Beth Shapiro

I don’t want to make anybody nervous, but the story of how I bought this book by the scientist of Bethany is, that first I bought a science book by what in the 21st century we might call a gentleman scientist, and then I went digging through my notes app and transferred a book title from there to my Amazon Saved For Later titles (limit 600 items, plus it gets more and more cumbersome the more you add to it, but I wanted to add some science books to my history books and other snobby humanities—snobby religion and snobby art; science can be snobby too, but people look up to it, and it’s different), and so then that book was also by a gentleman scientist, (like, he was Louis Vuitton, not Coco Chanel, lol), and so, I thought, well one of these books came from something called the Princeton Science Library, so I Amazon searched that, and, in what I guess was a short span of geological time, but an annoying amount of scrolling time, was able to scroll to a science book by a lady scientist, the scientist of Bethany here. So, one day, I’ll buy this book, and the other book, (one of them is already on the way, that third one), and then, bam! Knowledges! Ok! 🤯 👩

…. I bought the book! I started it!

Ok, first, I didn’t expect this to be something that was feasible, like, this year, you know. And obviously, if we could clone the mammoth but there was no home for it, no ecosystem, you know—what’s the point? I mean, the megafauna extinctions were probably caused by //ancient, Native// populations, you know. If the Eskimos or whoever caused too much disruption by bringing one down with spears every other year or something, Putin drilling for oil in Siberia and random Russians with assault rifles is going to be a bit of a problem, right.

That said, I don’t know why you call a book “how to clone a mammoth” if you don’t think that cloning large extinct animals isn’t a possibility in the long-range future, like 100 or 200 years, assuming we’ve gotten our ecological act together and society votes or whatever that, we need mammoths!, you know. But like, “How to clone a mammoth”: chapter one, Cloning extinct animals is impossible, and will always be impossible. Chapter two…. ~I mean, it’s weird, right.

I mean, I’m going to read the book, so it’s fine I guess. I guess the bottom line is that we have a lot of power and are gaining more, including the power to theoretically be less disruptive to nature and become more viable long-term, all of which are good things…. But we basically don’t know how to use the power we already have all that well, which is a bummer. We still have to try, I guess; that’s not what I mean, but…. Given just our computer skills we could probably program Earth to be paradise in 200 years and I guess maybe we will but, I don’t know, right. You have a nice spiritual exercise and you’re sure the bright future’s going to happen; you reflect that we don’t want scientists to be women half the time, or often for women to be able to do anything, or how scientists often can’t use normal verbal language all that well, or how nobody ever seems to respect other disciplines, or how religion and politics are going from bad to yup, still bad, and it’s like…. You know forget about the mammoth; I’m just going to call the mother. Get her to protect me. Leave paradise for the people not yet born to bet on what year we solve for P where P = paradise, you know. But, hey.

…. Yes, the book is about bringing back extinct species—make a note to experiment different clunky ways of saying that, while becoming extremely intolerant of my own kookiness—but, rest assured, I will not be positive, and you won’t have to feel good. Happiness CAN be avoided, thank the Spaghetti Monster. But this curious strange exercise might still leave you with the sneaking suspicion that you’re better than other people, and that’s good…. Just remember you’re not better than me….

There was a time when I was too much a scholar to read the competing scholarships, you know; but I think my days of Kumbaya we’re all scholars are probably ending….

—I don’t want to understand ~things~, I want to understand the ~words~ by which things are called.
—Right. I mean, you’re almost right. But really you should understand ~numbers~, not the things numbered.
—Huh. So we have a disagreement!
—So we do!
—There are two ways of looking at the world!

…. (smiles)

I mean, I am glad that there’s science. Without science, (in our non-Indigenous, non-magical consensus), we would have nothing, basically, not purely human, nothing not derived from human history, and perhaps philosophy, but mostly custom and precedent, in whatever form…. And again, nothing about the custom and precedent of the other forms of life….

But scientists are strange people, you know. I realize as a (as I’ve since become) sorta crazy Merlin person, I’m throwing stones, he whose walls are made of glass, but…. I mean, scientists are our cultural ideal, to some extent, at least they’re the cultural ideal we own up to, but, WOW—strange!!

…. And it can be funny watching scientists trying to make decisions without emotions (!), or philosophy (neither one? 😹), or any sort of decision-making system; like, I’m waiting for some Indian nation in Brazil to say, We want you to bring back our god (so-and-so) whom you know as the (so-so-bird) and the Wiccans will be like, Yes! It’s Brigid!! (or whoever), and the scientists will be like, Silence, children! I SAID SILENCE, CHILDREN!! ~~😹😹

…. But whatever. It’s fine. It’ll be ok.

…. I know that I sound sarcastic or whatever, and then suddenly pollyanna-y, and that the latter probably irritates some scientists almost as much as criticism. But what I mean is, many of the dysfunctions in the typical member of the scientific community owe a lot to the problems of the larger parent society, you know. The scientific heritage and thought reform process at its best does have the ability to improve society.

…. One of the things that I got is that time doesn’t ever go back exactly: the more time passes, the greater the chance that we’ll have to let that organism go, wholly or at least in part. It might be possible to create hybrid types with living species, or certainly to learn more about the path that biological evolution took. But the more time passes, the more the remains decay and the planet moves on.

But I was impressed by—and I do not mean this as an insult; I mean it well—the secular “ritual” of science, the special, “ritual” action of experiments and other laboratory [or field expedition] actions. Unlike in I guess you could say modern philosophy, and most forms of philosophy that people call as such, and theology, if that word can be applied exactly, in science ~action~ matters….

Maybe not ~quite~ as much as in purely practical books and studies, but still. And yet the most important thing is to allow there to be a harmonious human population (and not a miserable but too-weak-to-do-major-damage human population of the past) to share the planet with the other organisms and allow them to evolve again, whether or not any particular form is reproduced or not. And the most relevant things for that are probably snarky youth-centric Gen Z publications that poke the Millennials in the gut with a long stick, right—that or just prosperity books so I can afford organic, responsible-agriculture products, for example, and electric cars, and so on…. The way that I didn’t understand when I was dancing because I was 22, you know.

But I digress. I respect the informations.

…. Stereotypically I’m the one to doubt the doubters, but I think in their own process it can be well. They say, I don’t know we can do this; I don’t know that we can do that—and it sounds to me like they can’t even try, usually, for the tropical species that die and rot in an hour or whatever. And I don’t even care about the mammoth. (Sorry, Canada/Alaska.)

This might come across as an insult to Dawkie and Friends, but I feel like it’s easier now to accept ‘settle down children’ science criticism when I see that doubt is part of their own system, you know.

…. I guess I didn’t realize that selective breeding can work faster than I thought—more like historical time, a few or a handful of centuries, rather than real-long ~geologic~ time, if you can decide what you want and stick with it. It just kinda raises the question of what people want it for, when it’s become a success, and how patient they want to be with it, I guess.

As for using a computer to construct a genome, (a species’ gene pool), I’m not opposed to this, not in any sort of energetic way, or offended way, but I’m skeptical that it would work in any meaningful way in the near future. I don’t think our computers are advanced enough, and I don’t think that our consensus philosophy or whatever you want to call it that scientists use, generally, (and there would be Controversy! if they didn’t), really understands or rather makes space for the mystery of life enough to create meaningful or lasting results. You can work on it and try to evolve the computers for it if you have the money, but in terms of evolving actual literal squishy (carbon) life, I don’t know. I don’t know that there’s any shame in creating life and having it frown a lot and die—it’s no different than what some teenagers, indeed, really, most or at least, many many people do. And I don’t believe in shaming people. But if you don’t understand what god/spirit/Life-Principle is in the arctic duck you’re weaving, how do you really get a sense of what you’re creating? How do you decide that you created the life-principle you wanted to create? How do you know what you want, right?…. “Well, I want real hairy, because…. I don’t know. I want to see a hairy duck.” It just doesn’t seem, oddly, that the stakes for success are that high. It just doesn’t seem like it would be as successful as a natural-birth animal, and it probably wouldn’t be successful even in the physical way, I would bet. But whatever. These are the times we live in, right.

…. I mean, I feel like the ancient Jews were too perfectionist in copying the Bible and destroying it if there was one typo; however, a person is like a sacred book, you know, or an organism, and I feel like a scientists are trying to copy a sacred book by learning the alphabet but not knowing what the words mean, you know.

(shrugs) Or maybe I’m just crazy. That would certainly be a simpler conclusion to come to, right. 😸

…. Ok, so maybe it can be more about what resurrecting old-duck-like ducks can be like for the lake, rather than this superficial quasi-romantic improbable thing, right. “Just because they’re ducks! 100% Old Duck stock!”

It basically could be selective breeding on steroids. That’s probably the future. Maybe one day we’ll have elections over rival plans for duck DNA, or ads about the same from the relevant capital-raising campaigns that get on the Super Bowl, you know.

Or the…. Pickleball Championships. (Future!)

…. Actual campaign ad: If trans/queer kids don’t get burned at the stake by their parents, white women whose brains have been burned out by their husbands will rebel! No persecution no peace! No persecution no peace! I can’t hear you, mothers!

~ Whoops, hey we’re not there yet!….

Seriously, though, why do mothers have to be an embarrassment to the community? “You think I like being a mother? You think I like being treated like brain dead garbage Every, Day? The only reason I signed up for this is because I figure I can be the thought police, like the crippled persecutor, you know. First you play dead…. Then you attack! Hey, look! A happy woman! Let’s tie her down and dishonor the wench! Mothers, move out!

“Ah-ha. Americans.”

Oh my god, they’re dishonoring our community. It’s so sad…. I like it here. I used to like it here, couple of minutes ago. I don’t have any jobs or housing agreements lined up anywhere else….

(white woman) This year, I’m voting for the Nazis. It has nothing to do with race: I need to hurt my children. (awkward smile!)….

[…. Offended Woman: I mean, first I agree to surrender my full humanity and my completeness and become miserable for the Greater Good, and then! and then people don’t compensate me by Never Disliking Me No Matter What, because you have to do it my way because I stabbed myself in the gut for you. This would Never have happened under King Arthur! This November, vote Gwenhwyfar/Arthur on the Persecute Pagans Party. This message has been paid for Village Customs Group Choice—Capitalism, Eh! “I’m Gwenhwyfar and I’m a better person than you are. So die, scum!”]

[…. I mean, the Christians have the perfect scam; they really do. First, you take all that traditional oppression of women, take away whatever sexual or religious or professional competency is left, turn codependency into the only permissible morality, and voila! You have a feminine zombie army that will support the male elite, far more so than most random groups of men, you know. (chuckles) The only thing you forgot is an honest reward for your damages minions, you know! Well, no plan is perfect. I’m sure everyone will respect them, though. (chuckles) Perhaps the whole fingers crossed behind your back is an old biblical sign of respect, you know.]

I mean, if they wanted to nurture someone, you’d think they’d want to nurture the whores—probably the most un-nurtured, damaged, and traumatized group out there, or damn near. But I guess if you’re doing it all by yourself, you can’t take on those tough assignments, right. Instead you say: (talking into phone) 10AM re-traumatized whore, saw her successfully excluded from the group. Repeat: successfully traumatized whore; successfully traumatized whore. Blue eagle. Red 52. The fisherman found the purple hat, over. (looks around) What are You looking at?

…. Anyway.

Re: captive animals hurting themselves/animal dysfunction

I always disagreed with those mystics & romantics who say, We suck; animals are great, right. Animals are like us, they’re not better than us or worse. The more I hear about animals the more I think that it’s possible for an animal to be dysfunctional, you know. Some of them can also be almost as intelligent as a very small child, or at least a baby, right.

…. (end) And yes, if you’re curious, I happened to have changed my religious affiliation in between the time that I wrote the pre-review, and finished the book. (During which time I was probably in between on maybe a hundred books, or whatever, and occasionally even real life. 😸). I guess sometimes even a god can’t be a success if his friends betray him after he’s gone. Although I’d like to think that I wasn’t that traitor. 😉

…. (now it’s over) Anyway, it suddenly occurs to me that this isn’t natural history; it’s general biology/ecology, you know…. And, yes, I make fun of science nerds and scholars, but I sorta get that it’s hard to try to deal with the public’s attention span and not have them grossly misunderstand things, you know.

I’m not even gonna make a joke about that. Can’t even go there. 😸

…. Ok, I’ll make a joke about hate mail: “I learned that I was going to bring about the end of the world.”

Well, at least you learned! 😹

The electorate is so educated—and kind—right! 🥳

No worries. Just say mahalo. Mahalo, Great Spirit, that you have made us great. 😗

…. (NOW it’s over) Probably the worst enemy of applied ecology is recentism. Nature moves slowly. She’s patient. Native humans weren’t perfect at land management, but they weren’t recentist. They didn’t watch TV poorly; they didn’t even write angry little papers in journals, you know. One day, we’ll incorporate and improve upon the old Native secrets. We’re not there yet.… (plus d'informations)

Really a 3.5.

This book has a lot of good information in it. Shapiro is very practical and up front about the current state of the art regarding bringing extinct species back to life. She does not stop there, but also discusses the political aspects as well as the larger practical aspect: what are the larger goals, is there an appropriate environment to which the de-extincted creature be re-introduced (de-unintroduced?).

The writing is somewhat uneven and didn't grab me. It's not a page turner. Some things get repeated more than they need be - while on the other hand some more technical aspects or terms are glossed over. If you know or remember some biology, it's not a problem. For example, I'm guessing that most readers would appreciate terms like prokaryotic and eukaryotic being clearly defined, even if one can infer their meanings from context.

So, a strong recommendation to anyone with an interest in the topic, particularly because the book is current and keeps things real. Otherwise, you may want to pass on this one.
… (plus d'informations)

I came across this when looking for a history of biotechnology (in the sense of technology based on biology, including not just work animals but also fermentation, medicine, textiles and dyes, quickset hedges and living bridges, etc). It wasn't that, sadly - instead it's a much more narrow history of genetic engineering. It begins with traditional methods of cross-breeding (so there's a strong focus on cattle, sheep, chickens, and horses) then moves to artificial insemination.

The second half of the book is focused on direct gene editing, ethics, the potential for de-extinction and so forth - at which point I lost interest because it wasn't what I wanted, though not before becoming a bit uncomfortable with how dismissive the author was of resistance to GMO. I'm certainly not an apologist for the fear-mongerers, and the example goals she depicts of increasing animal welfare and improving food security are noble ones. And yet... if we're sawing off the horns of cattle, then is the only solution really to engineer hornless varieties? If people are starving or malnourished, is engineering vitamin-A-rich rice really getting to the root of the cause? Maybe later in the book she addresses these questions - her conversation with school children about mammoths does touch on some nuance - but by this point I was no longer willing to wade through the technical discussion of genes and cells and CRISPR.… (plus d'informations)

Too many stories that I was already familiar with.

> Wolbachia don’t kill the insects that they infect but they do cause fertility problems. When an uninfected female mosquito breeds with an infected male, their offspring don’t survive … it’s difficult to produce only males in a laboratory environment. Because offspring of Wolbachia-infected females survive, the accidental release of Wolbachia-infected females along with males would allow Wolbachia to spread through the population, ruining its potential as a mosquito sterilizer. Second, any reduction of the mosquito population might not last very long if, for example, mosquitoes can easily recolonize from nearby. Finally, Wolbachia are already present in some of the most important disease-vector species, meaning that this approach simply won’t work to control them.

> The self-limiting aspect of the sterility gene works like this: Males that develop from OX5034 eggs have a copy of tTAV on both of their chromosomes. When they mate with wild females, all their offspring inherit one chromosome with tTAV. The female offspring will express tTAV and die, and the males will develop normally. When these males, which have one normal chromosome and one with tTAV, breed with wild females, half their offspring inherit tTAV. Of this half, the females die and the males develop normally. After ten or so generations during each of which the proportion of males in the population with tTAV is reduced by half, tTAV will disappear. Because the number of individuals carrying tTAV reduces in every generation, the population-reducing effect of self-limiting sterility declines over time. This strategy nevertheless has a much longer-term impact than one that requires repeated releases of sterile males.

> The gene-edited moth competed successfully with wild-type diamondback moths, and many fewer caterpillars were produced compared to control fields. Oxitec has also developed self-limiting strains of the fall armyworm, the soybean looper moth, and several other agricultural pests. The self-limiting sterility approach to reducing populations of crop pests could save farmers billions of dollars of losses globally every year while also reducing reliance on chemical pesticides. Intriguingly, it may also help shift the conversation around genetically engineered food, since genetically engineered crop pests (which people don’t eat) could be used in place of genetically engineered, insect-resistant crops with similar gains in crop yield.… (plus d'informations)