It may sound cool to bring back the woolly mammoth after thousands of years of extinction — but Douglas Preston, the author of a novel that features the revival of the mammoths, has his doubts.
“If you take this and game it out to its logical end, you’re going to end up with something really terrifying,” Preston says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast.
That realization led him to write “Extinction,” a fictional tale that wraps the genetic resurrection of woolly mammoths and other extinct species from the Pleistocene Era into a murder mystery.
“‘Extinction’ does not have any science fiction in it,” the 67-year-old author insists. “This really is actual science that’s being done right now. It is here, and the ability to resurrect these extinct animals is here. … Maybe in my lifetime, we are going to see a de-extincted woolly mammoth, or a creature that looks a lot like a woolly mammoth.”
De-extinction technology takes advantage of CRISPR, a Nobel-winning technique that lets researchers edit the genomes of living organisms. The basic idea is to decipher genetic code that’s been recovered from specimens of an extinct species — for example, the remains of woolly mammoths dug up in Siberia. Then you edit the genome of a closely related species that’s still living — for example, an Asian elephant — to reflect the genetic traits of the extinct species.
Ideally, the modified genetic code can be inserted into cells to produce hybrids that possess the traits of the species you’re trying to resurrect. Researchers have been talking about using the technique to de-extinct the passenger pigeon, the dodo and the Tasmanian tiger — but the woolly mammoth is the sexiest species in their sights.
For more than a decade, Harvard geneticist George Church has been a vocal advocate for creating a new breed of mammoth-like elephant. He’s one of the founders of a Texas-based company called Colossal Biosciences, which has reportedly attracted more than $225 million in investment for advancing de-extinction technology.
Just last month, Colossal reported significant progress in its quest to reprogram elephant stem cells with customized genetic code. In a news release, Church said the team’s progress “opens the door for establishing connections between genes and traits for both modern and extinct relatives.” That includes the woolly mammoth.
Why do it? For one thing, woolly mammoths are creatures that most of us would pay to see. That’s how Preston sets the scene for his novel, which takes place in a 100,000-acre stretch of Colorado wilderness that’s been converted into a mammoth menagerie for rich tourists.
“It’s a very expensive park,” Preston says. “It costs thousands and thousands of dollars to visit the park. But when you visit the park, you can hike, you can camp … and then you can see these animals in what’s kind of their natural environment.”
Preston didn’t dream up the idea on his own: For years, a Russian scientist named Sergey Zimov has been working to establish a “Pleistocene Park” in northeastern Siberia. The park would serve as a nature reserve for mammoths and other de-extincted species.
The trailblazers of the de-extinction movement aren’t just interested in the entertainment value. Learning how to modify the genetic code for elephants could open the way not only for mammoth-like elephants, but also for more resilient elephants that stand a better chance of surviving 21st-century threats.
Another argument for de-extinction has to do with climate change: Church, Zimov and others contend that re-establishing a stable Pleistocene habitat could slow down the release of greenhouse gases from the Arctic tundra’s permafrost.
This scenario envisions mammoth-like elephants tamping down the permafrost, reducing the rate of thawing in the tundra and helping to re-establish the dry grasslands that existed in Siberia in the Pleistocene Era. Those grasslands could serve as a carbon sink for centuries to come. (It should be said that such a scenario is highly debatable.)
Preston suggests that Church has an even deeper and more existential motivation for bringing back the woolly mammoth.
“This is not about money for him,” he says. “This is about resurrecting Pleistocene species, many of which our deep human ancestors drove into extinction. It’s pretty clear that the woolly mammoth, and many of these great Pleistocene megafauna that inhabited North America and elsewhere, were extincted by human beings, by our ancestors. And so, bringing them back … there’s almost a spiritual dimension to it that I can hear in George Church’s writings.”
So what’s wrong with that? Preston is reluctant to delve into the details, for fear of giving away some of the plot points in his novel. “It’s a huge spoiler,” he says.
But you don’t have to be a geneticist to imagine how things could go wrong. In fact, sci-fi pioneer H.G. Wells anticipated the potential pitfalls more than a century ago in “The Island of Doctor Moreau,” his novel about a mad scientist who created human-animal hybrids. In the afterword to “Extinction,” Preston says 21st-century society appears to be steaming ahead on a course toward Doctor Moreau’s island.
“The problem with science and human beings is that if it can be done, it will be done,” he says. “We have never seen, in the history of science, where scientists have deliberately forgone doing something that they could do.”
The debate becomes sharper when the subject turns from reviving extinct species to using gene-editing techniques to benefit humans.
One major step in that direction was taken last month, when a kidney from a genetically modified pig was transplanted into a human patient. It’s also possible to modify the genome of a human embryo by editing out DNA snippets that increase the risk of disease, or editing in snippets that could enhance human abilities. One such experiment, aimed at boosting immunity to the HIV virus, landed the Chinese experimenter in prison.
Preston says that experiment hints at what’s to come. “We’re in very dangerous territory with this,” Preston says. “The desire of parents to have wonderful children is actually one of the most powerful emotions that we have as a species. … The impulse for parents to want to make their kids a little better than they were is enormous, and I don’t see that we’re going to be able to stop that impulse.”
The issue gets even more complicated when you look at the genetic history of our species. For example, up to 4% of the DNA coding for modern humans has been traced to now-extinct Neanderthals. That genetic heritage appears to include enhancements to the human immune system and blood-clotting mechanisms. But the immune-system mutations are also said to increase vulnerability to allergies and autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, while the blood-clotting mutation has been traced to a heightened risk of stroke.
Preston predicts the modern drive to eliminate genetic diseases and add enhancements will be a “slippery slope that leads to a big cliff.”
“Very soon, as a species, we will have the chance to take our evolution into our own technological hands,” Preston says. “And God knows what we’re going to do with it — because you know what? We’re not a wise species.”
Preston turns to a quote from visionary biologist E.O. Wilson: “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous.”
“A truer thing has never been said,” Preston says.
Cosmic Log Used Book Club
Preston says he started out thinking that he’d write an article for The New Yorker about the quest to resurrect the woolly mammoth — but he soon discovered that there were “dozens of science journalists already following the story, so I was kind of late to it.” That led him to write a fictional tale of de-extinction instead.
As Preston found out, much has been written about the subject, including “Regenesis,” by George Church and Ed Regis; and “How to Clone a Mammoth” by Beth Shapiro, one of Church’s colleagues at Colossal. Preston says his favorite book about the quest to revive the woolly mammoth is “Woolly,” by Ben Mezrich.
“This is a very good book,” Preston says. “It’s very lively and interesting, and he’s such a good writer.”
That high praise is more than enough to qualify “Woolly” as the latest selection for the Cosmic Log Used Book Club. For more than two decades, the CLUB Club has been highlighting books with cosmic themes that have been around long enough to show up at your local library or secondhand book shop.
Preston is already working on his next thriller, which he’s writing with his frequent collaborator, Lincoln Child. The Nora Kelly novel is called “Badlands” — and just as “Extinction” was based on real-world research into de-extinction, “Badlands” will touch upon the real-world mystery surrounding the violent demise of the Gallina culture of northwestern New Mexico in the 13th century.
“It’s a mystery that’s never been adequately solved,” Preston says.
“Badlands” isn’t the only writing project that’s on Preston’s mind. He’s still not quite finished with the world he created for “Extinction.”
“I’m definitely thinking about a sequel,” he says. “I’m working through it in my mind, but yes, there will definitely, 100% certainly be a sequel.”
My co-host for the Fiction Science podcast is Dominica Phetteplace, an award-winning writer who is a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop and lives in San Francisco. To learn more about Phetteplace, visit her website, DominicaPhetteplace.com, and read “The Ghosts of Mars,” her novella in Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine.
Use the form at the bottom of this post to subscribe to Cosmic Log, and stay tuned for future episodes of the Fiction Science podcast via Spotify, Apple, Overcast, Player.fm, Pocket Casts and Radio Public. If you like Fiction Science, please rate the podcast and subscribe to get alerts for future episodes.
