Group Report By:
Brittany Jette, Giahuy Lenguyen, Kaustubh Pandit, Rachael Zmich
Shapiro, Beth. How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction. Princeton University Press.
Beth Shapiro is an evolutionary molecular biologist who teaches at the University of California. She is a professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and specializes in analyzing ancient DNA. As a very published author, she has been awarded a prestigious Royal Society University Research Fellowship and was one of 37 people to be named an American innovator under the age of 35. Since she has held many high position roles and has a Ph.D. in her field, she has the background and knowledge to make her a reliable source.
The chapter is from the book How To Clone a Mammoth. The book looks at possible methods of de-extinction as well as the ethical ramifications of de-extinction. The author explains complex ideas using simple explanations. The author Beth Shapiro is an evolutionary molecular biologist. She however also uses philosophy and ethics as discussions in her book to discuss the ramifications of the de-extinction of the mammoth. She can be considered to be an authoritative source due to the fact that she has a Ph.D. in philosophy and bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Ecology. She uses her knowledge of philosophy to evaluate the action of de-extinction and her knowledge from ecology to propose methods of achieving de-extinction.
The main argument of this paper is that humans have played a part in the mass extinction of many species around the world. However, this worries humans as a loss of biodiversity and mass extinction in the past has led to catastrophe in the past, “Suggesting that the crisis in the present day has the potential to be as destructive to Earth’s biodiversity as the other five mass extinctions in our planet’s history.” (Shapiro, 8). If this sort of event occurred today, it would probably lead to our extinction as well, or at least severely affect the human race, which alarms people more than anything, “While some of us may not care about extinction as long as we are not personally affected, many of us find extinction unacceptable, particularly if it is our fault.” (Shapiro, 8). For this reason, and the guilt of killing off a species, which eliminates the possibilities that species could have presented, humans have begun experimenting with de-extinction, “If we can bring species that we have driven to extinction back to life, then we can right our wrongs before it is too late.” (Shapiro, 8). Ultimately, this raises more ethical and biological problems than any benefits it may provide to biodiversity.
In this book, Shapiro’s argument is unclear at times and she seems like she contradicts herself with the physical evidence they found and what is believed to have happened. Her argument that humans are a contributor to the extinction of animals like mammoths, steppe bison, and wild horses are uncertain when she states, “Humans did not arrive in North America until well after the populations of mammoths, steppe bison, and wild horses had already begun to decline toward extinction.” (Shapiro, 4). This statement shows that although humans may have helped to make these species go extinct, they did not contribute to the decline of the species. This means that the decline was caused by another factor and that humans did not cause a major decline making her argument uncertain in this statement.
The author does a good job of defending her argument with a relative, important information. As evidence, Shapiro explains that “Remains of mammoths, steppe bison, and wild horses are found in the fossil record of the last interglacial, indicating that they were able to survive despite the warmer climate.” (Shapiro, 3) meaning that the species went extinct for another reason that was not the climate change. She also explains that humans are the major factor in the extinction of these species when she says, “Wherever it went, its arrival seemed to coincide with the extinction of other, mostly large-bodied species. This species was, of course, humans.” (Shapiro, 4). Shapiro makes it clear that the humans feel guilty in for depleting the Earth of species and leading to the next mass extinction and causing a lack of biodiversity by trying to compensate with de-extinction efforts. This can be shown when she expressed that “The Lazarus frog and bucardo projects are only two of the several de-extinction projects that are underway today.” (Shapiro, 9).
One of the main topics that is brought up by Beth Shapiro in this article is that the earth’s uncontrollable change in climate throughout the past in many intervals reigning from 80,000 to 20,000 years ago has made many species decline in population because they were unable to adapt to the new climate “Average temperatures swung a whopping 5-7 C with each climate shift” (page 3). Climate change is out of the hands of humans, especially back in the day since we have no evidence that humans were even brought forth in the world yet, but their influence on the environment would not be as catastrophic as it is today which would mean that the climate change is out of human hands. However, the faith of animals in today’s era is largely in the hands of humans, for example, one of the most common debates consumers have is the level of meat production that the humans eat. David DeGrazia, who is an animal and ethical theorist, differentiates from what Beth Shapiro implies by emphasizing how humans don’t need to consume meat at all and that it’s more of a choice of humans in order to fulfill desires, “Usual circumstances aside- say, where one is starving and lacks alternatives-we do not need to eat meat to survive or even be healthy. The chief benefits of meat-eating to consumers are pleasure…” (page 74, Animal Rights). A high amount of meat consumption would lead to a higher demand for meat which would lead to more factory farms to produce it. This would then lead to more land being taken away from an animal’s habitat.
One of the main points of reflection and intrigue that came up upon reading the chapter as a whole was the ethics behind de-extinction. The claim of the ability, or the lack of thereof, of extinct animals to survive in modern ecosystems with modern climatic conditions was something that showed a lot of promise as further research. Another trend that came up was the causes of mass extinctions. As a group, we pondered upon how the cause of mass extinctions might have changed from natural causes to man-made causes. The destructive behavior of humans especially in the past few years has caused a lot of species to go extinct and this is something that caused our group to ponder for a few moments as something that needs to be further looked into.