Playing God can be dangerous

The Tasmanian tiger, a carnivorous animal that had roamed the Australian wilds for centuries and became extinct about 100 years ago, may come back from oblivion, in a script resembling Jurassic Park. An American company, Colossal Biosciences, has announced a project to bring the animal back to life through genetic engineering and cloning from the DNA extracted from a 108-year-old specimen kept in Australia’s Victoria Museum. The company is already working on a project to revive the iconic woolly mammoth that walked into the sunset thousands of years ago. The efforts are called de-extinction, and its supporters claim that science now has the knowledge and tools to bring any species back from the dead. The Tasmanian tiger was a beautiful animal, called a tiger for its stripes, described as a wolf for its looks, and considered a marsupial for its biology. It was an apex predator at the top of the food chain.

The idea of bringing back to life long-dead species through genetic engineering is controversial, and the scientific world is divided on it. Supporters claim that it will help to improve conservation technologies and lead to a better understanding of living species, and boost biodiversity. But there are strong arguments against it. Many believe that animals like the Tasmanian tiger and the woolly mammoth, when brought back to life, would live in a world vastly different from the ones they left and would not be able to cope with it. The habitat and the terrain, the food support systems, including the nature and availability of prey and vegetation and the climate, may have changed. Animals that are physiologically and psychologically ill-prepared for the new world are sought to be introduced into it. It is also pointed out that though individual animals may be rebirthed, production of a viable population may be difficult.

The disappearance of the Tasmanian tiger is supposed to have impacted the entire ecosystem of animals and plants in the region, disturbing lifecycles. The argument that its reintroduction would restore the balance is fanciful because nature would have found another balance which might now be disrupted. It is also foolish to imagine that perfecting the science of de-extinction would solve the problem of increasing extinction of species. The scientific definition of de-extinction and the laws on it are still fuzzy and evolving, and there are warnings that “playing God” with nature may have unexpected consequences. While the outcome of the revival project is yet to be known, it raises questions that have no easy answers. This question too: after millennia, will a descendant of the Tasmanian tiger, evolved and intelligent, try to revive an extinct human, to complete the cycle?