The dubious nature of de-extinction

Colossal Biosciences claims to have reached several milestones in its "Jurassic Park"-like ambition to bring extinct species back to life, helping it capture investor support and making its latest valuation over $10 billion. But some activists and scientists have pointed out the dubious nature of these claims, criticizing the murky science of de-extinction.

The company got pushback over its recent claim that it resurrected the dire wolf. But the debate over whether the pups are clones of their extinct relatives misses the point, said Beth Shapiro, Colossal's chief science officer, to CNN, adding that the team had successfully resurrected the "functional essence" of the dire wolf. Still, this clarification begs the question: Is de-extinction really doable?

Is de-extinction possible?

To date, there has only been one successful attempt to bring a species back from extinction, and it was a short-lived success. Celia, the last living Pyrenean Ibex, a subspecies of wild mountain goat, died in 2000. Three years later, scientists used cells taken from her body before she died to clone her with the same method used in the famous cloning of Dolly the sheep. Copies of Celia's DNA were developed into 407 embryos, and half were transferred to the wombs of 57 surrogate goat mothers. Seven of these implantations turned into pregnancies, and one baby ibex was born successfully. However, due to malformed lungs, the kid soon died from suffocation, living only a few minutes and giving the species the distinction of being the only one on Earth to have gone extinct twice.

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DNA recovered from long-dead creatures is "profoundly degraded, chewed up by time and bacteria," and what is actually recovered are fragments, said geneticist and frequent de-extinction critic Adam Rutherford at The Guardian. These fragments comprise a "tiny proportion of the total amount of DNA in a living creature, most of which is lost in time, like tears in rain." Much of what is lost has a "function in living cells" and is "species-specific." This makes the proposed process of de-extinction much different than the cloning of Dolly, whose complete genome was taken from a living sheep. "This is not photocopying," Rutherford added, "it's trying to assemble a book with only a clutch of sentences."

What about Colossal's de-extinction claims?

No matter how cute the dire wolf pups might be, the company's claims about them are "absolute bollocks," Rutherford said on his Punctuated Equilibrium Substack. No amount of "fancy pictures, cool legendary names," or "American-brand biotech TED-style glossy hubris can change this." The three pups are "by any sensible definition, genetically engineered grey wolves," an entirely different species than the extremely distant cousins they are supposed to resemble. "Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken," said Rutherford. The newborn pups are still grey wolves, and "dire wolves remain very extinct."

Additionally, the pups were brought into the world without packs or parents, with dogs as surrogate mothers, making them "gaudy boutique animals for a greedy, morally suspect company." If conservation is Colossal's goal, overlooking this is "nothing but ghoulish." These pups are "sophisticated social animals" that have been "experimented on for no good reason — not for medical knowledge, not for conservation reasons, just for business."

The company's broader efforts to de-extinct other flashy animals like the woolly mammoth are "as far as conservation efforts go — incredibly misguided," said elephant conservation expert Nitin Sekar at Ars Technica. Ultimately, Colossal's efforts will not "end up being about helping wild elephants or saving the climate" but "creating creatures for human spectacle, with insufficient attention to the costs and opportunity costs to human and animal life." If seeking to advance conservation efforts, the question is whether Colossal's "leaders and supporters are willing to pivot from a project that grabs news headlines to ones that would likely make positive differences."

The topic of de-extinction unquestionably raises ethical questions, but the birth of the pups is still a "major breakthrough in genetics," said Michael Knapp, an anatomy professor at New Zealand's University of Otago, to The Washington Post. It is easy to "brush attempts to bring back extinct species off as vanity projects without purpose in the real world," but that would "ignore the technological breakthroughs behind these efforts." However, whether "this is an avenue that should be further pursued is a highly complex question."