Looking at these fluffy little creatures, Romulus and Remus, I’m equally amazed and terrified. Reading about the debate in the scientific world in connection with the topic makes me even more troubled. So, did we bring back the dire wolf, which went extinct 10 thousand years ago, or not? Is this de-extinction project just a well-organized PR stunt with all the right amounts of science, voodoo, cuteness, and Game of Thrones? Does it really matter what it was?

I mean, don’t we as humanity have enough problems already? Climate change, war, economic recession, just to name a few. Do we need to start bringing back apex predators from 10 thousand years ago? A more than one-meter-high, 70-80 kilo carnivore, which hunts in packs… Some scientists say that it is not even a dire wolf, just a genetically modified gray wolf. And the question still stands: is it a good idea to tinker with predator DNA? What is the point? The “we can do it” feeling? Or boosting a Series X investment round? And now they want to de-extinct (great buzzword and hashtag, by the way) the woolly mammoth, which went extinct 4000 years ago. But why the woolly mammoth? Are we bored of elephants, or do they want to make a live-action Ice Age movie? And what’s next? The mighty T-Rex for a new fun park in Texas?

There is the wildly successful story of reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone Park in 1995 under the Endangered Species Act. They brought gray wolves from Canada and Montana, and the wolf population quickly started to grow, since it was their original and natural habitat. 

“This monumental undertaking marked the first deliberate attempt to return a top-level carnivore to a large ecosystem. The impacts of wolf recovery have been significant. With their return, Yellowstone’s large carnivore community is fully restored, and wolves are once again playing a critical role in Yellowstone’s natural ecological processes.” (from Yellowstone.org)

I know that this project is not as sexy as the billion-dollar de-extinction of a giant white wolf, but at least it is surely good for nature and humanity. Since we have the technology, we could use it to help life to survive, help species not to go extinct, and it would cost way less too. Of course, those guys in the boardroom want that CRISPR (a genetic engineering tool that uses a CRISPR sequence of DNA and its associated protein to edit the base pairs of a gene) to print money, profits, merchandise, entertainment, big pharma and maybe even military contracts. 

I’m pretty sure that these scientists are smart cookies, but my bet is that the businessmen behind them are smarter and greedier. Deep in their hearts, they are dreaming of the opening ceremony of the real Jurassic Park. They tend to forget about the fact that “life breaks free,” and we are simply not able to control that with money. Also, as Dr. Ian Malcolm said in the movie, after all the wows, surely comes the running and the screaming.

Playing God never ends well. Playing human for a change would be better.