De-extinction: The philosophy and ethics of resurrection biology

László Nemes

There is a growing interest in de-extinction or resurrection biology, the current or future biotechnological possibilities to bring extinct species back to existence. Provided that, in many cases, we have special moral duties to save the lives of the last individuals of a given species, thus protecting the species itself from extinction, it could be a question if we have similar obligation to resurrect even long extinct species (the woolly mammoth, for example) when the necessary biotechnological tools and methods (cloning, hybridization, gene editing) are available. Or even to create radically new life forms. In this lecture I provide an overview of the moral (and aesthetic) arguments for and against de-extinction, and elaborate a framework based on philosophy of biology to take the metaphysical and moral status of biological species under scrutiny.