Much of the coverage of this story has credulously repeated the company's marketing press release without any sort of critical appraisal of the actual significance of the announcement (read: not much) or of the stated goal, which is misguided in the extreme. I found this (older) article about the "de-extinction" project [1] to be much more informative. The same journalist covered the new announcement last week [2] (submitted to hn here: [3]).
This is very fascinating and a photogenic demonstration of what is possible via gene editing. My hope is that this research leads to cures of genetic diseases that have previously been incurable.
I doubt the efficacy of creating mammoth like creatures, or elephants that have mammoth traits. We’re talking about recreating an ice age creature that, ostensibly we hunted into extinction. But with climate change and a warming planet, even if we were successful in recreating mammoths, where would such a creature live? James Hansen, who testified to congress in 1988 and informed the public about climate change, recently said that the Paris goal of keeping warming under 2 degrees Centigrade is pretty much dead. At 2 degrees we’ll be seeing ice free arctics at-least once per decade. With that future, there’s simply not going to be any habitat for these creatures to live in.
So... Mammoths are elephants. Asian elephants are more closely related to mammoths than African elephants. They were likely genetically compatible. You could probably achieve a passable mammoth phenotype with selective breeding.
Also, Proboscideans existed in many climate zones through various climactic periods. They're not narrow specialists.
Mammoths just happen to capture the imagination, representing the ice age. Megafaunal extinction. Ancient hunters. Rewilding. Etc.
There's still an enormous number of edits they need to make. I don't remember the exact number they said but I believe it was in the several hundred to low thousands range. Meanwhile the rest of the world is mostly focusing on "an edit". It's not impossible, but it'll be quite an undertaking.
Of course they capture the imagination... I mean... imagine wooly mammoths roaming the boulevards of Paris... or having wings and perching on top on the Eiffel Tower... sadly no cure for cancer in sight.
Too bad. Mammoths? Not possible and unethical, according to this geneticist's opinion piece in The Guardian.
> The only way you will ever see a living mammoth is if our physicist friends finally crack time travel. I am a mere geneticist, but my understanding is that this remains very much in the realm of fiction. Perhaps in the meantime we could direct our scientific excitement and energies towards real problems, things on which millions of lives depend, rather than on this mammoth circus of macabre fantasy and moral bankruptcy.
Boy that geneticist must be fun at parties. Focus on my pet issues exactly like I do or else you are literally morally bankrupt! You can tell his mind has been throughly warped by academic knife fighting for grants.
Someone else mentioned sabre-tooth, I'd love for someone to figure out a way to revive the Moa - much more recently extinct, so maybe easier? (Though perhaps harder due to the climate being less amenable to preserving DNA)
I think most of this work going towards mammoths is also applicable to other species and a lot of the people specifically against reviving the mammoth seem to forget that.
I'm not happy with all this stuff - I think it's cruel. Back in the early 70s the lab I worked in had a colony of mice called "wobblers" that in some sense modelled Parkinson's Disease - but not usefully, as far as I could see.
I think it's acceptable if they have good reason to believe the gene editing isn't going to lead to a trait that harms the animal. I think fluffier fur isn't a big deal. And I say this as a vegetarian and a huge supporter of animal rights.
Inducing Parkinsonian symptoms or removing limbs is very different from some cosmetic changes. Maybe they also need to be kept in cooler environments or something, but assuming they accommodate that, this doesn't seem cruel to me.
I dunno - the right-hand mouse doesn't look so healthy around the face.
Just to be clear, I've killed quite a few mice in my time (traps, poison, cat) when they become nuisances. I'm not sentimental about them at all, but I do draw the line at actual cruelty.
It's also cruel to eradicate entire species. At this point we can only choose between playing incompetent god or competent god. This work is the latter, and I'm here for it.
No, I don't think it is cruel. For example, wolves were eradicated from what is now the UK in the Tudor ages. But it wasn't done with any particular cruelty (for the time), and just because they were eating sheep (wool was a huge industry back then).
There will be a lot of Dunning-Kruger phenomena involved.
Biology is hard to understand, because it is not logical in the same way that maths is. Our bodies contain untold amounts of traces of ancient bottleneck events that are no longer relevant, but the adaptations are still with us.
In that dilemma we are definitely god, you merely debate the competency.
Some folks thought to develop some semi-lethal virus in a lab in Wuhan because "we can/why not" and we know what happened next. Many of us have watched every Resident Evil movie or the 12 Monkeys.
Steve Gibson keeps saying "what could possibly go wrong". Our (commoners'/plebes') fates have historically been determined by warmongers, "hawks", ruthless immoral people who play chess with real humans.
I am not surprised that something will definitely happen. I will be surprised on the "when". I am semi-prepared for the morons to eliminate 90% of the world's population some way or another. I just hope that if/when that happens either "I go out" it will be quick and painless, or I will have the chance to 'activate my plan' and perhaps live a simple life in a forest away from the destruction.
>Back in the early 70s the lab I worked in had a colony of mice called "wobblers" that in some sense modelled Parkinson's Disease - but not usefully, as far as I could see.
If it wasn't useful, why did they have them? It's not labs just keep breeding mice that aren't useful for their experiments.
This is ridiculous. They started with the ambitious goal of cloning a mammoth, then scaled it down to making elephants slightly more mammoth-like, and now they've ended up doing a literature search on genes that make mice a bit furrier. At this point, they’re just another biotech company... which would be fine if they were honest about it. Instead, they’ve come up with this completely unrealistic plan supposedly aimed at combating climate change. Don’t be mistaken - anyone investing in this is doing so purely to profit from their intellectual property, not for any noble cause.
Readit News
[1]: https://defector.com/what-kind-of-future-does-de-extinction-...
[2]: https://defector.com/do-not-be-bamboozled-by-the-new-fluffy-...
[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43302625
I doubt the efficacy of creating mammoth like creatures, or elephants that have mammoth traits. We’re talking about recreating an ice age creature that, ostensibly we hunted into extinction. But with climate change and a warming planet, even if we were successful in recreating mammoths, where would such a creature live? James Hansen, who testified to congress in 1988 and informed the public about climate change, recently said that the Paris goal of keeping warming under 2 degrees Centigrade is pretty much dead. At 2 degrees we’ll be seeing ice free arctics at-least once per decade. With that future, there’s simply not going to be any habitat for these creatures to live in.
Also, Proboscideans existed in many climate zones through various climactic periods. They're not narrow specialists.
Mammoths just happen to capture the imagination, representing the ice age. Megafaunal extinction. Ancient hunters. Rewilding. Etc.
> The only way you will ever see a living mammoth is if our physicist friends finally crack time travel. I am a mere geneticist, but my understanding is that this remains very much in the realm of fiction. Perhaps in the meantime we could direct our scientific excitement and energies towards real problems, things on which millions of lives depend, rather than on this mammoth circus of macabre fantasy and moral bankruptcy.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/06/woolly...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moa
Inducing Parkinsonian symptoms or removing limbs is very different from some cosmetic changes. Maybe they also need to be kept in cooler environments or something, but assuming they accommodate that, this doesn't seem cruel to me.
Just to be clear, I've killed quite a few mice in my time (traps, poison, cat) when they become nuisances. I'm not sentimental about them at all, but I do draw the line at actual cruelty.
Biology is hard to understand, because it is not logical in the same way that maths is. Our bodies contain untold amounts of traces of ancient bottleneck events that are no longer relevant, but the adaptations are still with us.
Some folks thought to develop some semi-lethal virus in a lab in Wuhan because "we can/why not" and we know what happened next. Many of us have watched every Resident Evil movie or the 12 Monkeys.
Steve Gibson keeps saying "what could possibly go wrong". Our (commoners'/plebes') fates have historically been determined by warmongers, "hawks", ruthless immoral people who play chess with real humans.
I am not surprised that something will definitely happen. I will be surprised on the "when". I am semi-prepared for the morons to eliminate 90% of the world's population some way or another. I just hope that if/when that happens either "I go out" it will be quick and painless, or I will have the chance to 'activate my plan' and perhaps live a simple life in a forest away from the destruction.
If it wasn't useful, why did they have them? It's not labs just keep breeding mice that aren't useful for their experiments.
All well known and well studied mutations