When genetics reaches the point that we can resurrect extinct species, should we?

Scientists in the field of genetics tell us that we will soon be able to resurrect extinct species. Since very recent human predation was responsible for the demise of the Passenger Pigeon in the Americas in the 20th century, I can see it being a candidate for resurrection. I’d certainly love to be able to see a mastodon, and while sudden climate change in the late Pleistocene age appears to have been the prime mover in their extinction some 12,000 years ago, it’s fairly likely that human Clovis hunters played a role in that species’ end as well. So humans resurrecting them might be nothing more than righting a prior wrong.

But what about the Saber Toothed Cats? We humans may have helped do them in 11,000 years ago, but we might say good riddance. How about species even further removed from today’s fauna? I have no interest in living up close and personal with a herd of Velociraptors, their larger cousins, the Achillobators; or even worse, the fearsome Tyrannosaurus.

In this thread I touched humorously on the idea of applying genetics to the creation of chimera. But doing so is not a joke, or even a distant future possibility. We’ve already made glow-in-the-dark cats and other animals by injecting a gene from phosphorescent jellyfish into the egg cell of the animal. As we progress in genetics, the possibility will increase for the creation of designer species aimed squarely at meeting some perceived human need.

But the ability to do something is not an indication it should be done. All of us can stick our head in a hot oven, but most of us can see that’s not a bright idea, and so we avoid doing it. Just where should we refuse to tread in the emerging science of genetic engineering. Resurrection of the extinct? Creation of chimera? Turning our own species into designer humans? Developing viruses and microbes for war or for conferring health, increasing crop yields, etc? When do we start down the slippery slope toward some future genetically altered dystopia or even our own extinction?