The guest speaker at the Bovay Lecture this year was Ronald Sandler, and he covered the topic of genetic manipulation in order to save various species of animals. Entire species are disappearing at an alarming rate: up to several thousand per year, which is several orders of magnitude larger than historical trends. Species all across the globe have become more susceptible to extinction, particularly those that must live in very specific habitats such as the Artic, freshwater lakes, deserts, and islands to name a few. Most of the extinctions today result from non-local causes, such as the global climate change. By contrast, in the past a significant portion of species extinction could be attributed to local causes, such as a community clearing a forest to make farmland. These …show more content…
Humanity has a long history of using gene manipulation to engineer organisms, from plant grafting, used for the white spruce, tomatoes, and many other plants, to animal hybridization, which has resulted in the mule, and even killer bees. More recently, animals have been cloned from both living and dead hosts. This raises the question: is it intrinsically wrong to manipulate genes? Are the laws of nature violated in the process? If gene manipulation is not intrinsically wrong, should we still do it? Mr. Sandler views gene manipulation, or gene drive, as a new conservation tool that can create additional methods of approaching conservation issues. He argues that the gene drive method often meets key conservation criteria better than traditional methods. Genetic manipulation is already used to influence the longevity of certain species, namely to reduce the impact of invasive organisms. However, the genes of the actual species at risk can also be manipulated. This idea raises even more questions: how should these species be designed? Is the value of the species still the same after