Bio-Identities: Cloning the Recently Extinct

Abstract

This chapter focuses on attempts to bring back recently extinct species with the use of advanced biotechnologies. The emerging discourse of de-extinction introduces significant opportunities and challenges for ecosystem management. In 1999, for example, the Australian Museum launched a research project premised as an attempt to determine whether or not the thylacine, an iconic Australian marsupial that disappeared in 1936, could be brought back via the use of advanced biotechnologies. Following quickly on the controversies sparked by Dolly the Sheep in 1997, the Thylacine Cloning Project (1999–2005) amplified concerns and hopes about animal cloning. Despite intense criticism of this early initiative, candidates proposed for de-extinction today include the passenger pigeon, Australia’s gastric-brooding frog and even the Woolly Mammoth. To bring back an extinct species and establish it in situ on a sustainable basis would radically reshape human control over nature, though the feasibility and desirability of doing so remain controversial. This chapter begins with a cultural history of the field of ancient DNA analysis, before turning to an in-depth evaluation of scientific and public reaction to the thylacine cloning project. It concludes with a discussion of the fleeting but remarkable resurrection of the Pyrenean ibex in 2003 and the implications of the de-extinction agenda.

Death is only a state of black magic which did not exist so long ago.

—Antonin Artaud (Thacker 1999)