Bioethics Reading Extra Credit

The article that I chose is Mammoths are a huge part of my life. But cloning them is wrong. The topic was about whether we should attempt to clone mammoths because we think that is would be interesting to see an animal that is similar to a mammoth or whether we shouldn't because we could risk endangering the Asian elephant species even more by trying to clone a mammoth. In the article, Scientists Want to Bring Back Woolly Mammoths — But Why?, it stated how it would be fascinating to be able to see a mammoth because it was a animal that became extinct a long time ago. But to clone a mammoth it would require having to experiment or use Asian elephants as surrogates for an animal that has a similar ancestor but it may turn out to be unsuccessful which could endanger the species even more than it is now. In another article, Woolly Mammoth Clones Closer Than Ever, Thanks to Genome Sequencing, it mentioned at the end how if we could splice the DNA of mammoths into the cells of Asian elephants, it could help creatures to live in colder areas and to reduce human conflict. 

The benefits of this would be that we would be able to change animals DNA so that they would be able to live in colder areas away from humans. The potential risks of this is that it could endanger the Asian elephants even more and it may be something that may never work because they have to find a way to get eggs from the elephants and put it in a surrogate in order to clone a mammoth. 

I believe that we shouldn't attempt to clone a mammoth because there are more risks in order to clone one. One thing is that it could endanger a species even more, and if the attempt to clone one is unsuccessful it would be a waste of experimenting and using a species that may later become extinct. Second, I believe that even though mammoths are a creature that we are fascinated by because they existed a long time ago, we shouldn't try to clone one because it would be interesting to see an animal close to what a mammoth looks like. 

Works cited-

"Woolly Mammoth Clones Closer Than Ever, Thanks to Genome Sequencing." Live Science, 2 July 2015, www.livescience.com/51424-woolly-mammoth-genome-sequenced.html.

"Scientists Want to Bring Back Woolly Mammoths — But Why?" NBC NEWS, 22 May 2016, www.nbcnews.com/
news/world/scientists-want-bring-back-woolly-mammoths-why-n575581.