The cover story of the October issue of Wired discusses a palaeontologist's plans to reverse engineer chickens in an attempt to create a dinosaur: How to Hatch a Dinosaur. Because of the evidence that birds descended from dinosaurs, Jack Horner believes that by manipulating the regulatory genes that determine which bodily features a chicken develops he can genetically reprogram a chicken embryo to grow a tail, teeth and hands and thus become a "chickenosaurus." Other scientists interviewed for the article agree that Horner's proposal is theoretically possible because although chicken genes are programmed differently than dinosaur genes, bird cells do retain the ability to form dinosaurs. As the article puts it, "Every cell of a turkey carries the blueprints for making a tyrannosaurus, but the way the plans get read changes over time as the species evolves."
It's an intriguing article, but it leaves two important questions unanswered:
1. Why no mention of the movie Carnosaur?
Obviously Jurassic Park is the first movie that comes to mind when anyone discusses resurrecting dinosaurs, and the article does mention this movie, for which Horner served as a consultant. He doesn't believe the movie's premise is plausible because the DNA preserved in amber breaks down too fast. However, the Carnosaur series, released around the same time as the Jurassic Park movies, is more closely related to what Horner is proposing. It's probably been ten years since I've watched the Carnosaur movies, so my memory of them is a bit fuzzy, but I remember them well enough to know that the creature referred to in the title is created by a scientist who manipulates chicken genes. It doesn't take much imagination to guess what happens next. I expected more from a magazine written by nerds for nerds.
2. Why even create a chickenosaurus at all?
This, of course, is the more troubling question. The article only hints at an answer when it quotes Horner as saying, "When I was growing up in Montana, I had two dreams. I wanted to be a paleontologist, a dinosaur paleontologist--and I wanted to have a pet dinosaur." I had the same dreams, as I'm sure other kids did, but I'm guessing that when most of those kids grew up, even the few who became paleontologists, they accepted that they can't have a pet dinosaur. Horner's motivations seem to be simply that it is possible and that it would fulfill his childhood dream. She might have been insane, but at least the scientist in Carnosaur had a clearly defined reason for creating her monster: she believed that the earth still belonged to the dinosaurs, and she wanted to help them reclaim it.
What bothers me is not that Horner might be defying God, it's that he seems to be wasting money and that he could be making it more difficult for other scientists to secure funding and gain popular acceptance for controversial but worthwhile projects. He has already received some funding for the project, and presumably, he submitted a proposal detailing the reasons for pursuing the work and identifying its scientific benefits. They aren't articulated in the article, and the fact that he doesn't emphasize them in any of his quoted statements in the article or in the video interview posted on the Wired website suggests they aren't his main concern. It reminds me a bit of when I worked as a university composition instructor and received funding to travel to popular culture conferences and present papers on horror movies. It was fun, but I can't say it was a legitimate use of the university's limited resources. I wish I was joking when I say that these conferences typically featured multiple panels on "Hello Kitty."
I'm clearly not a scientist, but I do understand the concept of basic research simply for the sake of research with no specific goal in mind, and I agree that funding for this kind of research should continue. However, it's also reasonable to expect that when the funded research bears a close resemblance to mad science that the one conducting it be responsible enough to emphasize its potential benefits. They don't even have to be direct benefits for humanity, but when none are articulated, it makes one wonder how the money used to fund such research could be better spent.
A potential effect of Horner's project is that it could cause more headaches for other scientists conducting controversial research. These scientists are often perceived as Frankenstein-like figures, and researchers like Horner only encourage this stereotype. Despite the fact that the work of these Frankensteins often results in very tangible benefits to humanity, it is often met with skepticism, if not outright hostility. Horner might just ensure that a few more villagers sharpen their sticks, light their torches and join the angry mob.
Excellent point with #2.
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