Brilliant dodos

The hybrid scientist-carnival barkers at a company called Colossal have raised millions of dollars to use CRISPR gene-editing technology not to alleviate human suffering, but to resurrect the woolly mammoth, or at least a modern-age facsimile of the creature that went extinct 10,000 years ago. Serial entrepreneur Ben Lamm and his business partner, Harvard geneticist George Church, say the next step after this gargantuan leap will be choosing other extinct species to reanimate.

In typical tech-evangelist fashion, the two ridiculously insist they’re doing the world a favor by helping restore ecosystems and, in the process, combating climate change. It’s a fine line between doing God’s work and supplanting God’s job. As profoundly harmed as ecosystems have been by humanity’s growing footprint, it’s sheer folly to believe that a few people playing Duck, Duck, Goose, randomly picking species to welcome back, will alleviate rather than complicate matters.

We’re not even venturing into “what could go wrong” territory of “Jurassic Park” here. We’re talking about the far less dramatic but still pernicious unintended consequences of propping up creatures that Earth long ago could no longer sustain. And if a few hotshot startuppers really are intent on monkeying with Mother Nature so radically, we’d far prefer them splicing DNA to wipe mosquitos and ticks off the planet for good.

Finally, as Elizabeth Holmes’ Theranos trial continues, exploding her ambition to develop a magic box that could test a single drop of blood for all types of markers, the thought occurs that there’s one species that will never, ever go extinct: Silicon Valley venture capitalists who will throw gobs of cash at world-changing promises unlikely to ever pan out.