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Jurassic Park, Hastings?
What was the most exciting thing your children did at school this year? About fifty students at Hastings Boys High
School have been thinking about cloning an extinct bird. The Huia is the emblem of this school and it has been extinct
for seventy years or more -a victim of the colonization of New Zealand and the attack by axe, saw, and fire on native
forests. Life may imitate art in an event seemingly plucked from the pages of "Jurassic Park" when a conference convenes
at the school later this week to share the project with both the Maori community that will decide if the cloning should
go ahead and with the scientists that would love to make it happen. The July 9-10 conference is sponsored by cyberuni
(www.cyberuni.ac.nz ) a California corporation that will donate $100,000 of the proceeds of its Direct Public Offering
to the cloning attempt if it goes ahead.
Some of the boys have been considering whether it is possible to clone an extinct species. Jurassic Park introduced the
world to one approach - match the DNA of the extinct species to that of a living relative and plug in any gaps with DNA
from the living relative. The Huia, unlike dinosaurs, roamed its small corner of the world until recently and hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of stuffed specimens can be found in private collections and museums. One pair, the male with his
chisel like beak and the female with her uniquely different gracefully curved appendage, have had pride of place in the
foyer of Hastings Boys High School since the 1920s. It might be possible to put together a complete sequence of Huia DNA
using organic material from the bones and tendons of these and other stuffed birds. Professor Diana Wells of the
biochemistry department of Otago University has explored cloning another extinct New Zealand bird, the Moa, using
Ostrich DNA as a template. She will be speaking at the conference.
Matters may be significantly easier than this. 'Dolly' showed that mammals at least can be cloned if a whole cell, or
nucleus, is available. New Zealand has had experience in cloning cattle using this technique. Dr David Wells of the
Ruakura AgResearch Institute leads a team that has probably saved the Enderby cattle, the only cattle breed that can
survive on a diet of seaweed, from extinction. Culling by the Department of Conservation reduced the breed to a single
surviving, and ageing, cow. Thank to Dr Wells and his team, and a mixture of in-vitro fertilisation (using semen taken
from dead bulls and frozen) and cloning, the Enderby herd is now approaching double figures. If a whole Huia cell can be
extracted from a tendon or bone of one of the stuffed birds, a proven technology could indeed clone the Huia if an
appropriate surrogate bird can be found. However, the chances of extracting a viable cell or cell nucleus are remote.
Of course, there is more to cloning than science. The boys have also debated the moral issues involved. Although the
debate has at times been heated, the consensus has been in favour. The dispute is over whether the New Zealand
government has a moral obligation to pay for the cloning attempt. Although the politics may not interest him, Melbourne
philosopher and Roman Catholic priest, Rev. Dr. Norman Ford, director of the Caroline Chisholm Centre for Health Care
Ethics, will speak to the conference on the moral issues. The boys have also been assisted in their ethical
considerations by Dr Vanya Kovach of the University of Auckland's philosophy department, who spent a day at the school
holding workshops.
ENDS
MEDIA RELEASE FROM CYBERUNI.ORG.INC