Given the popularity of such recent books as Britt Wray’s Rise of the Necrofauna; The Science, Ethics, and Risks of De-Extinction and Beth Shapiro’s How to Clone a Mammoth; The Science of De-Extinction, as well as the publication of the most recent addition to the still growing body of literature taking the topic as its subject, Ben Minteer’s The Fall of the Wild; Extinction, De-Extinction, and the Ethics of Conservation, it shouldn’t be surprising that Intelligence Squared U.S. gathered together four people with quite different views on the matter for one of their Oxford-style debates.
The motion “Don’t Bring Extinct Creatures Back to Life” was defended by Dr. Ross MacPhee, Curator, Department of Mammalogy, Division of Vertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History, and Dr. Lynn J. Rothschild, Adjunct Professor of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry at Brown and Senior Research Scientist, Bio and Bio-Inspired Technologies, Research and Technology Lead for NASA HQ STMD, and opposed by Dr. George Church, Professor of Genetics, at Harvard and MIT & founder of the Personal Genome Project, and Stewart Brand, co-founder of Revive & Restore and founder of the Whole Earth Catalog.
The debate can be viewed in its entirety on the organization’s website and is expected to be released as a podcast as well in the near future.
