Recently, Colossal Biosciences brought the dire wolf back from extinction. Many celebrated this scientific achievement. I think this is a terrible idea. Anyone who's seen Jurassic Park knows that playing God doesn't end well.

The buzzword surrounding these experiments is de-extinction, AKA "resurrection biology." Dodo birds, passenger pigeons, and saber-tooth tigers are all current candidates for resurrection biology. Colossal Biosciences' dire wolf is just the latest animal to be brought back from the dead—that we know of.

When the news broke that dire wolves were back on Earth after 10,000 years, the word "clone" was thrown around. These wolves are not clones; they are the product of genetic engineering. They might look like a copy, but the wolves are merely an aesthetic reproduction—otherwise, they are 99.9% gray wolves.  

Today's lab-made dire wolves, named Khaleesi, Romulus, and Remus, weigh about 140 lbs and are only six months old. They feature the longer fur and bigger skulls that dire wolves are believed to have had.

While they might look like dire wolves, it has yet to be seen if they will act like dire wolves, seeing as how their DNA mostly resembles the gray wolf. They also entered Earth in an unnatural way, which would most likely sever any ancient behaviors they might have. (Much of what we know about the extinct dire wolf is from the tar pits in Los Angeles that captured many specimens.)

Colossal Biosciences is based in Dallas, TX. To create their dire wolf, they took DNA from dire wolf fossils. They built their own dire wolf genome based on what they extracted from the fossil, then threaded that through the DNA of a gray wolf. The gray wolf is allegedly the closest relative to the dire wolf.

According to Colossal, they used CRISPR technology to produce the dire wolves. This allows the scientists to edit the blood cells to tweak their specimen to their desired style.

While I understand the interest in the ability to create Frankenstein monsters, I don't think we're thinking through the consequences. That's not to say I'm anti-innovation; I just believe that science needs to draw a line in the ethics with which it pursues these advances.

It's not like this is the first time scientists have meddled with de-extinction or cloning, but the better we get at this technology, the more dystopian the consequences will become. It's not just about grieving pet owners paying to resurrect their dog, cat, or horse. This will eventually turn into the ethics of resurrecting people. Will you want to bring back a loved one who passed? Imagine these de-extinction techniques combined with artificial intelligence. The idea of "playing God" will only increase. The temptation to bring back anything will be at our fingertips. How would it affect nature? How will it redefine what it means to be human? This might seem like a giant leap from dire wolf to human, but scientists are already questioning how ethics hold back CRISPR.

He Jiankui is a biophysicist from China. Recently, he said, "Ethics is holding back scientific innovation and progress." In 2018, he used CRISPR technology to produce gene-edited human baby twins. He was imprisoned for three years for this. Now that he's out, he's calling on the science community to unshackle itself from the restraints of ethics regarding these human gene experiments.

Colossal claims their dire wolves will not breed. The edited DNA will be passed down to their offspring if they did. I'm sure the security is tight at Colossal, but what happens if the wolves breed with a wolf from outside the compound? This might also seem far-fetched, but similar situations have occurred with the genetically engineered salmon population. The FDA has allowed genetically engineered salmon to be served to people for decades. They are engineered with eel to make the salmon grow faster and bigger. The genetically engineered salmon is modified with the ocean pout—essentially, this looks like a giant slug from the ocean floor. The FDA says it's totally healthy to eat. Even though the freak-of-nature salmon were kept in their fish farms, there have been many breakouts. There is no telling now how many genetically modified salmon have mated with real salmon. Not only could this impact people, but it might come with risks to ecology.

How long until you can purchase dire wolf meat at WalMart?

Scientists have been toying with de-extinction for years.

In 1891, Hans Driesch, a German scientist, split sea urchin embryos to create sea urchin twins.

In the 1930s, German embryologist Hans Spemann created the "fantastical experiment." He created a clone by transferring a cell's nucleus into an egg, which eventually earned him a Nobel Prize.

By the 1950s, experiments in frog and tadpole cloning would prove successful.

Dolly the sheep was cloned in 1996 using SCNT technology. This was the first time an adult cell was used to clone a mammal. One of the side effects of the Dolly clone was that it aged prematurely.

And as recently as last year, Arthur Schubarth, an 81-year-old man in Montana, was sentenced to prison for illegally creating a giant hybrid sheep. U.S. District Judge Brian Morris said this concerning the case ethic of the big ram mutant: "changing the genetic makeup of the creatures on Earth."

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seized the giant ram. Supposedly, it will be transferred to a zoo where I don't know if its life will improve.

Although I disagree with the nature of Frankenstein's creation, I still don't quite understand why scientists are allowed to make dire wolves, but this man can't make a giant ram.

Colossal's next goal is to resurrect the woolly mammoth, using an Asian elephant to reproduce the dire wolf the same way they used the gray wolf. If this works, something that looks like a woolly mammoth will be walking Earth by 2028.

George Church, the co-founder of Colossal, says, "If we caused their extinction, we must bring them back."

This sounds narcissistic and lacks foresight. We are racing towards their extinction by investing in technologies that could erase us. I prefer the future where we don't have cloned babies growing in artificial wombs inheriting a world where we're on the menu for dire wolves and saber-toothed tigers. Unfortunately, I think this future is, to some degree, inevitable. I pray that we can find a way to balance ethics with the ego of death-defying science.