The end of death

There is, of course, one thing we can all be grimly certain of - death.

Or so we thought.

This week, Colossal Biosciences announced they had brought back the long-extinct dire wolf by combining fossilised DNA with a gray wolf genome. 

In Australia, a team of artists and scientists have reprogrammed cells from acclaimed composer Alvin Lucier to mimic the human brain and create new musical scores, more than three years after his death.

The idea of immortality of some sort is, of course, a common cultural trope. It’s hard not to think of Jurassic Park when considering Colossal Biosciences’ goal to revive the woolly mammoth, while Futurama featured long preserved brains (and heads) of everyone from Abraham Lincoln to the members of Hanson.

Culture has also shown the danger and sadness of such pursuits. 

News that the UK government is developing a “murder prediction” program sounds a little too much like the plot of Minority Report, albeit with AI in place of clairvoyance (and a disappointing lack of Tilda Swinton). 

Meanwhile, Biohacker Bryan Johnson’s vision of a uniting crusade against the “enemy” of death in an FT interview appears to ignore the many, many cautionary tales from literature, film, and art.

At a time of terrifying and seemingly-implacable division, a common cause, driven by curiosity, offers hope. But we may also do well to heed the warnings found in all manner of cultural outputs across human existence.

Saying that, the baby dire wolves are pretty cute.