Woolly mammoth mouse clone
By Greg Evans
When my father first told me about a woman at the bio-tech company Colossal who infused a mouse embryo with woolly mammoth DNA, which then grew into a woolly mammoth mouse, I immediately pictured the Grizzly whisperer massacre with the scientists half eaten skull dangling from the mouth of one of these monstrosities.
The word used to describe the woolly mice was, “cute.” They said the same thing about the velociraptors in Jurassic Park right before they ate Newman.
Scientists are working to genetically engineer a woolly mammoth to be grown in the belly of an Indian elephant and then reintroduced to the arctic to help restore the region’s ecosystem. Tell yourself whatever you want, this has nothing to do with any ecosystem. This is about scientists having a little fun, blowing off some steam before they have to get back to creating futuristic laser-beam killing machines and crops able to grow in radiation-saturated soil to not only win the inevitable outbreak of World War III, but survive afterwards.
They tried the same thing, or so I heard one night at the bar in the Watergate, using the DNA from a species of ancient giant discovered in 1613, known as Teutobochus Rex, a behemoth 30 feet tall and 10 feet wide with teeth the size of an “ox’s foot,” and created half a dozen Big Foots half a century ago. But it soon became apparent they are exceedingly smart and shifty, violent and unpredictable. Their survival skills are unparalleled and to top things off, they apparently live abnormally long lifespans. Scientists had released them into a National Park reserve to study their behaviors in nature. “The f**kers went rogue,” a red-faced, overweight former geneticist whispered while looking uncomfortably around the bar. “We f**ked up. Nobody wanted this to fall back on them. The agency has been trying to round them up to study them for military purposes. I gotta go.” And with that he left. Something spooked him.
Things got somewhat hairy after that. I was staying nearby, at the Hive Hotel over on F Street, and I am sure someone had been in my room the following morning after I brunched on Hongos Y Espinaca with a side of Nopales washed down with ice cold Pacifico beer at El Sol. Later, I suspect I was being followed during my power walk before losing the shadow in the Smithsonian.
I have mixed feelings about cloning or de-extinction or resurrection biology. Would I like to see woolly mammoths, or giant ferocious woolly mammoth mice reintroduced into the wild? I think that would be pretty cool, but what then? What happens when the scientists get bored with that, or they figure out how to clone a cyclops, Jesus, Helen of Troy or God forbid, Hitler! When does it go too far?
My suspicions are that they are trying to use the woolly mammoth as a cover for something far more sinister. This is when asking questions becomes dangerous. I often feel like I am being watched, as if the woods here in the mountains are crawling with PAVN or Khmer revolutionaries, circa 1970-1975, when being a journalist in Cambodia was a free ticket to the crematorium.
It isn’t just woolly mammoth DNA scientists are messing around with. They were actually able to bring back to life the long extinct dire wolf who disappeared some 12,500 years ago; and have worked to produce a Pyrenean Ibex, extinct in the early 2000s. This was briefly accomplished, however the infant creature died soon after birth.
One concerning detail is that the cloning or species revivalism is not just taking DNA or genome and growing a baby, but scientists are also trying to create “hybridized” beasts with “notable” modifications, such as creating a part woolly mammoth out of an Asian elephant where it has longer hair, a greater fat layer and can withstand far colder temperatures than a modern elephant.
The scary thing will be when what seemed weird at first becomes normalized, and then things really take turn. Imagine going onto Amazon.com and buying your own rapidly grown clone of Madelyn Cline. Humans are too creepy to be given access to that kind of capability. No doubt the poor clone would be chained down in someone’s musky Scarsdale basement and defiled as a sex slave or live-in housewife with a electric shock collar and a GPS chip in case she wanted to get cute and make a run for it. If you don’t think that would happen you are fooling yourself.
Scientists are well aware such horror would become a reality, but they simply don’t care. Then it becomes the government’s problem. Nothing will hinder their pursuit of mastering cloning, and if you think otherwise then you are even a bigger fool than you look. Thirty years from now John F Kennedy and Genghis Khan will be serving you hybridized fries and woolly mammoth veal sandwiches. Mark my words, this is only the beginning.