Abstract
This chapter surveys and critically evaluates all the main arguments both for and against de-extinction. It presents a qualified defence of the claim that conservationists should embrace de-extinction. It ends with a list of do’s and don’ts for conservationist de-extinction projects.
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Notes
- 1.
“The gene is the basic unit of selfishness” (Dawkins, 1976, p. 39). This being so, could we not identify a species with its genepool, and in this way substantiate the claim that a species ‘wants’ to remain extant and perpetuate itself into the future? No, for in the first place what is in the selfish interests of an individual gene is often sharply detrimental to the interests of other genes and to long-term survival prospects of the genepool as a whole. The interests of the genes therefore don’t add up to any coherent volition at the genepool level. In the second place, attributing selfishness to genes is just a useful figure of speech, that involves anthropomorphising a segment of DNA. Genes are ‘selfish’ and have ‘interests’ only in the extremely deflationary sense that self-perpetuating chain letters are selfish and have interests.
- 2.
See Jebari (2016) and Cohen (2014) for attempts to show that we owe a moral duty to species we have exterminated, a duty that requires us to resurrect them. Cohen acknowledges the profound difficulties confronting this view, writing: “The potential objections to [my] analysis … are legion. My aim was to show that the initially absurd-sounding idea of a duty of de-extinction deserves a second thought” (p. 172).
- 3.
This assumption is not needed by proponents of the justice argument in the special case that our generation is responsible for the extinction, but in practice proponents of the justice argument are usually arguing for the resurrection of species that went extinct long ago.
- 4.
The creation of de-extinct organisms for zoos or for the exotic pet industry would be of substantial conservation benefit only if some of the created organisms became available for rewilding (although see Archer (2013) for a contrary view). Depending on the species, it could also raise obvious animal welfare objections.
- 5.
There are some time constraints. Ideally a species will be resurrected sooner rather than later, especially when fast-paced environmental or ecological changes would make rewilding the species rapidly more difficult the longer the delay (Robert, Thévenin, Princé, Sarrazin, & Clavel, 2017). Another reason to resurrect sooner rather than later is so that more generations of people can benefit from the species’ de-extinction.
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Campbell, D.I., Whittle, P.M. (2017). Ethical Arguments For and Against De-extinction. In: Resurrecting Extinct Species. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69578-5_4
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