GREYSTONE BOOKS, OCTOBER 2017People are often willing to pay for something that they think is cool: a flashy convertible, a table at a Michelin-starred restaurant, an overnight stay at an exclusive hotel. But what does it mean when the cool thing is a sentient being? What unexpected forms of commodification might that create? Who profits from making its coolness available? And what happens if it goes out of style?
When considering de-extinction’s potential applications, conservation consultant Kent Redford and colleagues write, “The work will attract funding, inform science, help develop techniques useful in other fields, and provide an example of synthetic organisms that have public appeal.” But that already raises an ethical issue: Should we be promoting the public appeal of synthetic organisms when we could be working harder to increase the public appeal of unmodified creatures that are still around and that face threats in the wild? Are these two things mutually exclusive? Or would it be a mistake to think that they are?
In 2015, Jurassic World, the fourth film in the Jurassic Park series, earned over $200 million at the U.S. box office on opening weekend. In 1993, the original film’s ...
