I agree with you on the sad part. I do enjoy biology, and I am sad to see so many species becoming extinct. I don't think that the project mentioned in the post is as hopeless as you make it out to be, however. In the future, we won't particularly be interested in plants and animals to develop drugs; that role will be taken over by rational drug design. The reason why we would want to preserve plants and animals is the same reason modern-day environmentalists take the positions they do: Earth's biological life is pretty frickin cool. So if we do want to revive these preserved species, it's not strictly necessary to actually put rhinos back in Africa. As a starting point, we could simply build a few high-quality zoos. Given some substantial advances in technology, simulate them. Allow people to go on a VR safari. Given a lot of technological advances, terraform a planet and use it as a nature preserve. It won't be possible to revive extinct species anytime soon, but I don't think it's a hopeless project at all to prepare for a day when it might be possible.
It won't be possible to revive extinct species anytime soon, but I don't think it's a hopeless project at all to prepare for a day when it might be possible.
Perhaps see: Extinct ibex is resurrected by cloning
It says: "An extinct animal has been brought back to life for the first time after being cloned from frozen tissue."
Interesting recent article from Ben-Nun et al. (doi:10.1038/nmeth.1706) in the high-impact journal Nature Methods.
As I understand it, they express reprogramming factors in the adult cells (e.g., fibroblasts) of two endangered species (here and here) to convert them into induced pluripotent stem cells.
They then cryopreserve these pluripotent stem cells, in the hopes that they can eventually be used to increase the number and genetic diversity of these two species.
However, this will require two additional technologies which, crucially, are still in development:
1) the generation of germ cells from pluripotent stem cells, and
2) the development of assisted reproductive technologies for related monkeys and rhinos.
In the meantime, these pluripotent stem cells will simply remain in cryopreservation.
What does this remind you of? In what ways is it different, such that it can be published in a high status journal? Are those differences informative in any way?