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Following recent talk of resurrecting the woolly mammoth, a new analysis has poured cold water on the idea of de-extinction efforts, recommending that funding go to conservation efforts instead:
Ten days ago, science news media outlets around the world reported that a Harvard University–led team was on the verge of resurrecting the wooly mammoth. Although many articles oversold the findings, the concept of de-extinction—bringing extinct animals back to life through genetic engineering—is beginning to move from the realm of science fiction to reality. Now, a new analysis of the economics suggests that our limited conservation funding would be better spent elsewhere.
"The conversation thus far has been focused on whether or not we can do this. Now, we are progressing toward the: 'Holy crap, we can—so should we?' phase," says Douglas McCauley, an ecologist at University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the study. "It is like we've just about put the last stiches in [Frankenstein's monster], and there is this moment of pause as we consider whether it is actually a good idea to flip the switch and electrify the thing to life."
[...] the results also show that if instead of focusing the money on de-extinction, one allocated it into existing conservation programs for living species, we would see a much bigger increase in biodiversity—roughly two to eight times more species saved. In other words, the money would be better spent elsewhere to prevent existing species from going extinct in the first place [DOI: 10.1038/s41559-016-0053] [DX], the team reports today in Nature Ecology and Evolution.
[article abstract not yet available]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday February 28 2017, @09:46PM (5 children)
Where's your data coming from? My data [genome.gov] shows a stall out, and I haven't heard anyone report a reliable $100 human genome sequencing.
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(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 28 2017, @10:05PM (4 children)
Essentially its free and you're now mostly paying for HIPPA and biomedical safety of the workers and profit and paperwork costs.
You'll get bizarre quotes, because the market is bizarre, but "simple blood work" is of that order of magnitude of cost depending on insurance deals and bulk discounts and especially upon speed.
Its sorta like why does a hospital charge $60 to give a patient an aspirin tablet, well like $59.99 of the cost is the labor involved in the doc and nurse and insurance claim adjuster all screwing around, don't matter if the pill is $0.000001 or $0.01 its going to round up to $60 or so.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday February 28 2017, @10:17PM (3 children)
Your comment sounds good, but is bullshit. There is no genome sequencing free lunch, costs can go down, but haven't yet, and HIPPA does not apply to non-humans, like the ones these guys would be sequencing [soylentnews.org].
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(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 28 2017, @10:50PM (2 children)
Well the good news is "the price of human bloodwork" covers a random distribution from like $10 to $1500 depending on whats ordered and corruption related effects.
And the link you give goes to a graph that is very hard to interpret but you claim it means human genome sequencing costs more than $100.
So you can say theres not an overlap all you'd like, but it appears human genome sequencing is just another blood test of roughly typical cost, maybe on the higher and rarer scale but nothing shockingly unusual.
You may have made a mistake in your estimate and "it costs more than $100" was meant to be "it costs more than $100K" but that's hardly my fault.
Also no fair comparing to non-human which I guess would be cheaper? I guess veterinarian blood work is cheaper (liability insurance costs, I suppose) and maybe more limited such that gene sequencing your pet dog would cost a higher class of expense than generic doggie blood testing.
Somehow I don't think this necessarily matters in the big picture in that most of the cost of squirting out a herd of mammoths isn't going to be the sequencing anyway.
costs can go down, but haven't yet
I think you're linking to the wrong graph? That graph looks like its cratering like a dotcom stock in 2001.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 28 2017, @11:20PM
So... single payer healthcare? Yup, sounds good to me too!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday March 01 2017, @03:51AM
The graph did crater quite nicely. Except until recently, when it stalled out (end of the graph).
I meant $100, not $100k:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1,000_genome [wikipedia.org]
https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/09/illumina-ushering-in-the-100-genome/ [statnews.com]
https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/10/illumina-wants-to-sequence-your-whole-genome-for-100/ [techcrunch.com]
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2017/jan/10/illumina-announces-arrival-100-genome-few-years-no/ [kpbs.org]
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/illumina-ilmn-launches-novaseq-series-125812778.html [yahoo.com]
The machines that are expected to make it as cheap as $100 per human genome can sequence many samples in parallel, lowering costs. They could probably be considered robotic too. $100 is not much for a test you probably only have to pay for once.
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