Recently, Time magazine announced that the biotechnology company Colossal has resurrected the dire wolf, a species that went extinct thousands of years ago. “This is Remus,” read the caption over a photo of a robust-looking white wolf. “He’s a dire wolf. The first to exist in over 10,000 years.” According to Colossal, this is a first step to resurrecting other long-extinct animals, like the woolly mammoth.
As it turns out, the headline is an exaggeration. Remus, his brother Romulus and their sister Khaleesi contain no DNA from the dire wolf. Rather, they are modern gray wolves with genes tweaked by the company to mirror the DNA of the dire wolf. And they were more than likely engineered to look like the fictional giant wolves from HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”
The most common comment on the Time story was some variation of the sentiment, “I’ve seen this movie, and it doesn’t end well.” Most people likely had in mind “Jurassic Park,” in which a company uses genetic technology to bring back dinosaurs. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t end well. In fact, the seventh installment of the franchise will be released this summer, and each film contains the same message as the 1993 original: Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should.
Dozens of movies reflect the dangers of genetic tinkering, human reengineering and other forms of scientific hubris. From “The Island of Dr. Moreau” to “Gattaca” to “Planet of the Apes” to “The Island,” not to mention about half of all zombie movies ever made, we’ve been thoroughly warned about the illusion of human control over nature.
Maybe this is just the story of directors sprucing up a plot, or perhaps a surprising amount of wisdom in the arts has been overlooked or ignored by scientists and tech pioneers. A popular meme from Twitter quotes an imaginary science-fiction author saying, “In my book, I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale,” immediately followed by a tech company exec announcing: “At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel ‘Don’t Create the Torment Nexus.'” Even more, there is a strange disconnect between pop culture’s ability to anticipate the negative consequences of our scientific advances and our overall willingness to volunteer as guinea pigs.