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Science

TigerCloning 348

BeaverWise writes "Looks like puss and boots is coming back. The last known Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, died in captivity in 1936, but a team of Australian biologists believes the animal's extinction may simply be a 70-year hiccup. DNA from a Tasmanian tiger has been found, and cloning is under way."
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TigerCloning

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  • Is for someone to bring back Dire Wolves!
    "What a cute lil puppy" "Munch! Scarf! Yum!"

    Pirst Fost!
  • And give me some sabretooth aswell. Imagine 2020 when your daughter makes some tasy dront for thanksgiving...
  • by Spankophile ( 78098 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @02:36AM (#828313) Homepage
    I wonder if they'll have to repair the Tiger DNA with that from frogs, then we can have spontaneous sex-changes and let them reproduce!
  • What on earth does this refer to? Some Oz kids show or something?
    --
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25, 2000 @02:36AM (#828315)
    Tazmania Park is frightening in the dark
    All the thylacines are running wild
    Somone shut the fence off in the rain
    I admit its kinda eerie
    But this proves my chaos theory
    And I dont think I'll be coming back again
    Oh no.

    I cannot approve of this attraction
    'Cause getting disemboweled always makes me kinda mad
    A huge tazmanian tiger ate our lawyer
    Well, I suppose that proves...they're really not all bad
  • Always been a fan of this bizarre kitty. Glad to see they're bringing him back. Kinda makes up for the fact humanity hunted 'em out of existance. Of course, now here comes the flip side: What if our killing off the Tasmanian tiger *WAS* a natural product of Darwinism -- acted through humanity as a whole? What if we start doing this to a bunch of other animals? What happens when we finally bring back wooly mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers or even dinosaurs? (Assuming viable DNA can be found.) What sort of kinks will be throwning into the evolutionary process? My 0.02$.
  • Aren't they trying to do something similar to this with the Wolly Mammoth? If they success, the days of a real Jurrassic Park may be near.... Kewl!
  • This is sure to bring up A LOT of ethical questions. If we can bring back a certain species of animal then what role does God play? I am not a very religious person but this kind of thing scares the hell out of some people. Think about it, religion is about God making all of the decisions, who lives, who dies, what species keeps going, what species becomes extinct, etc. If we start making these decisions the people that spend every sunday in church will have to look at things differently. It is just 1 BIG can of worms.
  • Haven't we learned our lesson about this [jurassicpark.com] yet?
  • What if our killing off the Tasmanian tiger *WAS* a natural product of Darwinism...

    You go Adolf!

  • by Panamon777 ( 78286 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @02:40AM (#828321)
    ...to what extent do you repopulate the wild? Do you produce three or four for display in zoos, or do you reproduce millions of them (a la the Passenger Pigeon) to put them back into nature at the levels they once were?

    This does, of course, assume that the cloning works perfectly. If it does, it'll have a significant impact on the Endangered Species list - don't worry about killing off endangered animals, because "they" can always make more! It might do more harm than good in that respect.

    Evan
  • So dinosaurs are next!? Darn, I thought those mainframes will become extinct once and for all.
  • Does anyone have a link to some pictures of the Tasmanian Tiger pleas?
  • I remember reading about this over a year ago when somebody realized that it should be possible and began snapping up all the tiger fetuses in jars he could find.

    Which, in a way, is probably a strong argument for keeping dead babies in jars.

  • Just want to know your opinion:
    how will all this cloning interfere with evolution (according to Darwin's theory)? Shall we claim cloning is the next step in evolution so we could take back extincted species, or shall we be worried for the fact we are doing some sort of sabotage to nature's law?
    Cheers!
  • not meant as flamebait but... here goes.

    if something happens that proves somebodies beliefs wrong, then obviously they are wrong and are foolish to go on believing it. if they can't deal with cloning its their own problem . not the cloners problem
  • Don't they see that with the limited DNA there has been created a genetic bottleneck where only certain traits are possible? The end result is like forever inbreeding: rampant disease and disfigurement.
  • What, you mean the second law of thermodynamics?
    --
  • These cloned tigers will be either put in wild life very early, but they would need support as they have no parents, or later but then, they'll not be trained to survive in the wild and risk to be extermined by other races (not speaking of men).

    They could also be put in Zoo... But then, what good is it to bring them to life ? Born to be prisonner is no good.

  • by Dan Hayes ( 212400 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @02:46AM (#828330)

    I'm not some kind of technology-fearing Luddite (as the fact that I read /. should prove) but IMHO this isn't the right thing to do. Why? Because as much as we might like to, you can't turn back the clock - a principle made abundently clear by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

    Whilst the original loss of the Tasmanian tiger was a tragedy it makes to sense to recreate the animals just to satisfy the collective guilt over the original incident. Times have changed, and there isn't a place for the tiger in modern Australia - shown by the fact that it was a dangerous menace which was hunted in the first place. Even if these scientists manage to recreate a viable population of them, where are they going to go? Back into the wild where circumstances will echo what happened in 1888?

    There are valuable uses for medical technology like this, but attempting to correct the sins of the past isn't one of them. Like it or not, life follows a plan, and once something has happened we need to deal with it and move on.

  • It will be our own downfall!

    I predict eventually we'll bring back all the extinct species from the past, you know, the Dodo, Sabre-Toothed Tiger, Dinosaurs, Ronald Reagan, etc. Then they'll reproduce at an uncontrolable rate, the world will be overrun by carniverous beasts whose staple diet will be humans and we'll all die horribly.

    I've seen it all in a dream.
  • If this works, we could bring back many of the species that we drove into extinction through our ignorance. We are destroying the Earth with our technology -- we're learning this the hard way. We need to start using the technology to reverse the damage we have done, while learning how to eliminate the effects of our new knowledge on the environment. This is one start among many.
  • by FascDot Killed My Pr ( 24021 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @02:52AM (#828339)
    I didn't read the story very closely so I don't know if it mentions how many tasmanian fetuses (fetii?) they have. If it's a small number, though, this exercise is relatively pointless. Let's say it was one female and one male. They make 50 copies of each and breed the males with the females. The children of these parents will actually be genetic siblings. You don't want to interbreed siblings for well-known reasons.

    Two females and two males are only slightly better--the children will consist of three groups: full siblings, half-siblings and strangers. But the grandchildren will be (carry the one, add two) all full and half siblings? Anyway, you can see my point. They need a "breeding population of genetic samples" if they want to do more than a publicity stunt.

    I should also note that while the animal produced IS a tasmanian whatever, this extinction/cloning cycle will probably result in long-term speciation. That is, X years from now (for some X less than the "normal" amount) these tasmanians will be a different species than the original. Why? Because we chose a non-random sample AND subjected the new animal to new conditions (unless they plan on releasing them into the wild).
    --
  • This is so not going to work. Sorry to be a nay-sayer, but cloning mammals is still very problematic in the best conditions.

    Dolly the sheep has been in bad health for a long time; and other clonings report similar results. Injecting DNA from one organism into an egg does not give the same results as natural conception; it appears likely that some DNA damage may be occurring.

    Also, the DNA by itself isn't sufficient to reproduce an organism: there are lots of proteins involved in reproducing DNA, and the environment in which the embryo grows is crucial. Even if we produce a clone of something, there's no guarantee it'll be an actual Tasmanian wolf; it might be smaller, bigger, whatever.

    No matter how you nurture the clone, it is not going to be in an authentic womb, and things like the oxygen and nutrient supply, hormones from the parent animal, the womb physiology and the gestation period will all have unpredictable effects on development.

    My prediction is that they will be highly unlikely to get any form of live offspring, but if they do, it certainly won't be a Tasmanian Wolf as your 19th Century hunter would know it.

  • by Dan Hayes ( 212400 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @02:52AM (#828341)

    ... is here [aol.com]. I kid you not.

  • Yes, it IS going to cause some waves. But.. could God not want mankind to undo the error of killing these animals into extinction? If a religious person can accept a species dying by the hand of man, then why couldn't this person accept a species (assuming in unaltered form) being brought back to life? I guess it is more convenient to accept destruction through the hand of mankind than conception of life.

    I guess it's ok to be religious, as long as it doesn't get in the way of reality. Besides, you can argue everything is the work of God anyway. After all, God's ways are mysterious. It is my opinion that when you can attribute any random set of events to faith or to some divine being, claiming that being to be responsible, yet its actions cannot be measured or verified, then you have just rendered the existence of that being as irrelevant ;-)

    These developments are of great importance, given the possibilities and dangers and should be considered carefully in all respects, but I don't think religion should have any influence on this.

    (Note that I am not against religion per se - my gf is religious ;-), but it should just not get in the way of things)

    Tal.
  • by Millennium ( 2451 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @02:56AM (#828348)

    But I very much doubt this will work. The reason: there's only one tiger that can provide suitable DNA.

    The problem with this is that you can clone the tiger as many times as you like, but they all have identical DNA. That's what cloning is. For starters, that makes them all the same gender, but even if you overcome that barrier you still have inbreeding taken to its most extreme level. That would be even more destructive to the species than the unrestricted hunting of the past was.

    You could try engineering genetic drift into the species, perhaps, but there are two problems with that. First, expense. You'd have to make literally hundreds of clones, all of them different, to recreate the species at a viable level. Second, you have to map out the genome to do this reliably, and for that you need multiple specimens (which the scientists don't have). So all you can do is more or less blind guesswork (or at the least, really myopic guesswork).

    Then there's the woolly mammoth experiments, where they want to reconstruct the species by interbreeding clones with elephants. Again, interesting, but if you take this route have you really recreated the species, or just a fairly good facsimile? You've created something that looks like a mammoth, and maybe even acts like one to the best we can figure out, but is it really a mammoth?

    Yes, it'd be a nice idea to bring back extinct species, particularly the ones for which humanity is to blame for their extinction. But the fact is, there are things that, once done, just plain can't be undone. It's a shame, but everything, even science, has limits (maybe those limits are really, really high, but they exist all the same).


    ----------
  • doh i did it wrong here [tased.edu.au]
  • I not sure we should go around resurrecting whatever species we feel like.

    But we are free to kill them off whenever we like? By your logic, we should bulldoze all hospitals and allow people with easily-treatable diseases to die.

    I am all for the protection of endangered species, but something about bringing to life what was history through science gives me that "Don't mess with the time-space continuum, Marty" feeling.

    For starters, this is science, not science-fiction. There is not time-travel involved. If humans killed a species off, why can't they bring it back?

    -- Floyd
  • by stevens ( 84346 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @02:57AM (#828351) Homepage
    this isn't the right thing to do. Why? Because as much as we might like to, you can't turn back the clock - a principle made abundently clear by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

    Actually, we can turn back the clock (i.e., bring back the tiger). You seem to be arguing that we shouldn't because we can't. That's just silly. We can and we will.

    Like it or not, life follows a plan, and once something has happened we need to deal with it and move on.

    Actually, there is no cosmic plan; we learn what we can about the world through own own brains and try to get along as best we can. And humans deal with nature not by adapting (in the sense of passive adjustment), but by understanding and adapting it to us. Tiger extinct? Let's learn to bring it back. Hell, we're close to bringing back the Wooly Mammoth from the last ice age, 10k years ago.

    Using science to figure out the universe around us is what we do. This is just one more example--and if it brings back a tiger, then it's a net benefit, so I don't see the problem.

    Steve
  • Hear, hear...kind of.

    This most certainly isn't an answer to righting the wrongs of the past. The only place for such an animal today is in captivity, which is worse than extinction, I'm inclined to think. Still, the sheer accomplishment of cloning an extinct creature probably makes the entire endeavor worthwhile.

    A while back, I was criticized for presenting basically the same viewpoint you have, but nothing's really changed. When a creature falls prey to extinction, be it through natural predation or the stupidity of man, it is following the rule of "Survival Of The Fittest". Obviously, it wasn't fit at the time. The day may come when, after we've totally decimated the ecosystem, man isn't fit to survive either. On that day, we'll fall, and inevitably something else will come along to take our place. It's the way things work, and fighting it is only self-congratulatory nonsense.

    --- Chris
  • "...IMHO this isn't the right thing to do."

    "There are valuable uses for medical technology like this..."

    And just how do you think we are going to get to the point of medical technology without experimenting on animals? And what more dramatic demonstration can you think of than "resurrecting the dead"?

    But even the core of your argument "Like it or not, life follows a plan, and once something has happened we need to deal with it and move on." makes no real sense in this context. Tasmanians were part of an ecological structure. It may be that the structure no longer requires this element in which case we are OK. But it may be that the structure does (or will) require this element in which case we better get cracking.

    Consider your argument in terms of building materials: "So we lost a beam. Like it or not you can't turn back the clock--it's the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Sometimes beams just break or get removed. It's all part of The Plan. There are valuable uses for construction technology in learning how to create new beams, but attempting to correct the sins of the past isn't one of them."
    --
  • by dabadab ( 126782 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @03:04AM (#828363)
    "Sabotage to nature's law"?
    Evolution is not a law, it is just a result of nature's laws and the circumstances. (But if you insist on your views then medicine is also a sabotage - guess most of the /.'ers would have died before reaching age 10 if it were not for today's medicine (no insult on /.'ers, just look what were the infant mortality rates a couple hundred years ago) and thus they could have not breed)
    You can not sabotage nature's laws, that's what distinct them from human laws :)
  • by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @03:06AM (#828364) Homepage
    this technique is actually the scientific basis for the Second Coming [clonejesus.com]
  • Well, the Tasmanian Tiger isn't the only creature that they could use this sort of thing on. Over in South Africa, there's a painstaking project to re-create the Quagga, or Cape Zebra. They've spent the last ten years breeding regular zebras focusing on breeding animals with quagga-like traits, to get something that is as close as possible to what died out a hundred-odd years ago.

    There are a few quagga pelts still around the world, so what are the bets someone just goes and clones one, just when this project is about to get results. Hahaha!
  • I don't see how it's any different to us making species go extinct in the first place. We already effectivly decided (En mass, not individuall) to eradicate the passenger pidgeon, dodo and others. There are other species which have gone extinct because we carelessly upset their enviroment, and we're apparently doing the same to other species, including the great apes, and other species, including Bison & birds of prey, have come back from the brink of extinction by our deliberate actions to protect them.
  • Yes, but which of the rampaging, man-eating beasts would be the scariest? Not the dinos or the sabre-toothed tigers, after all we've all seen those caveman movies so we're practically used to getting eaten by them. No, I think it will be a toss-up between the dodos (because getting killed and eaten by flightless birds is so humiliating it's horrific) or Ronald Reagan (Think zombie movie, except with Dittoheads saying 'Don't shoot he was the greatest President ever! Cut taxes! Raise spending! Trickle down! Arrgh he's eating my face!').

    Maybe I shouldn't post so early in the morning, but that sounds like some kind of metaphor for the Reagan era...

  • Slightly OT here - does it bother anyone else that they're bringing back the wooly mammoth, a creature from the ice age, to the present, where the north pole is melting and the greenhouse effect is raising the overall tempurature? I can't do much but shake my head over this whole story...good breeding questions from you guys. One can only hope the professionals in charge have an answer.

    The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
  • By your logic, we should bulldoze all hospitals and allow people with easily-treatable diseases to die.

    Keep in mind, humans in hospitals are either alive or in the grey zone between dying and dead. I don't think extinct qualifies as being in that grey zone. Being extinct means you are definitely crossing a threshold to reinstantiate thier life on earth again.

    And bridging over that "70-year hiccup" isn't that far from time-travel in the sense that you are assuming that all changes in the enviroment are trivial since the last time this tiger was domininate. What if the world has adjusted since then?

  • by vslashg ( 209560 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @03:22AM (#828387)
    Wait. If our killing of the Tasmanian tiger was a natural product of Darwinism, then why isn't our bringing one back also natural?

    Oh, that's right, I forgot. If a beaver builds a dam, that's nature; if we build a hydroelectric plant, that's science. Humans are intrinsicly evil and have no place on this planet. [end sarcasm]

    All that's happened is that we've got a workable intelligence, so instead of creatures evolving to the environment, we're creatures changing the environment to suit ourselves. I still don't see why this kind of thing isn't considered nature. People seem to act like cloning is against the rules, to which I say, what rules?

  • by dmuth ( 14143 ) <doug,muth+slashdot&gmail,com> on Friday August 25, 2000 @03:22AM (#828388) Homepage Journal
    When a little body paint [ot.com] works much quicker! ;-)

    (Yes, that really is me, just last week, actually. If anyone wants the full exaplanation, feel free to write me [mailto] for one.)

  • I remember reading about this over a year ago when somebody realized that it should be possible and began snapping up all the tiger fetuses in jars he could find.

    Two points:
    - This story is at least a year old, I think it was originally in either New Scientist, or the Times of London.

    - It is NOT a tiger, it is a striped, dog-like marsupial, that happens to have stripes. The reason it was called a tiger simply relates to it being striped and carnivorous, not a cat or carnivore at all.

    More info is available from the Australian National Museum here [austmus.gov.au], or from Sheffield Univerisity here [shef.ac.uk].

  • If we can bring back a certain species of animal then what role does God play?

    God's role was to give us the capability/intelligence to things. When you see some poor kid dead after being hit by a car, you could say (and yes I realize that there are people who think this way - the proper term for them is idiots), 'Well it's God's will that Jenny Sue kicks the bucket, so what can we do?' or you can call 911 and get some EMTs to try and give her with blood transfusions and jump start her heart.
    (BTW, I fully realize that saving Jenny Sue is more important than resurrecting extinct animals, so let's not start a 'X is more important than Y' sub-thread, just in case anyone is tempted.)

    Also, if I happened to offend anyone's religious beliefs by my analogy, well, too bad. If it makes you feel better, I've probably offended every other religous group (including atheists and agnostics) at some other point, so fuggedaboutit.

  • "Simulation?"

    How do you create a working simulator without any data on the actual processes?

    "Testing on willing human volunteers?"

    Logically impossible in this case. Remember we are creating clones. How do you obtain the permission of the human you are about to create? Or are you thinking that the clone and original are somehow the "same person" and that asking the permission of one gives the permission of the other? If so, I guess it would be OK if I asked one of a pair of identical twins if I can experiment on the other one.

    "Life is not like a plank of wood..."

    Yes it is. Hey! Making assertion without proof or reasoning is easy! I'm going to give up that "using logic and data" thing I've been doing.
    --
  • This isn't entirely true. There are endangered species that have recovered after dropping down to around a dozen (I saw this on National Geographic or some similar show, it was a US species of creature, I'm drawing a blank on the actual bird though) closely related animals.

    In the same show they talked about using the genes of close evolutionary cousins to reduce the potential damage caused by inbreeding. This would be key to making a viable species recovery from only preserved genetic material.

    If this reintroduction were successful (and a lot of knowledgeable people say it won't be, apparently DNA tends to fragment) the biggest problem will be, as usual, humans. Much like the reintroduction of wolves these tasmanian tigers will be mythified and vilified and hunted back to extinction by clueless farmers.

  • But.. could God not want mankind to undo the error of killing these animals into extinction?

    OF COURSE he would want us to fix that mistake!

    ominous voice from above: "I said Tasmanian DEVIL, you idiots!"


    Sean

  • by Basalisk ( 215292 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @03:35AM (#828405) Homepage
    I live in Tasmania, and so I feel this is quite close to home. When White Tasmanians came here, there was a thriving population of Tasmanian Tigers, or Native Wolves as they were called back then. It was thought that there population could cope with the amount of hunting that was going on. However by the late 1890s, They were becoming scarce. They weren't as easy to find. The last of the species died in Hobart Zoo in 1936. It was thought that the Thylacine was extinct, as no confirmed sightings have occurred since then. There are many unconfirmed sightings every year. Some people think that there is still a small remainant colony in some parts of Tasmania, mainly the SW World Heritage Area because of it's remoteness. That part of Tassie is still very wild.
    The Thylacine would probably benefit from being ressurected. If there is still a wild group, this may help to boost their numbers. I think the tiger should be brought back, not just because it is an extinct animal, or possibly endangered (unlikely tho), but because it represents a group of mammals (I think is) unique to Tasmania, The Carnivorous Marsupials. Most carnivorous marsupials that developed on mainland Australia were squeezed out by the dingo, a close relative of the dog. The dingo did not reach Tasmania and as such its CM populations were left undisturbed. The Tasmanian Devil is also a CM. However the thylacine was the only active hunter. I just hope that enough genetic diversity can be found among the 'samples' to provide a stable population.
  • by TheCarp ( 96830 ) <sjc AT carpanet DOT net> on Friday August 25, 2000 @03:35AM (#828406) Homepage
    Your making the assumption that the "Evolutionary Process" is a process that is heading towards a specific goal. As if the process has some sort of will, some plan.

    Natural selection is truely a simple concept, and can be summed up in 2 statments:

    1) Change happens
    2) Organisms that can survive and multiply better than others, will do so.

    The ice age comes, any animals that can survive in extreme cold will survive. They will adapt to it. Animals with genes for thicker fur and better metabolism will survive and pass on those genes more readily than those that don't have them.

    Its simply a model for application to situations. You could say that the environment became unfavorable to these tigers, as they had more predators. They were unable to adapt in time to survive these predators.

    Thats no moral judgement. That doesn't mean the tigers shouldn't exist because they were unable to survive hunting. It just means that they didn't.

    Nature isn't moral. It just is.
  • by Guppy ( 12314 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @03:40AM (#828412)
    I think the article is a little vague about what we're actually capable of doing right now. First of all, all we actually have is dead, preserved tissue. Current cloning techniques need intact, living cells to serve as a nuclear donor. It sounds like what they want to do is sequence the Tasmanian Tiger DNA, and then clone (in a molecular sense) portions that can then be grafted onto the nucleus of a living relative, until you've reconstructed the Tasmanian Tiger.

    This means a massive, high-accuracy sequencing job (Possible, very very expensive--but the price is dropping), and the ability to insert large numbers of lengthy sequences in a targeted fashion (Barely possible, but currently not nearly feasible for a project this large).

    The replacement of Tasmanian Devil DNA (Or whatever species they start with) will almost certainly have to be done piecewise, over several generations of Devils. Current cloning techniques almost certainly will also be used, since you need to get those modifications into the germ line (There are other methods besides cloning from somatic cells, but they don't work too well).
  • Why stop with an extinct animal?

    Think of the ramifications and benefits of cloning extinct people as well?

    For instance, we could DNA from his now frozen brain and clone Hitler. We could then finally put him on trial for crimes against humanity during the war. Heck, we could televise it for ad revenue. Afterwards, we can have him put his face through a board at carnivals and allow people to throw pies at him.

    We could clone Jesus Christ from the Shroud of Turin and start a whole new industry recreating "What Christ Really Looked Like". Wow, we might possibly have to repaint the Last Supper and hundreds of velvet paintings in people's homes.

    We could clone up new versions of Alexander the Great, Augustus Ceasar, Ghengis Khan, and Abraham Lincoln and see if one of them would make a better president for the U.S.

    We could bring back Andre the Giant and the Von Erich brothers to kick all these new wrestlers' butts.

    Heck the possibilities are endless. Get writing your congressman and local cloning board!
  • by mr.ska ( 208224 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @03:44AM (#828415) Homepage Journal
    The children of these parents will actually be genetic siblings. You don't want to interbreed siblings for well-known reasons.

    Very true, and I considered that point as well, however, this excerpt from the article:

    Once DNA damage is assessed and repaired, the tiger's genetic blueprint will be inserted into the egg of a close relative, probably the Tasmanian devil or the numbat, another marsupial, for incubation.

    ...changes things. What do they mean by "repaired"? I can only assume they's splice in the DNA from "a close relative" to fix it. What does that do? Instantly you have different DNA. If they can do it once, they can do it again, and make many unrelated siblings that happen to be cloned from the same base genetic material, but with repairs.

    Of course, there's always the chance that whatever they "fix" will produce something other than the desired tiger. Very close, but genetically different. They will probably never succeed in bringing the tiger back, but they will succeed in creating a new breed based on the species' genetics.

    Cool.

  • here [tased.edu.au] is a video of an Tasmanian tiger from 1933
  • The breeding population is unknown. There is a slight chance that this thing isn't extinct yet, its just there have been no confirumed sightings since the 1930s. However Tasmania is a very rural place and there is the chance that some of these creatures are still there. I don't think most people in the world understand just how few people there are in some places in Australia. For example Cape Tribulation is a major town on the north east side (its on your maps). Its got a stable population of about 100 and has power till 10:00 at night. A days hike from there and you can be places where people haven't been in a very long time.

    Back to the Tasmanian Tiger.
    They aren't cats.
    The are marsupials and they were also known as the Tassy Wolf. The "Tiger" name was a result of their stripes.

    Marsupials have a number of strange breeding habbits. They can put their young "on hold" during times of little water and food. The time between mating and birth isn't a set time like almost all other animals. They young ones just stop growing for a while. All their young are born in a much less developed state than mammels as well. They also seem to have a way of laying low that can make some of them very difficult to find. Most Aussie animals don't have many if any preditors since the Tiger and Tassy Devil were about the only two that hunted larger animals.

    Wild dogs wiped them off the mainland less than 4000 years ago.
  • "Because you know the principles behind it? This isn't guesswork you know. It's a logical progession of scientific knowledge."

    I ask, for the third time, where do we learn these principles if not from nature? They are not obvious a priori. Cloning is an old idea but a new technology. Experiments must be done.

    "You were talking in general, so was I."

    Regardless, the fact remains that human volunteers for a full-clone-creation experiement are useless. Given that simulation is also useless (as shown above), please explain where we get the requisite DNA.
    --
  • This has got to be the most pointless circular argument i've ever heard.

  • by Nicolas MONNET ( 4727 ) <nicoaltiva&gmail,com> on Friday August 25, 2000 @03:58AM (#828427) Journal

    In principle (given sufficiently advanced genetic technology) it might be possible to identify and eliminate the recessive lethal alleles from the tiger gene pool. It would then be safe for cloned animals to interbreed.

    I think that, in order to determine recessive lethal genes, you need to have a sufficiently large population ... currently , such genes are discovered through epidemiology ... so this process would be quite impossible.

    Anyway, the danger of cross breeding is to the immediate offbringing. After a few generations anyway, provided the first children don't die too early, the problem should go away.

  • by Hard_Code ( 49548 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @04:02AM (#828429)
    First of all there is the matter of a viable gene pool, as somebody mentioned. Either we just clone it with itself over and over and just have a freakish line of tigers with genetic problems, or we breed it with some close relative, thereby eroding its genetic uniquiness.

    That's besides the fact that its habitat has probably changed. Where would we put such a thing? What would it eat (rabbits maybe)? What would eat it? I don't see how bringing back a life form just to stick it in a cage so we can gawk at it a "net benefit". That's a waste of effort, and cruel.

    You're right, there may be no cosmic plan...but that doesn't mean there doesn't *have* to be one. We can make up our own, like: we shall not bring back the dead for shits and giggles. Just because we *can* doesn't mean we *should* (and this is in a totally a-religous sense). Arrogance of doing everything we could just because we could got us some of our major problems (antibiotic resistence? new diseases emerging from strange places, due to climate changes, and/or tampering with the environment). It is a very stupid mentality to think that if something doesn't hurt us today, we might as well do it. We should be thinking in decades, not weeks or years.

    And what friggen purpose (other than scientific study) would bringing back a *mammoth* have? What, let them roam the midwestern plains or something?
  • Humans have been messing with Australia for about 40,000 years. One of the current versions of the history show that there was a huge wombat like creature that did a very good job of cleaning out the underbrush. Apaerently these things where as large as cows and would eat huge amounts of underbrush. The humans came along and had the giant wombats for dinner and then the underbrush built up and the massive fires started. The humans figured out that if they start the fires, more of them are likly to survive and they would have more stuff to eat. Some of the trees have adapted and now there are a few types that loose their leaves in the summer buring season and have leaves in the winter. Odd development for only 40k years.

    Australia is also home to the oldest existing rainforest. Some of the forests are millions of years old. It even appears that some of the existing rainforest would periodcly adapt to winters below the antartic circle.
  • by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @04:05AM (#828433)
    This Universe is Mine.

    I am God Here.

    I define superior morals as follows:

    All people shall bow down and worship Me.

    All people shall pay homage to Me, and believe in Me, despite the contradicting physical evidence I shall create to sow confusion in their souls. If they should question my capricious moods and inconsistent demands and proclimations they shall be cast into a dark, hot, fiery place, to be tortured for the rest of eternity.

    As God, My Superior Morals allow Me to take great delight and pleasure from this. Thou shalt not kill, but I'll waste as many of you little pricks as I like.

    As a final insult to the inferior beings I have created, I shall have sex with one of them (call it bestiality or incest, My Superior Morals allow me this luxury), cause her to have a child, who will suffer and be crucified, then later worshipped.

    However, since I have already commanded these inferior milk suckers not to have any other god before Me, and this includes My Son, they will all be damned for worhipping him, be it in place of, or simply in addition to, Myself.

    Damned if you do. Damned if you don't. And a damned fine way for Me to counter the ennui of endless time, being enterained by their pathetic efforts to satisfy my impossible demands, sqaundering their own pitiful and short lives in the process. Delicious irony and fantastic entertainment for the hosts of heaven.

    Now sing My praises, bitch.
  • This is quite true. I am from Vermont where the large cat known as the catamount, which is also the mascot for UVM, was supposedly hunted down to extinction. Back in '93 a small family of catamounts were discovered around Canon Vermont I believe. It has been a while since I have heard anything about it though.
    Molog

    So Linus, what are we doing tonight?

  • What sort of kinks will be throwning into the evolutionary process?

    People used to be concerned that genetic scientists might be trying to play God. Your objection seems to be that the scientists are trying to play Nature.

    If you go back to the old myths of Pandora and Icarus, and compare that with the Unabomber Manifesto and Bill Joy's open letter in Wired, you can see how mankind has always been a little scared of the consequences of going "too far". However, it has now been over 50 years since we discovered a technology that can wipe out mankind, and civilization continues.

    It seems to me that this is an irrational, inborn fear, a phobia against Too Much Knowledge. It also seems to me that this is an instict which we should resist, becuase knowing more has always proven to be a Good Thing in the long run. Nuclear bombs are scary, but nuclear fusion generators may be the answer to all of our energy problems someday. Genetic research raises a lot of questions, but it might also allow us to live longer, happier lives.

    For my own part, I'm going to stick with the "let's learn everything we can about the universe" camp. Doing so might harm us, but there is no doubt that not doing so will.

  • by Suidae ( 162977 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @04:17AM (#828438)

    The problem with reintroducing them into the wild was pointed out quite clearly in Jurassic Park. Many behaviours of a species are learned from the parents, once a species has gone extinct, these behaviours are lost, and any cloned animals are simply NOT going to be the same.

    You can make a bunch and release them in the wild, but their genetic diversity will be destroyed, and their learned hunting skills and social structure will be gone. The best we could hope for would be a bad copy of the original.

  • by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @04:19AM (#828441) Homepage Journal

    Heh, interesting. A beaver's dam is part of the beaver's "extended phenotype." Hoover dam is part of a human's (a group of humans'?) extended phenotype. Tasmanian Tiger, which used to be an animal all on its own and probably didn't do much evolving in the presence of humanity, will now also be part of human extended phenotype. That life form will be a manifestation of human genes that create minds that want to play God. Tasmanian Tiger, descended from apes.


    ---
  • They're Grrrrreat!

  • Here's some links.

    http://www.nt-tech.com.au/enright/images/b_thylaci ne.jpg - rock art (Kakadu National Park Northern Territory)
    http://www.nt-tech.com.au/enright/jimjim_falls_wal k.htm (source of above picture.)
    http://www.bio.flinders.edu.au/thyl.htm - complete skeleton (Flinders University South. Aus.)

  • latest news on the quagga apparently is that it was a subspecies, not a species. I think they're already quite far recreating the quagga through normal breeding techniques.

    //rdj
  • As to "what sort of kinks will we be throwing into the evolutionary process", that's a good question: Evolution produces animals that are well-adapted to their environment; if an animal can't adapt, it becomes extinct.

    So humans have become a key part of the environment, and species become extinct if they can't adapt to us.

    The good news for Tasmanian Tigers is that they're cute. (I guess. I'm not sure what they look like, but they sound cute from their name.) Being perceived as cute has positive survival value, so I expect that they'll become more common in the future.

    If we were talking about some sort of boring rain forest lizard that bites people and hisses, then obviously nobody would want to clone it. So it would stay extinct.

    So, what's the future of Life on Earth? I predict that an a few million years, wild animals will be considerably fluffier, they'll have huge eyes and tastefully attractive color schemes, and they'll enjoy being hand-fed and petted.

    My only regret is that I probably won't live that long.
  • by Nezumi-chan ( 110160 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @04:53AM (#828452)
    I'm not some kind of technology-fearing Luddite (as the fact that I read /. should prove) but IMHO this isn't the right thing to do. Why? Because as much as we might like to, you can't turn back the clock - a principle made abundently clear by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

    I'm a little fuzzy as to what the Second Law of Thermodynamics has to do with "turning back the clock" (which isn't what the scientists are trying to do - this is biology, not time travel).What it does sound like is Manifest Destiny.

    As far as I can see, your logic rests mainly on justification after the fact. "This species died out, therefore it was supposed to die out and we're wrong to try to change that." The same can be applied to any species we've driven to extinction, either by hunting or destroying habitat. All you need is that handy bit of sophism, "What's done is done," and everything is explained in terms of The Plan.

    Pretty handy way of humanity getting off the hook for all sorts of ecological disasters, doesn't it? Sure, we're polluting the oceans, killing off the animals and befouling the earth. But if we weren't supposed to do it, then we wouldn't be able to, right? Besides, what's done is done, and thanks to a spurious reference to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it's too late to change our ways now.

  • by Mike Connell ( 81274 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @04:54AM (#828453) Homepage
    > It's the way things work, and fighting it is only self-congratulatory nonsense.

    Not meaning to be rude, but: Utter nonsense.

    "Survival Of The Fittest" isn't some great plan - it's a description of a process. You seem to be saying that we should just lie back and take whatever comes; after all, if something becomes extinct then it just wasn't fit enough, and it's somehow right that it should be dead! What if we nuked half of the planet? Oh, "Survival Of The Fittest", those creatures weren't fit enough to survive, and we shouldn't try to save them...

    If you really want to base your view on "Survival Of The Fittest" as a big unbreakable rule, look at it this way. That tiger has proven to *be* fit even after it become extinct. By being an interesting creature, it is fitter than others that we might bring back. Another example: furry seals get more protection than slimy eels. Why? Because they are *fitter* (cuter).

    best wishes,
    Mike.
  • Bingo! I wish I had moderator points already. When people say how "vulnerable" the giant pandas are, I laugh. They're more powerful than white sharks. They have the ability to mesmerize the most powerful species on the planet into protecting them... all because of their appearance!
  • I think I've seen you on an IRC channel somewhere :>

    I encompass all things. :-)
  • If Darwinism is simply "Survival of the fittest" then every species that we've made extinct was less fit than us. However, what if we cause our own extinction by killing off too many other species?

    Would that mean that we're so fit as to be unfit?

    LK
  • Tiger Tiger burning bright,
    Two left paws? Now thats not right!

    Bob.
  • If I am not wrong, the first population of Tasmania (similar to Australian Aboriginals) was massacred / died from illness totally after the arrival of white colonists.

    It is one of the best cases of a human population totally exterminated not leaving even mixed-race descendants.

    Maybe you could clone some old Tasmanians.

    Am I wrong?
    __
  • Odds are if these scientists revive this species, they will eventually send them to various zoos. Imagine the turnout any zoo will have if they display a Tazmanian Tiger! Who in their right mind would miss something like that? It would be the most popular zoo animal ever. If a zoo nearby had one, I'm certain that anybody that has ever seen that famous black and white footage of the last one in the cage would make it a point to see one live.
  • I think it wouldn't be possible to repopulate their original habitat with cloned animals. I believe there are a few reasons for why the couldn't do this:

    1. Sometimes extinction is natural; since the last glatiation large mammals are desappearing, and I think it would be "unnatural" trying to fill the world my mamooths;
    2. If you want the species to be successfull (sp?) in the wild, you need genetic variability -- so you would need lots of DNA from different animals to achieve this;
    3. Reintroduced species, or newly introduced species, often disturb the equilibrium in the ecosystem. In this case you would have tigers eating animals that used to be the top of the chain food.

    So, I'll guess they'll stick to the zoos. :)

    --

  • Does this mean we can now splice a pig's DNA with that of an Elephant? You know, like a pot bellied elephant you can keep in the house?

  • (sigh)

    Here we go indeed, with the same tired old "science will invalidate faith" schtick ...

    If we can bring back a certain species of animal then what role does God play?

    The same role He plays and always plays. This is a non-sequiter -- the same question could be asked (and probably has been on Slashdot) about any technological innovation: the computer, the Bomb, antibiotics, all the way back to fire and the wheel.

    Think about it, religion is about God making all of the decisions, who lives, who dies, what species keeps going, what species becomes extinct, etc.

    "Religion" in general is not about such things. There are a whole host of religions which don't postulate an omnipotent deity.

    That said, Christianity does believe in an omnipotent God (as do Islam and some strains of Judaism, but I'm not as familiar with them). But all you've managed to do is to rephrase the old "omnipotence of God / human freedom" paradox that has been well-chewed by theologians for millenia now. Nothing earthshattering there.

    If we start making these decisions the people that spend every sunday in church will have to look at things differently

    Hardly. The fact that people have the ability to effect real changes in the world is hardly news to Christianity. Cloning the Tasmanian Wolf from fossil DNA is just one more example of cleverly pushing matter around in new ways, but hardly a challenge to God's omnipotence or to the Christian faith.

    But scientists, who ought to know
    Assure us that it must be so.
    So let us never, never doubt
    What nobody is sure about.-- Hillaire Belloc
  • by bob_jordan ( 39836 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @06:46AM (#828506)
    What if they simply don't have enough?

    Tiger tiger burning bright.
    Two left paws? Wait that's not right!

    Bob.
  • Actually, Tasmanian Tigers were butt-ugly; so the cute-and-fluffy theroy dosn't hold in this case (although it does have a certian amount of validity otherwise). The name "Tiger" is a misnomer -- they were not even felines; they were, like many native Australian animals, marsupials. Here is a good web page about Thylacines. [tas.gov.au]
    "The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
  • The only problem with a small gene pool is that there is a higher probability that undesireable recessive genes are reinforced. Virtually all domestic animals have been bred up from a small gene pool. Bad genes tend to hang around longer in domestic animals because humans ensure that the animals breed, regardless if the animal could survive in the wild or not.

    As an example, the Scottish Fold breed of housecat all trace their ancestory back to a single cat with a mutant gene that gave it folded ears. The breed was propagated by breeding that cat's kittens with their own siblings.

    A small gene pool isn't going to be a problem for a resureccted species. By keeping the animals in captivity for several generations before releasing them into the wild, you can clean up their genotype by ruthless culling of each generation to eliminate bad recessives. This is simple animal husbandry as has been practiced since before recorded history. The only thing that's different is the particuar characteristics you are trying to conserve and the ones you are trying to eliminate.


    "The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'

  • IMHO, this is really where the alleged morality in religon breaks down

    Read Heinlein's Job (aptly titled) for an interesting, witty exposition of the same concept you're expounding on here. RAH's deus ex machina ending is one of the best I've ever seen. Hint: he answers the question "who judges God?".

    But didn't He implicitly grant authorization when he sold--

    NO CARRIER

    You've gotta be careful when dealing with irrational deities. This reminds me of the wonderful lovecraft fanfic quote: "What a useless scroll... all it says is Hastur! Hastur! Hast- aaaaaargh!"

    Can't remember where I saw that, unfortunately...

    Rev Neh
  • When a creature falls prey to extinction, be it through natural predation or the stupidity of man

    We are natural predation.

    Steven E. Ehrbar
  • ROFLMAO Somebody give this guy (+1 Funny).

    This has to be one of the best (and most offensive) summations of Christian beliefs I've seen in a long time. (Although Al Pachino's speach at the end of The Devil's Advocate ranks right up there.


    "The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'

  • I've posted this on my website at http://www.duskglow.com/godbitch.html. I think it's great! Please let me know if you want attribution or don't want me to...
    If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
  • by Benjamin Shniper ( 24107 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @08:15AM (#828548) Homepage
    I mean, just because we are no longer hunting some animals to extinction doesn't mean they will thrive in the wild anew. First, there's not nearly as much wild left, and the people probably aren't going to move away. Second, there will be no proper parents to teach proper tiger behavior to these pups. This is just a feel-good solution to a real problem - we're running out of space for humans and animals in general.

    -Ben
  • obviously, you haven't read the Bible. cite me one scripture where it says that you will be eternally damned, or burn in hell for not believing in God...you won't.

    "Because all those men which have seen my glory, and my miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice; Surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it:"
    -- Numbers 14:22-23

    " the LORD have said, I will surely do it unto all this evil congregation, that are gathered together against me: in this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall die. And the men, which Moses sent to search the land, who returned, and made all the congregation to murmur against him, by bringing up a slander upon the land, Even those men that did bring up the evil report upon the land, died by the plague before the LORD."
    -- Numbers 14:35-37

    And, your kids aren't going to be too well off:

    "Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;"
    -- Exodus 20:5

    As for the burning, that seems to be what God resorts to whenever he gets pissed off:

    "And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people: Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them:"
    -- Exodus 32:9-10

    Hell, you get eternal damnation for working on Sunday!

    "For whatsoever soul it be that shall not be afflicted in that same day, he shall be cut off from among his people. And whatsoever soul it be that doeth any work in that same day, the same soul will I destroy from among his people."
    -- Leviticus 23:29-30

    And he wasn't just joshin', he MEANT that:

    "And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day. And they that found him gathering sticks brought him unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation. And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him. And the LORD said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp. And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the LORD commanded Moses."
    -- Numbers 15:32-36

    So be careful gathering them sticks!

    I'd go on here for another several thousand words, but I have work to do...

  • If you're a human and you hunt some game, you win, but if you kill just about everything, well...

    Then you had better be a good farmer.

    So, the question is--- is the "natural Darwinistic act" of an intelligent species evolving and destroying things before going extinct something that happens every several million years? If so, no problem!

    There was a science fiction story a while back (~1975?) about time travelers who went back to try to determine what killed off the dinosaurs... what they found was small raptor-sized super-intelligent creatures with hunting rifles and nuclear weapons. The images fueled a lot of nightmares when I was 12.

    First the sleestack, next us.

    Similar. Check out HP Lovecraft's The Nameless City [gizmology.net] for yet another description of lizard-men whom evolution dealt with harshly... in TNC, they seem to be returning for a second act. Regardless, it seems to be a common theme in literature: the most terrifying creature is one that thinks, and the second most terrifying creature is one that is almost human. Combine the two abstractions and you get monsters like the lizard people/flying monkeys/slant-eyed hairless aliens depicted in everything from Oz to V to the X-files.

    Rev Neh
  • I believe that I've read that all the cheetahs in the wild are genetically identical.

    Nature appears to have run the experiment of having a genetically identical species with some success. Having identical animals is not necessarily a situation doomed from the start.

  • Jurrasic park has come true. An extinct species is now being brought back...could dinosaurs be next?
  • by Reziac ( 43301 ) on Friday August 25, 2000 @10:05AM (#828576) Homepage Journal
    Firstoff, animal breeding is my professional field, and after 31 years I think I have a clue:

    Someone says: "They make 50 copies of each and breed the males with the females. The children of these parents will actually be genetic siblings. You don't want to interbreed siblings for well-known reasons."

    You don't know what you're talking about. Firstoff, in animal husbandry "interbreed" means "crossbreed within the same general type". Frex, a crossbred dog would be say a Malemute and a Labrador Retriever (from two different breed groups entirely) and an interbred would be a Lab and a Golden Retriever (from two similar breeds, but still not a purebred).

    Second, what you meant, to wit "inbreeding", does ***NOT*** IN ITSELF ***CREATE*** problems, contrary to popular perception. All inbreeding does is *concentrate the genes you already have*. If they're bad you get worse results. If they're good, you get better results. If you want to find out exactly what genes are really present in your breeding stock, inbreeding will display both the results of homozygous recessives (such as most colours other than black) and the results of homozygous dominance (such as better muscling in beef cattle) much more quickly -- in one or 2 generations, with no GUESSWORK required. This applies to both positive and negative traits. The sooner you know what genes you have in your herd, the sooner you can breed for OR against that trait.

    Nearly all commercial livestock species have been intensively inbred for over 100 years, because inbreeding FROM SOUND DEFECT-FREE STOCK produces consistent, predictable, uniformly positive results. MOST animals in the wild inbreed to some extent, because they don't have any "moral" objections (they will cheerfully breed their siblings, in fact the tendency is to *want* to breed within animals that smell the same, ie. are closely related), and because generally there is not a lot of movement between population territories.

    The notion that inbreeding is automatically BAD comes from the fact that in animals with a LOT of genetic defects in the gene pool, such as humans, ANY time you double up on a set of their genes, chances are you've also doubled up on something Bad. The average human carries an average of 25 to 75 genes for LETHAL defects. The average dog carries for one or two. Beef cattle generally carry NONE. Wild animals, per observational evidence, tend to carry FEW or NO lethal defects -- because unlike with humans who have access to medical treatment, in the wild natural selection does its job: An animal with a defect doesn't survive long enough to reproduce; therefore defective genes tend to eliminate themselves.

    I'd say I was sorry about the long rant, but I hear these ignorant statements all the time and I get sick of it. I could draw an equally-valid analogy to the effect that the linux community is inbred and therefore defective.

  • by Anonymous Coward
    Its not so much that people are bad, its that we alter the planet in wholly unnatural ways. A beaver building a dam does disrupt water flow but it is something that not just beavers but all other species in the local ecosystems have adapted to over millenia.

    Humans have done it in a few centuries on scales that are beyond the capabilities of most species to adapt to and is many magnatude fold more disruptive and distructive than a beavers dam.

    You comment that all we are doing is changing the world to suit ourselves and that is correct but it is almost always that the exspense of another ( usually many ) creatures. And its not a position we should be in because we dont have the first clue how to manage biospheres/ecosystems. To date our track record has been horrible and shows our complete lack of understanding of all the mechanisms and feedbacks involved. ie the Biophere project. We're barely capable of managing an ant farm properly let alone an entire ecostsytem. That is the problem.

    This is coupled with our religous driven hubris that we are top dog, and we are the owners of all other species on this planet and thus have the right to do with them as we please. The fact of the matter is without technology we are not top dog, We're PREY! Our technology has not allowed us to avoid evolution but it has to some degree removed Malthusian pressures from us and generally eliminated our status as prey.

    Now as to cloning of a tasmanian tiger, since we were likely the cause of its unnatural extinction ( ie we hunted it to death not for food -- natural reason -- but for trophies and game, etc ) bringing it back probably is not really a bad thing from an ecostsytem point of view since ecosystem pressures were not what caused its extinction.

    However there is one problem. Since you only have one source of DNA the species will be incredibly genetically weak and thus vulnerable to disease and genetic problems occuring. Though this is seen is some natural species, cheatas for example comparitively they (tt) would be super weak.

    Nothing we have done recently is a product of natural Darwinism, we have created a none darwinian evolutionary pressure and that pressure is US.
  • And here I thought that geeks, being the subject of persecution by the "norms" were supposed to be a better, more understanding lot....

    It is precisely this understanding which causes the rest of us to chortle at the irrational ravings and intellectually bankrupt posturing of the religious zealots who seem inevitably attracted to stories regarding any kind of genetic engineering or manipulation.

    We chortle in much the same way we chortle at an adult who continues to profess a belief in Santa Clause, the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny long after childhood has past.

    Think about the argument (and pseudo-logic) being applied to the argument to which I posted my harsh, but accurate, parody of Christianity.


    Posit: God exists and is superior.

    Therefor humankind is inferior.

    Inferior beings cannot presume to judge the morality of a Superior being.

    Therefor, no matter how reprehensible his actions may be, we cannot judge God. In fact, we are expected to sing his praises no matter what.


    Now substitute "Nazi" for "God" and "the rest of us" for "humankind":


    Posit: Nazis exist and are superior.

    Therefor the rest of us are inferior.

    Inferior beings cannot presume to judge the morality of a Superior being.

    Therefor, no matter how reprehensible their actions may be, we cannot judge Nazis. In fact, we are expected to sing their praises no matter what.


    Anyone else see the insidious danger this kind of mindset represents to all of mankind?
  • Tazmanian Tigers? I don't believe they exist.
  • Then it's okay if I kick my cat, because I am (supposedly) a 'superior being'?

    Didn't think so.

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • ---
    no physical evidence? go look in the mirror, if that isn't enough evidence for you that God exists, i don't know what is.
    ---

    That's like saying, "Look at that rock over there. If that's not evidence that a purple three legged midget put it there, I don't know what is".

    Logic doesn't look like that. Along with your chosen form of mythology, there are a number of other people willing to provide their own explainations. In fact, there are hundreds of billions of 'potential' origins for the human race. A proponent of any one could say what you said above and make just about as much sense.

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • You don't know what you're talking about. Firstoff, in animal husbandry "interbreed" means "crossbreed within the same general type". Frex, a crossbred dog would be say a Malemute and a Labrador Retriever (from two different breed groups entirely) and an interbred would be a Lab and a Golden Retriever (from two similar breeds, but still not a purebred).

    There's a difference between animal husbandry and genetics. I'm not sure what a "breed group" is, but I don't know if it's a genetic term; all dogs represent the same species.

    Second, what you meant, to wit "inbreeding", does ***NOT*** IN ITSELF ***CREATE*** problems, contrary to popular perception. All inbreeding does is *concentrate the genes you already have*. If they're bad you get worse results. If they're good, you get better results...

    How do you "concentrate" genes? Undesirable genes tend to be both recessive and rare; undesirable dominant genes are selected out rather quickly. By breeding two organisms that both have the same recessive genes, you have a higher chance of expressing these recessive characteristics. Contrary to your initial assertion, interbreeding DOES cause problems. Humans may be particularly susceptible due to the relatively close genetic relationship we have with each other, but it affects all sexually reproducing animals. To take an animal husbandry example, I know a lot of purebred dogs have heart and respiratory problems because of this. As for cattle, they are selected by breeders mainly for size over several thousand years, and by this time they have so many harmful traits that almost none of them could survive if released into the wilderness.

    The notion that inbreeding is automatically BAD comes from the fact that in animals with a LOT of genetic defects in the gene pool, such as humans, ANY time you double up on a set of their genes, chances are you've also doubled up on something Bad. The average human carries an average of 25 to 75 genes for LETHAL defects. The average dog carries for one or two. Beef cattle generally carry NONE.

    I'm very curious as to where you got these figures. The human genome was just now mapped (and that's just the gene's form, not their function), and scientists are discovering genetic causes for various diseases on an ongoing basis. How did you come to the figure of 25 to 75? Even if you mean lethal at birth or shortly after rather than during the entire lifetime, it still seems too small a number. And I don't know where you got the number from in the first place.

    OST animals in the wild inbreed to some extent, because they don't have any "moral" objections (they will cheerfully breed their siblings, in fact the tendency is to *want* to breed within animals that smell the same, ie. are closely related), and because generally there is not a lot of movement between population territories.

    Now this is definitely suspect. Just about every piece of zoological literature I've read on the subject (granted, they've mostly been about primates and other mammals, but that's what we seem to be focusing on anyway) says that animals are selected to look outside of immediate family groups for mates. The only time that animals tend to inbreed is when they are forced into it through non-typical situations (i.e. zoos and animal breeders). There is a definite evolutionary advantage in creating genetically diverse offspring. I think you're mixing up the idea of animal husbandry, in which certain characteristics are aimed for, and standard evolution, where characteristics are selected for not by any objective standard of good or bad, but whether they help an animal survive or not.
    --
  • With all this talk of Darwinism one would think it was a moral imperative. It's not. Natural selection is an epiphenomenon, not a moral law. If you don't know what an epiphenomenon is I'd argue you're not fit to hold an opinion on _this_ particular subject- in case there is anyone who doesn't know what an epiphenomenon is, I'll try to explain it.

    Take a sprinter, who can repeatably run X distance in 13.5 seconds. Where is the 13.5 stored in him? To make him faster do you go and change the '13.5' to '13.2' or lower? No- that number is the product of all the different variables (body mass, muscle effectiveness, air drag on whatever clothing he's wearing, wind, air pressure at whatever altitude he's at and ability to use lungs to get oxygen from said air mid-race) that make the sprinter up. None of these variables are morally right or wrong- the fact of air pressure is not morally wrong. The fact that the sprinter has body mass is not morally wrong. All this produces the epiphenomenon of his repeatable sprint time of 13.5 seconds- which might take on great importance, but this doesn't change the fact that it's the product of all the variables that make up the sprinter.

    By the same token, existence of the Tasmanian tigerwolf is an epiphenomenon. It wouldn't even be extinct if a bunch of humans with guns hadn't blown 'em all away. Its existence is neither more nor less important to 'natural selection' as any other animal- natural selection is an EPIPHENOMENON, it does not need to be cared for by wise humans in order to work- this attitude is much like insisting that people must _care_ that 2+2=4 or mathematics will be lost. 2+2=4 is an epiphenomenon of certain ways of thinking about number, and fits with the real world, explaining certain processes accurately. Natural selection is an epiphenomenon of ways of thinking about populations, and likewise fits with the real world, explaining certain processes accurately. It does not need to be _protected_. It is.

    If the Tasmanian tigerwolf is reintroduced to the world, this too is an epiphenomenon- because the environment of wild animals _unavoidably_ includes what humans think about them. If humans think it is ecologically, morally, or even aesthetically better for some species to persist in the face of human expansion, and take action about it, that human opinion becomes _part_ of the animal's environment, and the epiphenomenon may be survival of that species. For whatever reason it would be 'fitter'...

    I'm reminded of a SF story, Cordwainer Smith's 'Norstrilia', in which there are huge, deformed, sick sheep that produce an immortality drug. These sheep are tended by humans, like a crop. In those hypothetical circumstances, that is 'fitness'.

    However, one needn't get fictional to find an example that contradicts people's simpler Darwinesque beliefs- look at the wolf. Wolves have formidable natural weaponry, yet the species also possess formidable 'mental blocks' against injuring a submissive member of their own pack. If a wolf rolls over and bares its throat, an attacking packmate will find it impossible to finish off the first wolf, no matter how important that might be to the attacker at the time. This is purely a mental block- Darwinistically, one might think that it'd be better for the attacker to get to kill all competitors and control the gene pool, dominate completely. Unfortunately, wolves are such deadly fighters that this would lead to obliteration of entire packs through infighting- and so the epiphenomenon of natural selection leads to wolves with mental blocks towards hurting submissive packmates- wolves whose _minds_ have a direct influence on the survival of other animals.

    By the same token it is not at all unreasonable to suggest that the general ecological concerns of many humans are natural selection- on the one hand it may be the Tasmanian tigerwolf, and in other areas it may be a town objecting to the death of a river through intense industrial pollution killing other industries such as fisheries, or it may be the objecting to oil tanker spills and the dumping of contaminated bilgewater. The objections, the protests, are themselves part of natural selection, and in many cases they are as survival-enhancing as the wolf's suppressed killer instincts- they serve the _population_, without which there would be no individuals. If all the world was individualistic oil-dumping river-poisoning clear-cutting species-obliterating extremes of 'Darwinist' behavior, the planet would be more or less lifeless in not many thousands of years, because some types of self-interested behavior are _destructive_. And so, given the human capacity to think about such things, natural selection produces the environmentalist in increasing numbers, preying on the industrialist and keeping the whole 'pack' of humans going for the long term, much as the suppressed attack instinct of the wolf towards submissive wolves keeps the wolf population going for the long term.

    It's not unthinkable that, with the human capacity for thought, natural selection begins to encompass the entire biosphere of the whole world- with environmentalists beginning to forge 'suppressed eco-obliteration' instincts in other humans, the survival trait being the flourishing of the entire ecosphere. There's huge benefit to the uncontrolled diversity of biology on the planet. It's not simply aesthetic benefit but scientific benefit as well, and also raises issues of whether it's an unsafe gamble to kill off vast numbers of species and reduce the complexity of the biosphere to a simpler, possibly unsustainable condition in the long run. NOW is the time to consider these things, not 100 years too late.

    Let them bring back the tigerwolf. It should not have been eradicated so quick in the first place. We don't know what possible benefits there might be from having them 100 years on.

  • But one sick of having our ideas espoused by barely literate morons!!

    sigh

    Obviously, you missed the entire point of my argument, which was to mimick the flawed arguments (of the religious zealots) I followed up to.

    I do not dispute that the argument they posed is moronic. Indeed, that was the entire point of my post. Of course it fails any formal proof of logic! That is obvious to nearly all of us. Less obvious, and far more relevant in some respects, is the danger such arguments (and the mindset they engender) pose to all of us, religious or not.

    For reference on the original (flawed) arguments to which I responded, I suggest reading (or rereading) the posts higher up in this thread. I encapsulated their (the religious zealots) arguments, then did a simple substitution to demonstrate in no uncertain terms the dangers of that particular argument (and mindset).

    Check the context before flaming next time -- once your acidic rhetoric is removed, all you've really done is underscore the very point I was making. Your flames would be much more relevant directed elsewhere.

    BTW - Not that it is any of your business, but after work last night, at around 5:40 PM, I was in the arms of a beautiful woman. What were you doing, other than posing on slashdot as a "superior being" to those who actually take a stand when religious zealotry rears its ugly head in inappropriate places (such as a discussion of science and application of genetic research)?
  • To correct someone on a common truth (the Earth is not flat) is doing them a favor, to attack them for a personal truth is foolishness. Even more so is to berate someone for what they believe is right, by beating them over the head with what you believe is right.

    Said "truth" ceases to be personal the moment it is evangalized in a public forum and presented as "the truth" with no evidence other than opinion backing it up. This is doubly so when done in an inappropriate forum such as this. To inject religious dogma into a scientific discussion is akin to an athiest grabbing the pulpit at mass and expounding on the absurdities of creationism.

    To not take a stand against such intellectual aggression is foolishness, and to not berate the outright stupidity of the arguments presented is to in effect condone them, which IMHO would be intellectually dishonest.

    If the religious zealots do not wish to be mocked for behaving foolishly in a scientific forum, then they should keep their religious dogma and rhetoric where it belongs, in their churches and appropriate religious discussion forums (which slashdot most emphatically is not).

    One last thought: What was that rule about arguments and Nazis? Oh yeah, first one to mention them loses. :)

    The only thing I've lost is a little time. Making Nazi's a taboo subject is clever, if you support their behavior, wish to suppress open discussion, or merely wish to deflect attention from an argument. Of course it is a dangerious approach to make a topic such as that out of bounds, as such a "conspiracy of silence" makes an ideal breeding ground for those with similar philosophies to espouse their views. Use at your own risk, and don't be surpised when many of us, who would most vehemently not like to see a repeat of 1930's and 1940's Germany, don't adhere to your taboo.

    The Nazi example as I used it in this duscission was very appropriate for two reasons:

    (1) they are a clear and concise example of a group of people who did consider themselves superior (and above judgement), who have nevertheless been harshly and appropriately judged by history and

    (2) the mindset the flawed argument I was paraphrasing encourages the kind of non-critical acceptance of dogma which is a fertile breeding ground for philosophies very akin to fascism in its many forms.

    Using artificial, arbitary taboos to suppress discussion and deflect attention may strike you as clever or witty. In the end, however, it is merely foolish.

One person's error is another person's data.

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