They still have some work to do, but in a few more years, these scientists will be set to play God by recreating the long-extinct animals -- for only 10 million bucks a pop.
"It may one day become possible," Pennsylvania State University biochemist Stephan Schuster explained, "to mammoth-ify an African or Asian elephant genome."
Awesome. But why ?
Imagine the other potential uses for this science. Why not, for instance, drill deep into the Michigan ground and excavate the long-lost DNA of a competent auto-industry executive or even Henry Ford (you know, after they erase the Nazi-sympathizing chromosome)?
Either way, science is on the march. And though we tend to concentrate feverishly on the negative, great things are happening.
Writing this column has momentarily revived my belief in humankind. Short term, you say, we're on the wrong track. Well, long term, we usually are on the right one.
So if we somehow survive these Dark Ages -- a time when Americans already live long, healthy, prosperous lives and have the financial wherewithal to fund scientists who muck around in the Siberian ice -- maybe, just maybe, we can live forever one day.
That is, if you actually are interested in such a terrible inconvenience. |