Stewart Brand revisiting the Conservation Pledge…as an atavistic activist.
With biotech accelerating four times faster than digital technology, the revival of extinct species is becoming possible. Stewart Brand plans to not only bring species back but restore them to the wild.
It’s a fascinating story, starting with the passenger pigeon and then wooly mammoth.
His TED Talk just went online. I followed up with dinner with Stewart and compatriot Ryan Phelan to talk further about this project.
“Biotech is about to liberate conservation.”
Michael McGrew, a scientist at the Roslin Institute in Scotland has proven a key component of the approach. He takes falcon skin cells, induces them into pluripotent stem cells and inserts them into the germplasm of a chicken.
“Mike’s doing miracles with birds… That chicken will have the gonads of a falcon. You get a male and female chicken, and out of them come falcons. Real falcons out of slightly doctored chickens.” (diagrams below)
“We will get woolly mammoths back.”
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“It would be helpful if humanity got into the habit of thinking of the now not just as next week or next quarter, but the next 10,000 years and the last 10,000 years — basically civilization’s story so far.”
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