I’ve always been fascinated, and thus repeatedly watched via cable TV, the highly successful sci-fi thriller trilogy film of the Michael Crichton (novel) and Steven Spielberg (director), the Jurassic Park. The movie has been about the unforeseen consequences of turning a menagerie of cloned dinosaurs into an amusement park.
Well what seemed as merely a science fiction in the past may perhaps become a reality soon. I’m not referring to the amusement park of dinosaurs, but of the technology that would enable one.
According to the Telegraph (which includes the diagram above)
The woolly mammoth, extinct for thousands of years, could be brought back to life in as little as four years thanks to a breakthrough in cloning technology.
Previous efforts in the 1990s to recover nuclei in cells from the skin and muscle tissue from mammoths found in the Siberian permafrost failed because they had been too badly damaged by the extreme cold.
But a technique pioneered in 2008 by Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama, of the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology, was successful in cloning a mouse from the cells of another mouse that had been frozen for 16 years.
Now that hurdle has been overcome, Akira Iritani, a professor at Kyoto University, is reactivating his campaign to resurrect the species that died out 5,000 years ago.
If these scientists will be spot on with their predictions, then the implications would be REVOLUTIONARY. You may call it a black swan- a rare high impact event.
Since one thing may lead to another, then it won’t likely be just about Jurassic Park and about possibly saving endangered or the restoring of extinct species, but likewise the possibility of resurrecting our ancestors!
While it would be a pleasure to see Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, Menger debate Keynes live, it would be a nightmare to see Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot or Marcos back, yikes!
We’d also probably see our world co-exist with clones ala the movie The Island, starred by Scarlett Johannson. Of course, am guilty here of the projecting current trends into the future as a way of mental stimulation.
Nevertheless, the rapid progression of technological innovations never cease to amaze me.
1 comment:
Endless discovery and innovation under capitalism is indeed fascinating. Actually it won't be far out to see people living up to 200 years old in the next few decades.
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