Vox: All Posts by Dayton Martindalehttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2024-01-31T07:00:00-05:00https://www.vox.com/authors/dayton-martindale/rss2024-01-31T07:00:00-05:002024-01-31T07:00:00-05:00The US uses endangered monkeys to test drugs. This law could free them.
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<figcaption>Long-tailed macaques in Indonesia. | Gustavo Mejía/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Everything from Ozempic to Covid vaccines is tested on long-tailed macaques. Experts believe many are illegally trafficked from the wild.</p> <p id="7zoKrr">Tanya Sanerib has some advice for your next life: “Don’t come back as a crab-eating macaque.” </p>
<p id="cuLyW6">That’s what Sanerib, international legal director for the Center for Biological Diversity, concluded after looking at data on the vast numbers of crab-eating macaques, monkeys also known as long-tailed or cynomolgus macaques, imported into the United States for animal testing. </p>
<p id="HkMIRR">These playful, fruit-loving monkeys have the misfortune of being a standard research model used for toxicology testing in the biomedical industry. In recent years, exporters based largely in their native range of <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2022.839131/full#:~:text=The%20CITES%20Trade%20Database%20revealed,Philippines%2C%20Thailand%2C%20and%20Vietnam.">Southeast Asia</a> have sold <a href="https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/26857/chapter/9#211">more than 30,000 long-tailed macaques</a> annually to the US, largely for laboratory use. </p>
<p id="FR8yaA">Biomedical industry demand for long-tailed macaques is so high that, analysts reported last year, a single animal could be <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Pharmaceuticals/Lab-monkey-prices-soar-in-U.S.-after-China-cuts-off-exports">sold for as much as $60,000</a>. On arrival at pharmaceutical companies and research institutions, they’re destined to live in cages and face experimentation to test everything from the <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/ozempic-was-tested-on-iucn-endangered-monkeys-heres-what-we-know">weight-loss drug Ozempic </a>to <a href="https://nprc.org/research/the-monkeys-behind-covid-19-vaccines/">Covid-19</a> vaccines.</p>
<p id="uHPsy4">US scientists have been using large numbers of these monkeys since the 1970s, when <a href="https://bioone.org/journals/primate-conservation/volume-23/issue-1/052.023.0115/The-Crab-Eating-Macaque-Macaca-fascicularis--Widespread-and-Rapidly/10.1896/052.023.0115.full">India halted exports of rhesus macaques</a>, and researchers had to find a new, more easily replaceable species for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1978/01/23/archives/export-ban-on-monkeys-poses-threat-to-research-export-ban-on.html">lethal pharmaceutical testing</a>. Long-tailed macaques’ relative abundance in the wild meant they fit the bill.</p>
<p id="O0S1Rz">Unfortunately, they’re not so abundant in the wild anymore. </p>
<p id="10NmZk">While the animals proliferate in US laboratories, they are struggling in their native habitat, and the animal testing industry is partly to blame. Long-tailed macaque populations <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/fr/species/12551/221666136#population">declined by 40 percent</a> from the mid-1980s to 2006, and in 2022, they were listed as endangered by the <a href="https://www.iucn.org/about-iucn">International Union for the Conservation of Nature</a> (IUCN), a global authority on wildlife threats. The IUCN named several causes for the macaques’ decline, including habitat loss, the pet trade, subsistence hunting, and capture for biomedical research. Throughout the 2010s, 60 percent of the more than 400,000 long-tailed macaques exported from Asia went to <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajp.23547">the US</a>.</p>
<p id="VqY54U">On paper, most long-tailed macaques imported by the US are labeled as captive-bred — meaning they came from facilities that breed them for research rather than from the wild. But <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235277142300040X">some</a> <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajp.23547">experts</a> believe that illegal trade in wild-caught macaques is widespread, and that many of those that end up in US labs have actually been trafficked from the wild. In November 2022, the Department of Justice <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdfl/pr/cambodian-officials-and-six-co-conspirators-indicted-taking-part-primate-smuggling-0">indicted eight people</a> allegedly involved in a smuggling ring that brought <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/20/trafficked-lab-monkeys-cambodia-us-investigation">more than 2,600</a> wild long-tailed macaques from Cambodia into the US under false permits labeling them captive-bred. </p>
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<img alt="A group of long-tailed macaques hang from a wired ceiling in a fenced-in outdoor area." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/7LRMX4XzNNJ2P--Tao8x8TMjBWw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25256843/WAM10547.jpg">
<cite>Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals Media</cite>
<figcaption>Long-tailed macaques at a breeding facility in Vientiane, Laos.</figcaption>
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<cite>Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals Media</cite>
<figcaption>A long-tailed macaque mother and infant at a breeding facility in Vientiane, Laos.</figcaption>
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<p id="WNVYB1">Then last April, amid growing concerns about the species, a coalition of <a href="https://www.vox.com/animal-welfare" data-source="encore">animal rights</a> activists, conservation groups, and scientists led by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) <a href="https://www.peta.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023-04-12-PFR-to-List-the-Long-Tailed-Macaque-Under-the-ESA_Redacted.pdf">petitioned</a> the federal government to list the long-tailed macaque under the <a href="https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/2023/12/18/23989030/endangered-species-act-explained-environment-biodiversity-extinction">Endangered Species Act</a>. </p>
<p id="vIgRhM">This could have radical implications: If successful, their call might not only end imports of long-tailed macaques, but also help address the <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23795087/animal-experiments-primates-mental-health-effective">physical and psychological distress</a> they face in US testing labs and perhaps even end their use in research altogether. And it could do that for all members of the species — whether they were abducted from the wild or have lived their whole lives in a cage. </p>
<h3 id="NlOcjJ">The Endangered Species Act’s radical potential for animals in captivity</h3>
<p id="0FSc9r">The PETA-led petition’s potential to upend a pillar of biomedical research in the US highlights what may be an underappreciated aspect of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), a landmark federal law passed 50 years ago last month to protect species at risk of extinction. While its most <a href="https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Understanding-Conservation/endangered-species-success-stories">high-profile successes</a> include such symbols of the American frontier as the bald eagle, the Florida panther, and the grizzly bear, the law is not just for protecting animals in wild habitats from human encroachment. It also calls for better treatment of endangered animals in captivity. </p>
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<p id="CWINsO">Although the exact status of captive animals under the ESA is far from settled — subject to shifting regulation, controversial loopholes, and evolving case law — its wide-ranging protections promise to free endangered animals from many forms of exploitation that are beyond the reach even of laws ostensibly designed to stop animal cruelty. The 1966 Animal Welfare Act, for example, merely sets <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/12/11/23500157/neuralink-animal-testing-elon-musk-usda-probe">minimal standards</a> for the conditions of animal use, such as minimum cage sizes for animals used in experiments — thereby taking for granted that animals will be harmed for profit-seeking purposes like entertainment, drug development, or cosmetic testing. </p>
<p id="IG2so6">But the ESA provides a basis for challenging such harm. It <a href="https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/endangered-species-act-accessible_7.pdf">prohibits</a> any “take” of an endangered animal, which the law defines as “to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.” It also allows citizens to directly sue entities that they believe are violating the law, making it much easier to enforce than the Animal Welfare Act.</p>
<p id="0DmdK0">In conservation biology, the health of wild animal populations and the welfare of animals held in captivity for human purposes have traditionally been seen as incompatible, or at best unrelated — contributing to a divide between conservationists and animal rights advocates. </p>
<p id="D4wk6T">Animal advocates are often highly critical of zoos and aquariums, for example, because of the physical and psychological harm that can be inflicted on animals confined to small, unnatural settings. Those most concerned with the survival of wild populations, however, <a href="https://www.iucn.org/sites/default/files/2023-10/2023-position-statement-on-the-role-of-botanic-gardens-aquariums-and-zoos-in-species-conservation.pdf">sometimes support zoos</a> because they help keep the species’ gene pool alive (whether zoos actually help wild animal populations, however, is <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23914885/zoo-animals-conservation-endangered-threatened-species-sanctuaries">contested</a>). </p>
<p id="7LeJ7N">Michael Soulé, considered a founder of conservation biology, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1310054">wrote</a> in 1985 that the field was not<em> </em>concerned with “the welfare of individuals,” but only with “the integrity and continuity of natural processes.” While he objected to animal cruelty, he cautioned that “conservation and animal welfare … are conceptually distinct, and they should remain politically separate.”</p>
<p id="LUvqOO">But in the Endangered Species Act, these two goals — protecting species and protecting individual animals — are linked. “The language, purpose, and legislative history of the ESA … make clear that the act is designed to protect both captive and wild members of protected species,” wrote legal experts Delcianna Winders, Jared Goodman, and Heather Rally in a <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/products/inv/book/413429989/">chapter</a> of the 2021 edition of <em>Endangered Species Act: Law, Policy, and Perspectives</em>. According to Sanerib, that’s part of what makes it one of the stronger environmental laws on the planet. </p>
<p id="57GiBy">A key ESA case for captive animals began to take shape in the late ’80s, about as far from wilderness as you can get: backstage on the Las Vegas Strip. A dancer at Vegas’s Lido de Paris cabaret <a href="https://news3lv.com/features/video-vault/video-vault-ringling-bros">leaked footage</a> to PETA showing famed animal trainer Bobby Berosini beating the show’s performing orangutans. <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-08-08-mn-161-story.html">Subsequent investigation</a> found further evidence of physical and emotional abuse, including cage sizes roughly one-third of the legal requirement. Attorney Katherine Meyer, who led PETA’s case against Berosini, argued that the orangutan operation wasn’t just a typical animal cruelty case: Because orangutans were listed as endangered, Berosini was violating the ESA. </p>
<p id="TjI2ec">Berosini’s permit to breed the endangered great apes was revoked, and the show closed down. Meyer, who later became the <a href="https://animal.law.harvard.edu/team-member/katherine-meyer/">inaugural director of the Harvard Animal Law and Policy Clinic</a>, said this was the first case she knows of in which the ESA was used to protect captive animals from abusive situations. In the decades since, ESA lawsuits have been brought against the <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5361853">Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus</a>, the <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23937898/orcas-whales-dolphins-seaworld-blackfish-captivity-cetaceans">Miami Seaquarium theme park</a>, and <a href="https://aldf.org/article/animal-legal-defense-fund-lawsuit-shuts-down-inhumane-pennsylvania-roadside-zoo/">numerous</a> <a href="https://www.wizmnews.com/2018/04/12/court-iowa-roadside-zoo-where-la-crosse-bears-retired-violated-endangered-species-law/">roadside zoos</a>, on behalf of endangered bears, elephants, orcas, and other captive animals.</p>
<p id="i5VMdJ">The exact scope of the law’s protections remains a legal gray area, <a href="https://www.vermontlaw.edu/directory/person/winders-delcianna">Delcianna Winders</a>, a professor and director of the <a href="https://www.vermontlaw.edu/academics/centers-and-programs/animal-law-policy-institute">Animal Law and Policy Institute</a> at Vermont Law and Graduate School, told me. Some courts have decided that poor living conditions or inadequate veterinary care constitute a “take” under the ESA, leading to several closures of roadside zoos. In 1976, Winders added, <a href="https://www.vox.com/congress" data-source="encore">Congress</a> rejected an amendment to the ESA pushed by the animal exhibition industry that would have excluded the “ordinary activities of a zoo, circus, menagerie or other similar exhibition” from the law’s purview. </p>
<p id="GGPFJY">But <a href="https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-50/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-17/subpart-A/section-17.3">exemptions</a> have been written into the law to exclude Animal Welfare Act-compliant practices from the definition of “harassment” — making it harder to argue in court that confining elephants in zoos, for example, is inherently an illegal form of harassment under the ESA. </p>
<p id="1yijdu">“It’s been a decades-long series of trial and error” to figure out how the ESA should treat captive animals, Winders said, and some tension remains. </p>
<h3 id="juhtiP">How the Endangered Species Act freed chimps from lab testing</h3>
<p id="Ow9OKa">Although the ESA doesn’t outright ban keeping endangered animals in captivity, its prohibitions on what you can <em>do </em>to a captive animal are far more stringent. The law poses a direct challenge to animal testing, which, according to Winders, clearly constitutes a “take.” Invasive experimentation almost definitionally involves the harm, wounding, and often killing of an animal. </p>
<p id="aB010J">While the ESA makes it difficult to experiment on an endangered animal, it is not impossible. Facilities can still carry out such research by obtaining a special permit from the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the federal agency that enforces the Endangered Species Act. In theory, to qualify for a permit, the research is supposed to benefit the species writ large, but in practice, the FWS has established what critics call a “pay-to-play” system: Researchers are allowed to simply donate to the conservation of a species in the wild in exchange for permits to conduct experiments on captive members of that species. </p>
<p id="QIqsZq">These arrangements have become common. In Atlanta, for example, the federally funded Emory National Primate Research Center experiments on the sooty mangabey, an endangered West African monkey held for research <a href="https://www.enprc.emory.edu/animals/sooty_mangabey.html">on HIV/AIDS, immune function, and other subjects</a>.</p>
<p id="ZOd3PJ">In 2016, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wildlife-loophole-exclusive-idUSKCN0ZD20U/">Reuters reported</a> that over the previous five years, “the vast majority of the estimated 1,375 endangered species permits granted by the Fish & Wildlife Service involved financial pledges to charity.” In a typical example, the agency approved a permit to transfer endangered African penguins to Miami Seaquarium in exchange for a $5,000 pledge to penguin conservation in South Africa. Following Vox’s interview requests, the FWS did not provide comment.</p>
<p id="8ENFZa">Despite that loophole, invasive research on endangered species remains rare and faces significant hurdles. In fact, the ESA has already succeeded in freeing one iconic species from such research: our social, tool-making, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTgeLEWr614&ab_channel=NewScientist">highly intelligent</a> cousin, the chimpanzee. </p>
<p id="dGK8yJ">Until quite recently, chimps’ genetic proximity to humans was seen as a reason to experiment on them rather than to protect them from captivity and exploitation; they were used around the world to study infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis. But in the late ’90s and early aughts, a growing global movement for chimpanzee rights <a href="https://releasechimps.org/laws/international-bans">resulted in bans</a> on using them (along with other great apes, including bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans) in invasive experiments in countries around the world. </p>
<p id="SxNJvI">By 2013, nearly every country that had been using chimps in invasive medical research had ceased the practice — with the US a notable exception, even though chimps were, and still are, endangered in the wild.</p>
<p id="uKnxvP">That was made possible because, for many years, wild chimpanzees and captive chimpanzees were treated differently under the Endangered Species Act. The former were listed as endangered, while the latter were considered only “threatened” — a less severe classification that made it easier to allow the continued “take” of captive chimpanzees. </p>
<p id="sTrGGy">Chimps were the <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/06/11/190714219/u-s-to-recommend-listing-all-chimpanzees-as-endangered">only species</a> subject to this “split listing,” which, the Fish and Wildlife Service <a href="https://awionline.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/wild-chimpuplistingcommentoct2011-012012.pdf">explained</a> in 1990, was due to their “importance in biomedical and other kinds of research” and their “use by zoos, as pets, and in entertainment.” </p>
<p id="TQ7FRL">To Katherine Meyer, the split listing seemed unlawful. In 2010, she consulted with Anna Frostic, an attorney for the Humane Society of the United States, who submitted a <a href="https://www.releasechimps.org/photos-and-pics/fws_chimp_endangered_petition%202010.pdf">petition</a> co-signed by the Jane Goodall Institute, the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums, and several other groups urging FWS to classify all chimps as endangered, including captives. </p>
<p id="giXNrN">Five years later, their effort <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/06/16/2015-14232/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-listing-all-chimpanzees-as-endangered-species">succeeded</a>. While some in the research industry <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/12/jane-goodall-us-chimpanzees-endangered">lamented this decision</a>, they <a href="https://www.boston.com/news/innovation/2013/06/12/no-more-monkey-business-biotech-industry-shrugs-at-change-in-chimp-status/">failed to mount</a> a serious opposition. By November 2015, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) <a href="https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/who-we-are/nih-director/statements/timeline-nihs-decision-end-use-chimpanzees-research">announced</a> it would no longer support chimpanzee research, ending a 90-year era of invasive research on our closest relatives.</p>
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<img alt="A cage stands on dirt ground outdoors amid greenery." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/s8VzJY762pY0cH7iRX7Pr-gfruY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25257121/WAM10437.jpg">
<cite>Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals Media</cite>
<figcaption>A cage once used to house chimpanzees used for research. It now stands empty in Carignan, Québec, at the entrance to the Fauna Foundation, an organization that provides sanctuary to chimps and monkeys formerly used in biomedical research.</figcaption>
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<cite>Jo-Anne McArthur/New England Anti-Vivisection Society/We Animals Media</cite>
<figcaption>A chimpanzee rescued from experimentation lives at Save the Chimps, a chimp sanctuary in Florida. The organization was founded in 1997 to house chimpanzees used by the US Air Force in space travel research and has since taken in hundreds of chimps rescued from biomedical research.</figcaption>
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<p id="hoHdmi">At the time of the petition, Congress had already been considering <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/house-bill/1326/text?s=1&r=37">a bill to ban</a> invasive research on great apes, citing the animals’ intelligence, social nature, and psychological needs. The scientific merit of experiments on chimps had also been thrown into doubt: A 2011 NIH <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK91445/pdf/Bookshelf_NBK91445.pdf">report</a> found that “most current use of chimpanzees for biomedical research is unnecessary” (though it did not endorse a ban). The FWS’s 2015 decision was the final — and critical — nail in the coffin for the practice. </p>
<p id="U7U6Cf">The case against split listing succeeded, Meyer said, because of the inherent connection between protecting captive animals and helping their wild counterparts. Jane Goodall and other experts argued that the use of captive chimps undermined conservation in their native range. It’s hard to ask poorer African countries to conserve chimps, Meyer explains, “when we’re hypocrites, we’re exploiting the captive members [of the species] in all kinds of ways.” </p>
<h3 id="tOMm2s">A scientific reckoning over primate testing</h3>
<p id="XeRM9L">The same is even more true of long-tailed macaques. Experimenting on them not only undermines US endangered species policy by creating the appearance of hypocrisy, but it also contributes directly to the species’ decline, incentivizing the illegal capture and sale of wild macaques. That has put the long-tailed macaque at the center of a reckoning within the scientific community over the exploitation of endangered animals.</p>
<p id="480xjQ"><a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/fr/species/12551/221666136#assessment-information">According to the IUCN,</a> the current level of long-tailed macaque exports is “considered by trade monitors as ‘extremely unsustainable,’” putting “a significant strain” on the species’ wild populations. The IUCN raised the concern that breeding facilities in Southeast Asia, motivated by “the large amount of money that can be made in the trade,” can illicitly label wild-caught macaques as captive-born, then export them to countries with large biomedical research industries, such as the US and Japan. This allows exporters to sell more macaques without the time, difficulty, and expense involved in breeding them. </p>
<p id="tlnyLU">“There’s so much money in this; it’s too tempting to break the law,” said Jeremy Beckham, former research advocacy coordinator for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. So long as research facilities in wealthy countries are willing to buy these animals, he argues, that is “going to incentivize dishonest actors” to take them from the wild — just as, the Department of Justice alleges, has been happening in Cambodia. The DOJ declined to comment on the ongoing case.</p>
<p id="mooa0G">The 2022 DOJ indictment has had cascading effects on the research industry: In the aftermath, the US <a href="https://fortune.com/2024/01/27/big-pharma-lab-monkey-shortage-crackdown-cambodian-long-tailed-macaque/">has halted nearly all primate shipments from Cambodia</a>, which had previously <a href="https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/26857/chapter/9#212">provided nearly 60 percent</a> of primate imports. In March 2023, the Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/20/trafficked-lab-monkeys-cambodia-us-investigation">reported</a>, the fate of more than 1,000 macaques held by pharmaceutical company Charles River Laboratories, the largest US user of nonhuman primates, was in limbo, as they cannot be experimented on unless it is proven they were truly captive-bred. </p>
<p id="a06zIv">For now, the macaques remain in Charles River’s custody, and the company told Vox that it has suspended primate shipments from Cambodia “until such time we and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can develop and implement additional procedures to reasonably ensure confidence that the NHPs [non-human primates] we import from Cambodia are purpose-bred.”</p>
<p id="G0jXSH">The situation has raised alarm bells for biomedical researchers, who complain of a “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/03/01/monkeys-cambodia-research/">shortage</a>” of laboratory primates. In July, Charles River and various industry groups <a href="https://www.amprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/FINAL-LTM-Statement-7.26.2023.pdf">drafted a statement</a> calling for increasing domestic capacity for breeding long-tailed macaques, so that the US doesn’t have to rely on primates imported from abroad. </p>
<p id="TGthnk">Meanwhile, the National Association for Biomedical Research (NABR), a trade association defending animal research, alleges that the IUCN’s classification of long-tailed macaques as endangered got it wrong, and that the species is <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/groundbreaking-review-on-long-tailed-macaque-conservation-status-published-in-highly-respected-scientific-journal-302021343.html#:~:text=WASHINGTON%2C%20Dec.,for%20Conservation%20of%20Nature%20issued.">in fact thriving</a>. An <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajp.23590">NABR-funded study</a> published last December found “no data” supporting species decline, and the organization has formally challenged the IUCN’s listing. Craig Hilton-Taylor, head of the IUCN Red List Unit, confirmed that the organization is considering NABR’s <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/resources/petitions">petition</a>, and said the evidence will be reviewed by an independent committee.</p>
<p id="fJTJ7L">Many scientists who study primates in the wild see things differently. “All of us who work in the field and have the opportunity to study wild primates can see the impact of laboratory research on wild populations,” primatologist Ángela Maldonado, legal representative at the Colombia-based NGO Entropika and a signatory of the petition to protect long-tailed macaques under the ESA, told me. While she “respect[s the] research and studies” of those who work with captive primates, she believes that “when someone gets a monkey in a lab, and never saw them in the wild, it’s very difficult to understand the ethical and behavioral impacts on animals.” </p>
<p id="JsC0sU">The International Primatological Society recently <a href="https://www.internationalprimatologicalsociety.org/harvesting-of-wild-primates-for-use-in-biomedical-research/">called for an end to experimentation on wild-caught primates</a>, and urged scientific journals to refuse to publish research conducted on them. “It is essential that in our quest to protect and improve human health, we do not lose sight of the importance and the inherent value of wild primate populations,” wrote the working group that drafted the statement. </p>
<p id="GzT3wT">The research industry, for its part, stresses the importance of invasive experimentation for human health. “Nonhuman primates ... play a critical role in developing new drugs, devices and vaccines,” said NABR president Matthew R. Bailey <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nabr-files-petition-challenging-the-listing-of-long-tailed-macaque-by-the-iucn-301851968.html">in a press release</a> last summer. “Arbitrary restrictions imposed on the importation of long-tailed macaques could jeopardize millions of human lives and threaten global <a href="https://www.vox.com/public-health" data-source="encore">public health</a>.” </p>
<p id="J75RpQ">But both the necessity and the ethics of using primates in medical research are highly contested, including by some scientists. Former animal researcher Garet Lahvis <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23795087/animal-experiments-primates-mental-health-effective">argued</a> in Vox last year that lab monkeys are so severely psychologically damaged from being confined in tiny cages as to make them virtually useless as test subjects. Neurologist <a href="https://www.oxfordanimalethics.com/who-we-are/fellows/">Aysha Akhtar</a>, a former medical officer for the Food and Drug Administration and now a fellow at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4594046/">argues that our reliance on animal testing ends up hurting humans</a> by producing “misleading safety studies, potential abandonment of effective therapeutics, and direction of resources away from more effective testing methods.” In 2022, Congress passed a law <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/health/drug-animals-testing.html">removing the requirement</a> for new drugs to be tested on nonhuman animals.</p>
<h3 id="fX3rvG">The long-tailed macaque’s fate hinges on the ESA. What about other animals used in experiments?</h3>
<p id="Fg10oI">Biomedical researchers and animal advocates do agree on one thing: an ESA listing for the long-tailed macaque could transform the species’ use in US labs. </p>
<p id="QNK5Nk">Without external pressure, however, the Fish and Wildlife Service is unlikely to announce protections for long-tailed macaques any time soon. <a href="https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/endangered_species_act/pdfs/Harris_et_al_2011_ESA_and_IUCN.pdf">One 2011 paper</a> looking at 130 animal species listed as endangered by the IUCN found that more than half were not recognized by the Endangered Species Act. </p>
<p id="rJCbCp">The reason for that gap, lead author Bert Harris wrote in an email, is that “the ESA is perpetually bogged down by politics. For example, the number of listings that are done each year changes dramatically when new presidential administrations take over.”</p>
<p id="9mRMwJ">A more reliable (though still not guaranteed) path to getting a species ESA protection is to directly petition the FWS — as the PETA-led coalition did for long-tailed macaques last April. The same day, they put forward a <a href="https://www.peta.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023-04-12-PFR-to-List-the-Southern-Pig-Tailed-Macaque-Under-the-ESA_REDACTED_Redacted.pdf">similar petition</a> for the southern pig-tailed macaque, which was also <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/es/species/12555/223433999">listed as endangered</a> by the IUCN but is used in lab testing (albeit much less commonly) in the US. Both petitions await a reply from the FWS.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Two adult pig-tailed macaques and one infant surrounded by greenery. One of the adults has their hand on the infant’s back." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zUmsl0TrKJqBF6t8HMVdLRyng9A=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25256932/GettyImages_534950372.jpg">
<cite>Stephanie Rabemiafara/Getty</cite>
<figcaption>Southern pig-tailed macaques in the rainforest in Sepilok, Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="MElhgG">While FWS is supposed to provide at least a preliminary response within 90 days, this has not happened, and experts say the process typically drags on much longer. It often takes years after an initial petition for a species to get Endangered Species Act protection. Politics within the scientific community may factor into the FWS’s decision, too: While chimp experimentation was already on the way out by the time they were listed under the ESA, research on long-tailed macaques is still in very high demand.</p>
<p id="OV0HOV">Still, “given that long-tailed macaques are considered endangered by IUCN and are in trade to and within the United States, there is a good chance FWS will list them under the ESA” — eventually, said Tanya Sanerib of the Center for Biological Diversity, who was not involved in the petition. </p>
<p id="x23r93">The Fish and Wildlife Service might decide to list the macaque as merely threatened, Winders explained, which would give the agency some leeway in deciding whether experimentation on the species should continue. If it lists the macaque as endangered, however, invasive research might end entirely. </p>
<p id="g2MGNQ">According to Amy Meyer, manager of PETA’s primate experimentation campaigns, research on long-tailed macaques is unlikely to get the sort of “pay-to-play” treatment applied to research on endangered sooty mangabeys. The permit for sooty research <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/04/11/2022-07647/foreign-endangered-species-receipt-of-permit-applications">allows only</a> “limited invasive sampling, including anesthetizing, collecting blood, skin, and bone marrow tissue samples, and MRI scanning” — “still cruel,” Meyer said, but long-tailed macaques used in labs are regularly exposed to high levels of toxins and chemicals, resulting in poisoning and death, a different scale of harm to the animal. </p>
<p id="DxNU42">For animal advocates, the Endangered Species Act’s potential is doubled-edged. It offers some animals protection against cruelty arguably stronger than what’s found anywhere else in US law, but only if they’re endangered. It’s not the harm itself that matters — the caging, poisoning, vivisecting, or killing — but whether that harm affects the survival of wild populations. While this could buy some relief for the long-tailed macaque, the ESA will remain indifferent to the vast majority of laboratory animals, which are members of non-endangered species such as mice and rats. </p>
<div> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Three adult macaques sit asleep in a row on a fence in a forest while cradling an infant macaque." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3kVnLZzsccgd_AzuCeIt0hsojI4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25257926/GettyImages_81470705.jpg">
<cite>Martin Harvey/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Sleeping mother and infant long-tailed macaques in the Alas Kedaton Monkey Forest in Bali, Indonesia.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="gdpACQ">Still, according to Beckham, campaigns to help primates such as long-tailed macaques can help break down the moral barrier that people put between humans and other animals. “If we can ... get people to understand we shouldn’t be using monkeys in laboratories, it is probably just the next logical step that people will start to think about dogs, and then rabbits, and then rats.”</p>
<p id="ka6IMP">The long-tailed macaque, like the chimpanzee before it, might be an especially good candidate for breaking down that barrier. These monkeys “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beEAKVZsJe8">love to swim</a>,” said Amy Meyer. “I’ve watched videos where they literally are climbing up trees just to jump in water. They like to have fun. [They are] social.”</p>
<p id="icgkCo">In other words, she said, “You look into their eyes and you see ourselves.”</p>
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24055003/long-tailed-macaques-biomedical-testing-ozempic-covid-endangered-species-act-cambodiaDayton Martindale2023-04-26T07:00:00-04:002023-04-26T07:00:00-04:00Bringing back woolly mammoths and dodos is a bad idea
<figure>
<img alt="A baby woolly mammoth specimen, which looks shriveled and very old, is visible in a glass display case." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/SLVr8ZL8SeUJWl4Bo0XRQcuxxjE=/0x0:4992x3744/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72218129/AP100302017379.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>A 42,000-year-old woolly mammoth specimen on display at the Field Museum in Chicago. | M. Spencer Green/AP</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>De-extinction isn’t worth the ethical cost.</p> <p id="ME5Z5m">On January 6, 2000, the bucardo (also known as the Pyrenean ibex, a subspecies of wild mountain goat) was <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2021/01/23/the-species-that-went-extinct-twice/?sh=7b27bce3312d">confirmed extinct</a> — for the first time, at least. Conservationists mourned when Celia, as the final bucardo was known, was found crushed beneath a tree in northeast Spain.</p>
<p id="7VEFj8">But scientists had removed some of Celia’s cells the year before her death, freezing them for preservation. In 2003 came <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/news-bucardo-pyrenean-ibex-deextinction-cloning">attempts at cloning</a>: Copies of her cell nucleus, containing her DNA, were <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/can-science-go-back-future/">implanted into 782 eggs</a> taken from domestic goats (a close enough relative to be compatible with the bucardo nucleus). From these eggs, 407 embryos developed, about half of which the team transferred into the wombs of 57 surrogate goat mothers. Of these, seven turned into pregnancies, and one was born successfully. <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/capra-pyrenaica"></a><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0093691X08007784?via%3Dihub"></a></p>
<div class="c-float-left"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Profile view of a brown goat with long, ridged horns, against a backdrop of greenery" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6dfYSJLDej9_DmlN3MHG2gmkxT0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24609980/GettyImages_622596746.jpg">
<cite>Yann Guichaoua/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>An Iberian ibex.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="l4fmUG">The bucardo became the first species to return from extinction — but only for a moment. The baby’s lung was misshapen, and she suffocated within minutes. For the second time in three years, the bucardo was gone.</p>
<p id="QuJMri">Celia’s story illuminates at least three realities facing “<a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/12/8/11633602/the-time-traveler-george-church-is-racing-into-the-future-and">de-extinction</a>,” a scientific pursuit aimed at using advanced cloning to resurrect extinct species. First, de-extinction seems technically possible — in fact, it has already been done once, if only briefly. Second, it won’t be easy. And third, there will be blood.</p>
<p id="zKb2Kj">When people talk about de-extinction today, they’re looking at something much more headline-worthy than Spanish goats. <a href="https://colossal.com/">Colossal Biosciences</a>, a buzzy de-extinction company founded in 2021 by Harvard geneticist George Church and tech entrepreneur Ben Lamm, has chosen three species to pursue: the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/13/science/colossal-woolly-mammoth-DNA.html">woolly mammoth</a>, an elephant species gone for thousands of years; <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-62568427">the Tasmanian tiger</a>, or thylacine, an Australian marsupial <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/07/science/tasmanian-tiger-sightings.html">believed</a> extinct since the 1930s; and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/31/world/dodo-bring-back-from-extinction-colossal-scn/index.html">the dodo</a>, a large flightless bird from the island of Mauritius that died out in the 17th century. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Black-and-white sketch of a large, eccentric-looking bird with a large curved bill." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0c6geGquBOjYm6KJoykB76pXRgU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24609901/GettyImages_691210958.jpg">
<cite>Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>A 19th-century rendering of a dodo.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="qvYK1D">For the first two, Colossal <a href="https://colossal.com/species/">claims</a> de-extinction could bring ecological benefits. With the dodo, a species synonymous with the concept of extinction, it hopes to create <a href="https://colossal.com/dodo/">“a symbol of hope”</a> for conservation. The company also believes that techniques developed to bring these animals back could then be applied to help protect present-day endangered species. </p>
<p id="0896vt">It’s an exciting idea — after all, who wouldn’t thrill at an Ice Age symbol lumbering through Siberian snow? But while the technical challenges are enormous, the ethical ones are even more so. De-extinction raises fundamental questions about conservation’s priorities, why species matter, and the risks of scientific progress. And as the bucardo shows, one of the most intractable problems is the harm to individual animals: Both the surrogate parents and newborn clones face a risk of suffering and trauma, used as mere instruments in a research project of unclear benefit.</p>
<h3 id="idPzWM">“The first woolly mammoths would be some of the loneliest creatures imaginable”</h3>
<p id="NCf054">Church has been planning to bring back the mammoth for <a href="https://reviverestore.org/projects/woolly-mammoth/history-of-this-project/">more than a decade</a>, working on the problem at his Harvard lab and with the company Revive and Restore before launching Colossal. The project is fueled in part by mammoths’ fame and charisma — the species no doubt generates more funding and interest than, say, bringing back <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/scientists-think-de-extinct-christmas-island-rat-rcna19218">the extinct Christmas Island rat</a>. </p>
<div id="mA21kG"><div style="max-width: 660px;"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 175px; position: relative;"><iframe src="https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-resurrect-a-mammoth/id1554578197?i=1000610678948" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div></div></div>
<p id="Y1yODA">But cloning a mammoth will be even harder than the failed effort to clone a bucardo. The goat-cloning scientists had used a still-living cell nucleus from Celia, but no living mammoths remain to harvest cells from, so we have no intact mammoth nucleus, no complete mammoth DNA, and thus no obvious way to transform an elephant egg into a mammoth embryo. Instead, researchers will have to make their own mammoth DNA. </p>
<p id="ygrMXR">Scientists have already pieced together the species’ genome from fragments of mammoth DNA unearthed from ice, so they have a map for what they are trying to recreate. Colossal’s plan is to use <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/27/science/crispr-gene-editing-10-years.html">CRISPR gene-editing technology</a> to modify the DNA of an Asian elephant, the mammoth’s closest living relative, inserting specific genes that they consider most essential to being a mammoth: in particular, the hair and other adaptations enabling cold-weather living. The result would not be genetically identical to the mammoths that roamed the planet during the last ice age, but rather a mammoth-ified elephant, a hybrid approximation.</p>
<p id="TdsI8U">Colossal declares on its website that it’s trying to create a better world <a href="https://colossal.com/a-better-world/">“for the planet, for the animals, for the future.”</a> But for many animals, this brave new world could be bleak.</p>
<p id="2dQWCz">The most direct ethical problems concern the mammoths themselves. The bucardo’s lung deformity was not a fluke. “Rapid aging, ongoing health problems and premature death” are common among cloned animals, philosopher Heather Browning wrote in her 2019 <a href="https://www.heatherbrowning.net/uploads/1/3/0/1/130104617/browning_2018_de-extinction_preprint.pdf">article</a> “Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Mammoths? De-extinction and Animal Welfare.” Many new mammoth babies would likely suffer and die young in the early stages of de-extinction.</p>
<p id="Iawtm3">The cloning stage also carries risks for the surrogate mothers, who will have no choice about their participation in the project. To gestate a whole herd of mammoths, many elephants would likely have to live in at least partial captivity and deal with the potential trauma of repeated miscarriages. The mother may need a C-section for the birth, as woolly mammoths are larger than Asian elephants — and surgery on an elephant isn’t easy. She would then be confronted by a strange, hairy child whom she may or may not accept. </p>
<p id="SWOhqt">“Elephants are normally really excited and happy when there’s a new birth,” Matthew Cobb, a biologist and author of <em>As Gods</em>, a book on the ethics of genetic engineering, <a href="https://play.acast.com/s/61da34ca3a030a0012a60626/638e47cb24272f001190d496?seek=4605">said</a> in an interview for my podcast, <em>Storytelling Animals</em>. “But they’re going to have this thing that is completely different. … It will smell different. It will behave different.” What if the elephant herd rejects the baby, leaving it alone and orphaned, like a real-life Frankenstein’s monster? “I can’t begin to get over quite how miserable that could be,” Cobb said. </p>
<p id="ztggDt">Colossal Biosciences suggests <a href="https://colossal.com/mammoth/">on its website</a> that while the base DNA will come from an Asian elephant, the mammoth embryos will be implanted into <em>African </em>elephants, which are larger and so may handle the birth better. The company also wishes to “eliminate any extra pressure” on the Asian elephant, as it is endangered while the African elephant, the site says, is considered merely “threatened.” That information is outdated, however, as African elephants were <a href="https://www.iucn.org/news/species/202103/african-elephant-species-now-endangered-and-critically-endangered-iucn-red-list">upgraded to endangered status</a> in March 2021 (and elsewhere on its site, Colossal does <a href="https://colossal.com/elephant-conservation/">acknowledge</a> that African elephants are endangered). </p>
<p id="OavXdH">“The ethical considerations these projects require … are definitely important,“ says Matt James, Colossal’s chief animal officer, in an email to Vox. “We continue to pivot and optimize on a daily basis.”<strong> </strong>Colossal didn’t respond to questions about the African elephant’s conservation status. </p>
<p id="ao6WOD">To avoid the complications of animal surrogacy, and to allow for faster breeding, Church has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/13/science/colossal-woolly-mammoth-DNA.html">previously declared his intent</a> to develop an artificial womb to gestate the mammoths, a technology that does not yet exist. Even if a synthetic womb were possible, it would only exacerbate the challenge facing the newborn woolies: How will they be raised, with neither a mother nor a father?</p>
<p id="uhJ7JX">Elephants are highly social, culturally complex creatures who live in tight-knit matriarchal bands. Without such a community, “the first few individual wooly mammoths born would be some of the loneliest creatures imaginable,“ philosopher Christopher Preston writes in his book <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262537094/the-synthetic-age/"><em>The Synthetic Age</em></a>. </p>
<p id="m52ft2">The first generation of mammoths would likely grow up in captivity, but we have little idea how best to raise them. While paleontological evidence gives some sense of their diet and behavior, the new creatures will be genetically distinct from their wild ancestors, and meeting their exact nutritional and social needs will be guesswork. Normal elephants are hard enough to keep in captivity — the small, enclosed spaces <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/opinion/zoos-animal-cruelty.html">wreak havoc</a> on their bodies and minds, and many zoos have <a href="https://apnews.com/article/science-fresno-animals-elephants-4aca228adfe0bd1d930c17e8b9c6c4b2">stopped keeping elephants</a> for ethical reasons. Now imagine trying to care for an elephant when we aren’t even sure of basic things like what to feed them.</p>
<p id="AOAut3">In response to these and other worries, James explained, Colossal Biosciences has developed a team “tasked with developing not just animal care strategies but socialization plans to rear animals in a healthy setting, even if they are the first of their species to be restored.” </p>
<p id="GQXtsr">Such planning no doubt can help, but nothing can eliminate the risks and uncertainties of keeping a brand new species in captivity. “Just raising [mammoths] to an age that they are suitable for release [into the wild] may prove to be impossible,” Browning writes, “and the animals are likely to be malnourished and in poor health, with potential psychological and behavioral deficits.” </p>
<h3 id="7f60dF">Mammoths might never be able to survive in the wild</h3>
<p id="RvTAWr">If scientists do succeed at keeping resurrected mammoths alive, they will eventually have to release them. Modern elephants are dependent on intergenerational knowledge transfer to learn the best watering holes and safest migration routes, but how will the first mammoths learn to survive with no generation above them? </p>
<p id="X1aqY2">Colossal Biosciences <a href="https://colossal.com/education/">hopes</a> that some combination of genetic instinct, surrogate elephant parents, and “on-the-ground animal behavior specialist teams” can teach the mammoths necessary survival skills. But reintroducing captive animals into the wild <a href="https://www.bbcearth.com/news/can-captive-animals-ever-truly-return-to-the-wild">often fails</a> even under far less exotic circumstances.</p>
<p id="dZAdpN"><a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-rise-and-reign-of-the-mammals-steve-brusatte">Paleontologist Steve Brusatte points out</a> in <em>The Rise and Reign of the Mammals </em>that climate change could also be a hurdle. Mammoths are <a href="https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/whats-coldest-earths-ever-been#:~:text=The%20latest%20ice%20age%20peaked,over%20North%20America%20and%20Eurasia.">adapted to Ice Age climates with average temperatures up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit colder</a> than today. If they return, they would be facing temperatures “much warmer than any mammoth ever experienced,” Brusatte writes.</p>
<p id="9bg4G4">Suppose that mammoths could overcome these obstacles, forging their own path and establishing themselves on the steppe as a happy community. To a hypothetical world of wild mammoths, we’d first have to be willing to put thinking, feeling beings through stress, pain, and often early death. For some animal rights advocates, this alone is enough to oppose de-extinction projects: they believe that nonhuman animals are not mere means to our ends.</p>
<p id="IBYEyw">For others, the ethical calculus may change if de-extinction brought about sufficient benefit. Perhaps the planet is made richer, in some small way, with one more species in it — one more unique way of the universe knowing itself. The full, joyful lives of some future mammoth herd could arguably justify the sacrifices along the way; we may even <em>owe </em>it to these future mammoths. </p>
<p id="gUKCUX">The problem with this thinking, <a href="https://humansandnature.org/conservation-extinction-emma-marris-yasha-rohwer/">write</a> environmental journalist Emma Marris and philosopher Yasha Rohwer, “is that it doesn’t seem like one can have actual moral obligations to what doesn’t exist.” If we create new mammoths, we’ll also be creating immense ethical responsibilities to them. But so long as we don’t, we can focus our moral attention on the living. </p>
<h3 id="c3gpf1">The dubious environmental case for de-extincting mammoths</h3>
<p id="jD1wIB">Traditionally, conservation biology <a href="https://reflectionsonpaperspast.wordpress.com/2021/01/21/revisiting-soule-1985/">has not evinced much concern</a> for the well-being of individual animals, instead prioritizing <a href="https://www.vox.com/22584103/biodiversity-species-conservation-debate">biodiversity</a> — the health of whole species and ecosystems. Under this framework, a new mammoth population could be justified if it creates concrete benefits for the broader ecosystem. </p>
<p id="70OOvX">Mammoths indeed once <a href="https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/ecosystem-engineers/">played</a> a key role as ecosystem engineers: They snapped trees, trampled grasses and mosses, created depressions that became ponds, and otherwise <a href="https://reviverestore.org/projects/woolly-mammoth/sergey-zimovs-manifesto/">transformed the steppe grasslands</a> in ways that could theoretically help today’s endangered inhabitants such as the reindeer and Saiga antelope. </p>
<p id="JGRIgm">But a resurrected mammoth would not fix what has primarily been killing these creatures, namely <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/19832/50194357#threats">hunting, disease</a>, and the loss of habitat through the expansion of <a href="https://mongolia.wcs.org/wildlife/saiga-antelope.aspx">grazing and industry</a>. De-extinction or not, addressing threats like these should be the most urgent conservation priority. In fact, introducing mammoths might invite even heavier human presence to the region: Church himself <a href="https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2020/01/engineering-life-synthetic-biology">speculated</a> in a 2019 interview with Harvard Magazine that mammoths could support “business models” including “tourism, meat, hair (following a sheep model of seasonal removal), and maybe legal ivory.” Church didn’t respond to a request for comment about these statements.</p>
<p id="i1Lek5">Another potential mammoth benefit is fighting climate change: Some scientists believe that mammoths’ compaction of soil could slow the thawing of Arctic permafrost, which releases the greenhouse gas methane. But it could take decades or more to breed enough mammoths to impact a sizable chunk of the permafrost, considering their slow reproductive process. <a href="https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2021/09/27/woolly-mammoths-climate-change-colossal-labs-george-church-colossal-laboratories-frederick-hewett"></a><a href="https://colossal.com/education/"></a><a href="https://www.newsweek.com/man-who-wants-release-thousands-woolly-mammoths-arctic-1735273"></a></p>
<p id="91gkEy">Even if the benefit were significant, Browning said in an email, it seems unlikely that bringing back a long-extinct creature is the best way to reduce methane emissions. If humans are creative enough to bring back the mammoth, surely we’re creative enough to find other ways of dealing with the permafrost.</p>
<h3 id="wZj4Rl">Beyond the mammoth</h3>
<p id="YV8TEM">De-extincting other animals is no less fraught. Different species present overlapping but distinct scientific and moral challenges, and de-extinction candidates may best be judged on a case-by-case basis.</p>
<p id="5Pow6B">“Mammoths seem to me to be the worst candidates due to their size and the likely complexity of their behavioral and social needs,” Browning said in an email, but species that went extinct more recently, she believes, may be easier to resurrect, because we may know more about their dietary and habitat requirements, and to at least some extent their original ecosystems still exist. </p>
<div class="c-float-left"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Pale color sketch of an animal that looks a bit like a wolf, but orange and with tiger-like strikes. The animal is crouching down and appears to be in a hunting pose." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/W9k-pXYD5MmWR3QBE24zF5kn2wA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24609935/GettyImages_1404637407.jpg">
<cite>Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Illustration of a thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="C41jOg">But in most cases, those ecosystems would hardly be safe. Most of the serious de-extinction candidates were wiped out due to human impact such as overhunting or habitat destruction. These pressures would likely still exist should they be resurrected. Philosopher Thom van Dooren and anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose <a href="https://www.thomvandooren.org/2013/11/02/keeping-faith-with-death-mourning-and-de-extinction/">wrote of de-extincting the thylacine</a>, or Tasmanian tiger: “What sense does it make to dream of returning the thylacine when we cannot even ask people to make room for dingoes? How have the sheep farmers that once played a pivotal role in the extinction of the thylacine in Tasmania so changed their ways that this resurrection will be a success?” Without a protected area to return to, de-extinct animals might be relegated to zoo curiosities or exotic pets. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Color sketch of a serene-looking, blueish gray pigeon with a coral-colored breast and eyes" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UYGJaedjodpgl078N4hoXz3IMaA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24609922/GettyImages_980035328.jpg">
<cite>Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Rendering of a passenger pigeon.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="gmKGJj">Ethicist T.J. Kasperbauer raises similar <a href="https://www.ltrr.arizona.edu/webhome/sheppard/catastrophes/PassengerPigeon2017ShouldWeBringItBack.pdf">worries</a> about the passenger pigeon, which the company Revive and Restore is <a href="https://reviverestore.org/about-the-passenger-pigeon/">attempting to revive</a>. The North American bird once flew in flocks of hundreds of thousands, but might again be hunted and treated as a pest if it reaches its former numbers. Kasperbauer also cites some scientists’ fears that passenger pigeon flocks are not self-sustaining beneath a certain size — that is, we would need to breed a truly ginormous number of birds to be able to successfully release them into the wild. </p>
<p id="zOt9d4">Alex Lee, a philosopher at Alaska Pacific University, is most concerned about the <a href="https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-moral-hazard">moral hazard</a>: If de-extinction technology becomes developed and widely accessible, will people become less worried about extinction in general? After all, why go through too much trouble to save a dying species when we could just bring them back a few years later? Empirical research is still needed to figure out how people’s attitudes are changed by the prospect of de-extinction, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21550085.2018.1448043">Rohwer and Marris suggest</a>. Perhaps a newborn mammoth could inspire a sense of awe and wonder at the natural world that drives people to fight harder for all life, rather than seeing it as expendable.</p>
<p id="axbFM5">For Beth Shapiro, a scientist involved in both Colossal and Revive and Restore, de-extinction itself is <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/03/14/1163547490/could-de-extincting-the-dodo-help-struggling-species">not really the point</a>. Instead, she explains in her book, <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691209005/how-to-clone-a-mammoth"><em>How to Clone a Mammoth</em></a>, the scientific tools developed to resurrect dodos or mammoths could be used to help other creatures. Colossal’s James told Vox<em> </em>that the company is partnered with several elephant conservation organizations, and that its “advancements in assisted reproductive technologies,” “genetic engineering for disease resistance,” and more will benefit both de-extinction and existing wild elephant populations. </p>
<p id="tIlDkb">For instance, the company explains on its site, Colossal researchers are investigating how to insert genes into Asian elephants that would <a href="https://colossal.com/elephant-conservation/">instill resistance to deadly elephant herpesviruses</a>. De-extinction technology could also bring back species we lose in the future. While this at least seems ethically preferable to mammoth de-extinction, any potentially invasive research program involving sentient beings should inspire caution.</p>
<p id="R4lFxH">James said that much of the company’s testing is being done using AI or in vitro cell cultures, rather than in live animals. If and when live animals do become involved, he says, “whether that be a lab mouse or an elephant,” the company has bioethicist advisers, an independent Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), and an internal review process “to decide if and how we should pursue every aspect of our work. … Animal welfare, well-being, and health are at the forefront of our minds.”</p>
<p id="zb6Ojr">These considerations are encouraging — but they can’t indicate that a research project is ethical because the Animal Welfare Act, which governs animal testing in the US, is highly limited and says little about what can be done to animals in experiments themselves, as Vox has <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/12/11/23500157/neuralink-animal-testing-elon-musk-usda-probe">reported</a>. Most animal research facilities have an IACUC, but they do little to prevent research that many find unjustifiable. </p>
<h3 id="iEOMKu">De-extinction should be decided democratically</h3>
<p id="JuoXK1">The ethical issues raised by cloning, captive breeding, wildlife reintroductions, and animal experimentation writ large are not unique to de-extinction, and de-extinction is far from the worst threat to animal well-being today. But they still matter, and they can force us to consider our relationship with animals more broadly. When we imagine a lonely newborn mammoth, we might be moved to consider an individual animal’s welfare and subjective well-being in other decisions around wildlife.</p>
<p id="MHupIF">Just as important: Who is the “we” who makes these decisions? Decisions about the dodo, for instance, should be made in concert with the people of Mauritius, where the bird’s ancestors lived for <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/06/the-dodos-redemption/486086/">potentially millions of years</a>, not solely by scientists thousands of miles away. Colossal “understand[s]...the importance [of] building mechanisms to give a voice to the local communities that co-exist with these animals,” James said. But mammoth expert Tori Herridge thinks more must be done to democratize the process. After declining a position on the company’s advisory board, she <a href="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24611059/d41586_021_02844_5.pdf">wrote</a> in Nature, “The ethical road to de-extinction has to include informed citizen voices. … Let the people decide the future world they want to build.”</p>
<p id="utlpep">How to do this, exactly, will be difficult. But modern genetic technologies are too powerful to be controlled even by well-intentioned scientists, let alone for-profit corporations — some deliberative democratic process is needed. And more complicated still, that democracy must <a href="https://sentientmedia.org/animals-could-play-a-pivotal-role-in-climate-talks-if-we-let-them/">strive to represent non-human voices</a>. Any decision on resurrecting species must <a href="https://tenderly.medium.com/animal-liberation-needs-animal-voices-eef6973ba777">consider the needs and desires</a> of the elephants, pigeons, and other creatures whose lives would be upended, constrained, created, and destroyed to make de-extinction a reality.</p>
<p id="SaCj5m">One day, new knowledge or technology may allow us to avoid de-extinction’s ethical costs. But until then, the woolly mammoth should remain nothing more or less than a memory.</p>
<p id="3fiYs7"><a href="https://daytonmartindale.com/"><em>Dayton Martindale</em></a><em> is a freelance writer and editor covering climate, ecology, animals, and politics. He hosts</em> <a href="https://shows.acast.com/storytelling-animals">Storytelling Animals</a><em>, an environmental books podcast, and serves as editor-at-large for the rural news publication Barn Raiser. This year, he will begin a PhD program in environmental studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, studying the ethics, politics, and policy of human-nonhuman interaction.</em></p>
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23696294/de-extinction-colossal-biosciences-woolly-mammoth-dodo-ethicsDayton Martindale