Beyond Technology and Scientific Ethics
When I read all the stuff
that is being published on the Steven Spielberg film ``Jurassic Park,''
I can only shake my head in wonder at the rapid strides that have been
made in molecular genetics.
The premise of the film
-- and Michael Crichton's book of the same title, on which the film is
based -- is that scientists can clone (that is, recreate) any creature,
even an extinct one like a dinosaur, provided they have the creature's
genetic code. The genetic code is contained in the creature's DNA.
This premise, in turn, is
based on the Nobel Prize-winning achievement of Francis Crick and James
D. Watson, who only 40 years ago deciphered the structure of DNA.
Picturing the DNA molecule
as a double helix, they noted their 900-word article in Nature, ``It has
not escaped our notice that the specific pairing [that is, the zipper-like
structure of DNA] we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying
mechanism for the replication of genetic material.''
The big if in ``Jurassic
Park'' is whether or not one can obtain dinosaur DNA.
In the movie, the dinosaur
DNA is retrieved from fossils of insects that had fed on dinosaurs' blood.
Now, this isn't as far-fetched as it sounds, writes Kathleen McAuliffe
in this month's issue of Omni.
George O. Poina, a paleontologist
at the University of California at Berkeley announced last September that
he and his colleagues had extracted DNA from an extinct 30-million-year-old
bee that had been embedded in amber.
At about the same time,
a group headed by Rob De Salle of the American Museum of National History
recovered genetic material from a termite that had been encased in amber
about 30 million years ago.
``We've got a project underway
to extract dinosaur DNA from insects preserved in amber samples,'' Poinar
says. He is thinking specifically of blood-sucking insects whose last meal
happened to consist of dinosaur blood.
Many of his colleagues are
skeptical. Michael Braun, a molecular biologist at the Smithsonian Institution's
National Museum of National History, points out: ``The DNA molecule normally
deteriorates rapidly after the animal dies. The conditions of burial and
preservation would have to be just right to salvage genetic material that
old.''
Even if Poinar succeeds
in retrieving some dinosaur DNA, cloning a dinosaur simply is not possible
yet.
Dom Lessem, author of Dinosaurs
Rediscovered, points out, ``Michael Crichton's fantasy of dinosaurs reconstituted
from fragments of their DNA locked in amber is just that -- a fantastic
feat of genetic engineering so far beyond present technology and scientific
ethics that neither genetic researchers nor Crichton will contemplate its
near-term prospects seriously.''