to produce is not fake rhino-horn, after all it has rhino DNA in it. And the matrix is keratin, which if memory serves me at all is what rhino horns grow from.
So, rather than bandy about that awful word, "Fake", let us elevate this issue and note that this company is making engineered rhino horn.
Last I heard, people in China (and USA and India and UK and...) buy Real Krab (or whatever the local name is), which is engineered from Real Sur
Re:This is great (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course it saves the rhinos. You put 100 times more fake stuff on the market and the price for rhino horn collapses, meaning people stop hunting them.
The brilliant part is that this makes use of something that's normally a bad thing - China's extensive peddling in fakes - to achieve a good result. I doubt it'll stop the really high end of the market, the sort of people who would instruct their buyer to send what they buy sent off to a lab (I don't think some rhino DNA alone would fool a lab, surely it looks different under microscopic examination), but for the rest of the market, it's a neat idea.
Re:This is great (Score:4, Funny)
You know what else is a pretty neat idea? Digital watches.
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Re:Love the idea (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't introducing Diet Horn here, they're trying to poison the supply chain.
The poachers probably aren't big proponents of a verifiable, traceable supply chain. They don't laser etch a serial number in the things after a kill. So you insert these fake horns into the chain and you dis-incentivize the poaching by driving prices down. Plus you get the witchdoctors questioning whether their supplier is selling them real of fake horns, which can lead to trust breakdowns and stop some purchases.
And hey, the smarter witchdoctors know it's all bullshit they're giving a polish to. So they'll secretly purchase completely legal and probably much cheaper fakes straight from the source and keep giving their victims a show.
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The poachers probably aren't big proponents of a verifiable, traceable supply chain. They don't laser etch a serial number in the things after a kill.
So what will happen is that most of the poachers will go out of business, but the nastiest, most tenacious poachers will band together and provide these features, because some ultra-rich Chinese guy will pay them umpty-ump dollars for certified rhino horn. Meanwhile, producing more rhino horn will make it possible for more people to buy it, which means more people will get "hooked" on it as they convince themselves it works — and if they break into the big time, they will go looking for the real thing
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The hunters become the hunted. Promote it as a hunting sport/capital punishment thing and add paid live streaming worldwide.
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Good idea, sir. We'll be sure to get the World Police right onto that, right after we consolidate our New World Order by quashing the outbreak of ungoodthink in Eurasia. As for vaporizing the poachers themselves... What do you think of drones with M-388 rounds? Make a real pretty little crater.
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If I were a poacher, and the premium for "real" horn was sufficient for me to keep poaching, I'd start delivering the head with the horn. Not sure we'll see printed heads in my lifetime.
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If I were a poacher, and the premium for "real" horn was sufficient for me to keep poaching, I'd start delivering the head with the horn. Not sure we'll see printed heads in my lifetime.
Oh, you never know! [google.com]
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I'm not quite sure, but adding an extra one to two thousand pounds of rotting packaging to your illicit product may impact your possible shipping channels.
Plus sawing through a neck instead of the much thinner horn would be a wee bit slower.
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One to two thousand pounds would be the whole rhino, not the head. And if you're chopping off the head then you can use a chainsaw without worrying about destroying some of the end product.
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Add to it the fact that it will probably not work - to those using it as "medicine" it's only the real deal or nothing. Unless you are able to flood the market entirely and use "an offer you can't refuse" deals with so much fake stuff that it's impossible for the poachers to sell their stuff.
The people smuggling the horns aren't exactly the most ethical businessmen. If you can sell them a fake horn for half the price they'll keep the profit, pass it on as real to the consumer, and the poachers might not be able to compete.
There will still be a few "legitimate" supply chains making sure they're getting the real deal, but it could put a lot of poachers out of business.
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That gives me a great idea - turn the poachers into middlemen. Get them to resell the fake horns at a large profit. It gives them a vested interest in passing off the fake horns as the real thing instead of making them compete with the fake horns, and the smugglers will be none the wiser.
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So yeah, let them flood the market with the phony item. Personally I don't think it would work though. It would be m
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...those buying these products usually have their own reliable sources to ensure that they are get what they pay for.
Those buying the products in bulk don't really care if they are genuine, they only care if the next customer in the supply chain will buy it. The end users, who are dumb enough to believe that ground up horn is going to cure their erectile dysfunction, don't have the means to test it. The end market is in China, where melamine is dumped into baby formula, dried weeds are sold as tea, and noodles are often preserved with formaldehyde. They just do not have the supply chain infrastructure to ensure qualit
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...those buying these products usually have their own reliable sources to ensure that they are get what they pay for.
Those buying the products in bulk don't really care if they are genuine, they only care if the next customer in the supply chain will buy it. The end users, who are dumb enough to believe that ground up horn is going to cure their erectile dysfunction, don't have the means to test it. The end market is in China, where melamine is dumped into baby formula, dried weeds are sold as tea, and noodles are often preserved with formaldehyde. They just do not have the supply chain infrastructure to ensure quality or authenticity. The fake rhino horn could work well.
Ironically, testosterone or one of DrugCo's magic cures for ED could be included in the counterfeit horn, so it works better than the real McCoy.
Re: Love the idea (Score:3)
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The diamond trade is artificially protected since it is a legal product and boosted by marketing. Your wife may not be able to tell the difference but advertisement tells you that only the real deal is worth it.
If I remember correctly it is the flaws in a natural diamond that make it "spark" more then a grown one.
The fake horns may work as long as no simple test is developed to check for authenticity. ..... even westerners still
The better approach would probably be to convince people but truth rarely works
Re: Love the idea (Score:2)
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As the siblings have said... DeBeers gets away with it because it is a highly protected trade of legal products that is fiercely enforced by a cartel.
Nowadays, many (if not most) lab-grown gem-quality diamonds are almost perfectly indistinguishable from the ones dug out of the Earth. Only a very small handful of human beings could even halfway consistently tell the difference between such diamonds in general, if not already informed of their respective origins. In some cases, the only real difference is the
Conversely (Score:4, Interesting)
given so few wild rhinos are left, how about giving them all prosthetic horns, to reduce their value?
It would still be a story, because you can use 3D printers for that too, if you really wanted to.
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In some wild life parks the "good guys" cut the horns from rhinoceros as a way to protect them from the "bad guys", so a "prosthetic horn" is dangerous idea actually.
...Unless the prosthetic horn looks nothing like the original horn, be it by colour or whatever.
Re:Conversely (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that the poachers killed the rhinos anyway because they did not want to waste time tracking a rhino without a horn. It was a good idea but didn't work [savetherhino.org].
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If you'd read the article you linked to, you'd see it does work, but not 100%.
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Here is the conclusion from the article:
A first priority for all rhino conservationists should be to ensure adequate anti-poaching monitoring and security (including intelligence-gathering) to protect rhino populations, and only then should dehorning be considered, for is a rhino really a rhino without its horn?
The effectiveness of dehorning alone is much closer to 0% than it is to 100%. Dehorning is only a small part of the solution.
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New idea: Give the rhinos an authentic-looking prosthetic horn with some C4 in it and a tensioned trigger wire running to the old horn stump. If some fucker cuts the horn off, BOOM.
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New idea: Give the rhinos an authentic-looking prosthetic horn with some C4 in it and a tensioned trigger wire running to the old horn stump. If some fucker cuts the horn off, BOOM.
Just means the poacher needs an expendable human, too. Those aren't particularly hard to obtain, unfortunately. And you also have to be very careful to ensure that the bomb won't go off when the rhino smacks something with its horn. Though I suppose blowing up all the rhinos will stop the poaching...
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It should be pretty hard to obtain an expendable human in the countries where the remaining rhinos live. C4 is very stable and won't go off on impact, but a stable and long-lasting detonator would be needed.
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Take a look at the current range [wikipedia.org]. There are plenty of greedy/desperate people there. They already risk being shot by game wardens and the military why difference would a bomb make?
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Rhino horns grow about an inch a year. They will eventuality grow enough to shed the prosthetic and boom, one dead rhino.
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How about this.
You allow very rich people to hunt Rhino Poachers?
Yes it is terrible idea and I don't really think it is a good idea.
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We already have people who hunt rhino poachers. They are called game wardens and the military.
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Not if the prosthetic horn was visibly and obviously not a real rhino horn (to the poachers and also to those giving it to them).
Given that a rhino can absolutely live without its horn... why not farm them? They wouldn't be cheap to farm, but I absolutely don't buy the cheap counterargument of "it would create demand". As long as your rhino farmers aren't some massive conglomerate trying to increase demand (ex, tobacco industry) but instead offering the "real deal" at prices that, while still expensive, c
Will price point even matter? (Score:3)
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Mix in random poisons.
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Are you suggesting poisoning people? That seems absurd.
Also, what poisons? Keep in mind your poisons have to have a long enough life, penetrate the entire horn of a living creature without harming it (likely impossible), and in your BEST case scenario, end up hurting actual people. Plus the fact that, to be effective, the poisons would have to be unfilterable / unbindable, an unlikely situation.
It's not just morally dubious, it's overall just evil. But unlike most evil plans, it doesn't help anyone, not
Re:Will price point even matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Keep in mind your poisons have to have a long enough life, penetrate the entire horn of a living creature without harming it (likely impossible),"
Why? you'd just lace the horns once they've already been removed, or lace the fake ones and seed them into the market. It would only take a few casualties to massively drop demand.
"and in your BEST case scenario, end up hurting actual people"
Is this somehow worse than hurting actual rhinos? Is there some reason to class humans as a super species that have a greater right to exist than any others other than anthropomorphic arrogance?
What about the people whose lives are taken by poachers? what about the people whose livelihoods are destroyed by poachers potentially resulting in their lives being taken? Are the lives of rich Chinese folks more important than everyone else?
What about the fact that when poachers make a kill they often lace the animal carcass with poison so that the hundreds of vultures that descend on a fresh carcass are also wiped out because otherwise park rangers see the vulture swarm and know where the poachers are active? What about the people who are dying of disease because vulture populations have been decimated due to this practice meaning there are no vulture clean up flocks around in more populated areas any more to deal with decaying disease ridden carcasses of feral dogs and such that the vultures remove? Do those people not matter either?
What about the people who have died due to conflict and terrorism funded by spoils from poaching? do those victims no matter either?
I'm not advocating the GPs plan but I don't think it's as clear cut as you make out, certainly were that eventuality to occur, that given that the Chinese government wont do anything to quash the myth that rhino horn is magical, then if nothing else I'd have zero sympathy for the victims were this to happen- I'd rather have people like that suffer, than the people whose lives are taken, livelihoods are destroyed by poaching, or the poached animals themselves. Plenty of rangers and locals who have had the misfortune to run into poaching groups have also died because of these people, why should I care if something happened to the consumers at the other end? Their actions have killed enough people and animals.
Make no mistake, demand for these horns from the people buying the product have enough blood on their hands, it's not a victimless crime, on the contrary, there are many, many victims so the people who consume and feed this trade becoming victims is actually a very much preferable alternative to the status quo. It's much better that people responsible for a problem suffer, than innocent bystanders.
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"Is this somehow worse than hurting actual rhinos? Is there some reason to class humans as a super species that have a greater right to exist than any others other than anthropomorphic arrogance?"
Yes because it is our species. Really any member of a species that does not put the survival of the other members of it's species over a different species is flawed from a biological viewpoint. A prey animal will not allow a starving predator to take another member of the herd just so predator can survive. A rhino
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"Yes because it is our species. Really any member of a species that does not put the survival of the other members of it's species over a different species is flawed from a biological viewpoint."
That assumes you have a complete grasp of the global ecosystem, which we don't. We do know that biodiversity reduction can lead to population collapse that can in turn hurt us though.
"A prey animal will not allow a starving predator to take another member of the herd just so predator can survive. A rhino will not wo
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You can try to spin it however you want. The vast majority of the people on earth do in fact see humans as having a greater right to exist than other animals. If a rhino and person were caught on a see-saw contraption on a cliff where the process of
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"You can try to spin it however you want. The vast majority of the people on earth do in fact see humans as having a greater right to exist than other animals."
I doesn't matter how I spin it, it doesn't mean it's right, whether it is or not is a wholly personal thing and doesn't make me any more wrong than someone that holds the opposite view. There's a fair argument backed by science though that allowing destruction of biodiversity only hurts us in the long run however.
"The poachers are only hurting animal
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I'd put it something that both makes people puke their guts up and makes them unable to get it up (if such a thing exists).
Immoral? No, it's punishment, no more immoral than prison.
Re:Will price point even matter? (Score:4, Funny)
I'd put it something that both makes people puke their guts up and makes them unable to get it up (if such a thing exists).
Lots of beer then?
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Re:Will price point even matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you suggesting poisoning people? That seems absurd.
But we do it for other products. We poison industrial ethanol so the government doesn't tax it at the recreational rate. We spike opioid analgesics with non-therapeuticly high levels of acetaminophen to discourage recreational use. If we're willing to poison things that are sold legitimately, why wouldn't we poison something that is illegal? I'm not saying it wouldn't work for other reasons you cited, but we've already stepped over the line as a society of intentionally poisoning things to discourage their use.
Hoped Viagra Would have taken care of it (Score:2)
Rhino horn's function = Tylenol (Score:2)
Instead of Viagra, rhino horn's main function in traditional Chinese medicine is much more closer to Tylenol
Rhino horn has never been used as aphrodisiacs in Chinese medicine
As there are hundreds of other ingredients, vast majority of them plant based, such as barley or chrysanthemum, which work much better as fever reducer in traditional Chinese medicine, rhino horns are actually not needed at all
unworkable (Score:5, Insightful)
Animal horns have intricate ordered microscopic structures that no 3D printer can reproduce, but that are easy to look for with a microscope.
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Great Idea (Score:2)
Now if they just pass laws which make sure that if you can prove you are trafficing in *fake* rhino horn you are off the hook for fraud (and their aren't any trafficking laws) it should be possible to drive the market for rhino horns out of existence.
A slippery slope? (Score:2)
Poison the bastards (Score:5, Interesting)
Most materials will soak up another material of the right type afaik, so capture the rare rhino's and soak their horns in something poisonous.
Make anyone using rhino horn medicinally puke their guts up for a month, that'll teach the fuckers.
In fact, someone should take the confiscated rhino horn, poison them and then release them onto the market.
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Sadly that probably is the only solution. But as soon as someone did it the usual bleeding hearts would crawl out from under their fetid rocks and be out on the streets protesting.
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But would they? To protest poisoning rhino horns is pretty much to support the people killing rhinos. I don't think the 'bleeding hearts' would protest much.
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Nobody complains that the ATF requires producers of (non beverage) ethanol to denature it and make all the hobos sick.
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Supply chain injection (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm curious how you'd actually inject these into the supply chain.
At the minimum it seems like you'd need some undercover work, and to be really effective the best way would probably be to catch and turn some of the actual dealers. Conversely, I suppose it wouldn't take more then 1 or 2 deals-cut in order to seriously undermine and devalue the entire trade.
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I doubt it because it would work BOTH ways (Score:3)
Whatever simple test they could fool by simply "mixing in dna" would likely then be spoofable the other way too: a vendor caught selling rhino horn could tell the authorities either "oh no, it's synthetic actually" or at least he THOUGHT it was. ...because the people who buy rhino horn today aren't doing it to own something that's LIKE rhino horn; they either believe some goofy bullshit it about it making their dicks hard or for some mystical "I want to have something that's forbidden" reason - in either case, 'fake' rhino horn wouldn't cut it anyway, and there will still remain the market for real rhino horn.
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So, just like synth diamonds have eliminated... (Score:5, Insightful)
This will work about as well as synthetic diamonds (which are actual, real diamonds) have collapsed the natural diamond market and eliminated the horrific practices which surround natural diamond mines in under developed areas of the world.
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Reading the comments, I've gone back and forth as to whether this would be effective and I think this about sums it up. There is demand for rhino horn and even if we flooded the market with fakes, people would know there are fakes and would demand the real thing. What would likely happen would be that any poorer folks would buy "cheap rhino horn" which is really the fake stuff being passed off as real. They might even know it is fake but wouldn't care as they wouldn't be able to afford the real stuff.
Mea
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Do you want to enlarge your black market? (Score:2)
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Will it be realized? (Score:2)
The company already mulls expanding its production principle to other, lucrative wild animal trades such as the claws of tigers and lions. Pembient is however a young company â" for all their ingenuity, will their ambitions to take on such a colossal black market be realized?
Are you crazy? Of course it will; the people who slaughter endangered animals like this aren't in it to provide their esteemed customers with a genuine article - they just want the money. They will jump at the opportunity to make a fast profit by cheating. Why endanger youself by poaching if you can just mix up some gunk in a printer?
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Anthropogenic selection (Score:2)
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Variety? (Score:2)
Just sell powdered horn (Score:3)
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What's next? (Score:2)
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turn about is fair play? (Score:2)
So after all this complaining about how counterfeit food and medicine from china is morally repugnant, we decide to turn the tables...
At least we are attempting to save the rhinos, I guess, but seems to me that it's a slippery slope to agree that flooding a market with counterfeit goods is actually a good idea...
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Is This A Publicly Traded Company? (Score:2)
Really? (Score:2)
Re:The next Jurassic park movie (Score:5, Funny)
"Run! We only have 37 days before the t-rex finishes printing and comes to get us!"
"We call it the Cartridge Contingency. If the dinosaurs become uncontrollable we just stop replacing the cartridges in the printer and no more dinosaurs. Much faster than the Lysine Contingency of the first island."
Re:Rhino horns don't even work! (Score:5, Informative)
for the vast majority of the Chinese people, over 90%, do not believe in the effectiveness of the rhino horns
So that's a target market of only 136 million?
with the exception of those living in the Hong Kong and surrounding region (mainly Guangzhou)
Oh, and they're only concentrated in one of the wealthiest areas? Definitely not a problem then.
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How about we take this a bit further and embed a bit of Viagra and aspirin in them - make them actually work in the way people believe they should works (ie. hangover cures and erectile dysfunction).
We can also give them a pinkish tint so people can easily identify the 'good' ones (sign of quality - just like the blue color of Breaking Bad's meth).
After a while people will be demanding the artificial ones - problem solved!
Re:Rhino horns don't even work! (Score:5, Insightful)
The claim that the rhino horns are clamored as Chinese medicine is way over hyped - for the vast majority of the Chinese people, over 90%, do not believe in the effectiveness of the rhino horns, with the exception of those living in the Hong Kong and surrounding region (mainly Guangzhou) This has been evidenced time and time again on the distribution data on where the rhino horns were used - over 80% of it were used inside Hong Kong In fact one can go to Chinese medicinal shops in Hong Kong and find rhino horns display prominently, but in other places inside China, there is no rhino horn in sight as there is no market for it
It isn't just rhino horn, it's rare types of wood, tiger/lion skins and the skins of other endangered species, turtle shells, elephant tusks the list goes on and all of this to feed the Chinese taste for luxuries. There used to be a market for these products in the west and to an extent there still is. Conservationist groups have done a lot of work to shame people into not buying this stuff and for a while it was actually working. With the economic boom in China that changed. A while ago I watched an interview with an African ranger who commented that "Wherever the Chinese show up the animals disappear". The problem of poaching is bad enough without the Chinese über-class of nouveau rich luxury junkies making it worse and I don't give a hoot for arguments like there being a long and rich tradition of ivory carving in China that will die out if there is no ivory. If I have to choose between luxury obsessed people in China or the West getting their fix of ivory products or elephants surviving as a species I will pick elephants every time and the same goes for tigers, lions, turtles and less cuddly or less cute creatures like the short tailed albatross, 20 % of north american mussel species, the Ganges shark, the addax, pygmy three-toed sloth, the California condor, the Lord Howe Island stick-insect, the okapi, the European fresh water pearl mussel..... the list is so long it depresses me to think about it.
Re:Rhino horns don't even work! (Score:5, Interesting)
and the pangolin, what's not used for trinkets or medicine is simply scoffed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/maga... [bbc.co.uk]
"They asked up to $1,500 (£1,000) a kilo. Asked why they were so expensive, one woman replied with no apparent shame: "Because they're rare and illegal."
My only hope here is that when the pagolins are all dead, the ants they used to eat in great quantities rise up and eat the vietnamese and chinese who put profit above ecology.
Wabbit season! Duck Season! Chinese Season! BLAM (Score:2)
Re: Rhino horns don't even work! (Score:2)
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Print them where you want to sell them. :-)
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