Mendel's Ark Biotechnology and the Future of Extinction [Paperback]

Does extinction have to be forever?? As the global extinction crisis accelerates, conservationists and policy-makers increasingly use advanced biotechnologies such as reproductive cloning, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and bioinformatics in the urgent effort to save species.?

Mendel's Ark?considers the ethical, cultural and social implications of using these tools for wildlife conservation.?Drawing upon sources ranging from science to science fiction, it focuses on the stories we tell about extinction and the meanings we ascribe to nature and technology.?

The use of biotechnology in conservation is redrawing the boundaries between animals and machines, nature and artifacts, and life and death.? The new rhetoric and practice of de-extinction will thus have significant repercussions for wilderness and for society. The degree to which we engage collectively with both the prosaic and the fantastic aspects of biotechnological conservation will shape the boundaries and ethics of our desire to restore lost worlds.

Preface

1. The Future of Extinction

1.1 Goodbye to the Baiji

1.2 Welcome to the Anthropocene

1.3 Wicked Problems and Socio-Technical Imaginaries

1.4 Taking Control of Natures Realm

1.5 Telling Stories about Extinction

1.6 The Once and Future Baiji

References

2. A Political History of Extinction

2.1 The Biodiversity and Extinction Crisis

2.2 The Ladder of Life: ?The Question of Extinction in Classical Antiquity

2.3 lª