Is bringing back missing animals as difficult as 'Jurassic Park'?

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(Illustration by Hisham Akira Bharoocha for the Washington Post Magazine)

On a cold January night, A Harvard genetics professor with a floating white beard was standing in a theater on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, an icon of the environmental movement wearing a fleece vest at his side. The two men were looking at the problem: How to convince their counterparts of the scene, as well as the 300 people who dropped off at Hunter College's Kaye Playhouse for a debate, that the world should bring back velociraptors or, at the very least, an extinct pigeon ?

The theme of the 1993 blockbuster "Jurassic Park" was set in the background, interrupting their discussion even before the debate began. In the film, based on Michael Crichton's best-seller of 1990, dinosaurs are brought back from extinction to occupy a theme park. "This film took sides. The experience explodes. People are hurt, "moderator John Donvan told the crowd at the presentations. "But not until actor Jeff Goldblum said," Scientists were so concerned about being able to do it or not, that they did not stop to think if they had to . "And then, a dinosaur eats Jeff Goldblum."

In fact, a dinosaur does not eat Goldblum's mathematical and cunning character, but chaos certainly reigns in the film and its innumerable sequels as a result of the dying out. These images are what George Church, 64, of the floating white beard, who helped launch the human genome project, and Stewart Brand, 80, the fleece vest, founder and publisher of the Whole Earth catalog, would need to overcome win the debate tonight.

The actor Sam Neill in "Jurassic Park III." From 2001 (Universal via Reuters)

The official motion of the evening, "Do not bring missing creatures back to life," was chosen by Intelligence Squared, a non-profit organization that turns academic debates into live events and popular podcasts. Lynn J. Rothschild, 61, an evolutionary biologist and astrobiologist with NASA, and Ross MacPhee, 70, curator of the American Museum of Natural History. Central Park.

The brand began to offensive. The controversy around the dying out, he says, is "invented". He did not say that they should resurrect carnivorous dinosaurs. Instead, he said, the disappearance could be achieved through hybrids, animals created from living, threatened or endangered species, using CRISPR – an acronym for a tool relatively new that has been equated with "playing God remove and replace genes. Finally, CRISPR could be used to enhance agricultural production or to reconstitute wildlife that is slowly disappearing.

This is the goal of the Revive & Restore project, a Californian non-profit organization founded by Brand, that seeks to "improve biodiversity through new techniques for genetic rescue of threatened and endangered species". the wild by removing the genes from the modern band-tailed pigeons and replacing them with pigeon-carrier genes.

Restore & Revive would like to do something similar with woolly mammoths, by modifying the genes of the extinct creature in those of modern Asian elephants. In this case, however, the goal is to help increase the endangered Asian elephant population, which has been decimated by a herpes virus. "We are not just curing extinction," Brand told the public. "The technology behind the dying out is used by us and by others to prevent extinction."

In 2018, Brand and Church traveled to northeastern Siberia, where Russian scientists are trying to recreate a prairie ecosystem called the mammoth steppe, named after its predominant and extinct herbivore, the woolly mammoth. As the number of mammoths decreased, dense foliage took root and eradicated the grasslands. To restore it, scientists used bulldozers to cut down trees and shrubs, and brought herbivores, including elk and moose, to graze and foliage at a distance. According to Church, the mammoth and Asian elephant hybrids could once again live in Siberia. He also urged everyone to "relax" about the hybrid perspective. "There is a lot of hybridization in mammals. "I am partially Neanderthal," he said, citing scientists' estimates that about 20% of Neanderthalian genes could be found in modern humans.

(Strangely enough, no one in the debate mentioned that Montana State paleontologist Jack Horner, who is scientific advisor for the first film, Jurassic Park, is also working on a hybrid called chickenosaurus. We should all find out. There should be no limit, "he told NBC News in 2018." After discovering something, you can limit it. ")

But a hybrid mammoth, wandering again in Russia, raises all sorts of questions, said Rothschild and MacPhee: Could a breeding population ever be established? Would this hybrid be released in a world without natural predators? How could a mammoth know how to be a mammoth without other mammoths? "You have all the problems of not having a mother and people – other organizations to learn, and not having the right microbiome, etc.," said Rothschild. "And so, each of these individuals, I believe, will suffer for something that we could solve differently."

During a question-and-answer session, an audience member asked the four people on stage if a very rich person could use the technology, possibly for commercial purposes, while the scientists were still discussing whether she should do it or not. Brand said that "nothing" was going on in the world of dying for commercial purposes. MacPhee, in response, stated that he was happy not to be "the most naive person in the group tonight". He asked, "Do not you think there's a future to have saber-tooth tigers that you can use for hunting purposes? "

Rothschild further pushed the argument by wondering if anyone could attempt to remove a Neanderthal for trade or simply in the name of science. According to Rothschild, the idea was "morally repugnant". "We have enough problems with humanity, recognizing that our minds are about equal in all races. And deliberately recreating a species that, we know, is going to be inferior in some way, is simply asking for huge problems, "she said in her final argument.

"So in the day when the Homo sapiens would have mixed with Neanderthals, you would have discouraged that? Brand joked. The audience laughed. But finally, on the basis of the votes cast before and after the debate, more people came alongside MacPhee and Rothschild than those of Church and Brand. For once, Jeff Goldblums won.

A month later, I returned to Brand to seek a serious response to Rothschild's ethical concerns about the return of the Neanderthals. "I suppose Neanderthals would be accepted as humans today (at least in our open and nurturing communities)," he replied in an e-mail. But he was skeptical that anyone would want to revive them because it would be a step backwards instead of advancing for humanity.

I asked him if he planned to see the next movie "Jurassic Park", which should be released in 2021. It was perhaps one. He said he prefers less "dystopian" scientific films, but added, "It is good for the public to be informed of the scientific details."

Jason Nark is a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer.