V: MORALITY VC: MINIMIZING SUFFERING I affirm the resolution: De-Extinction is unethical. I value Morality, as the word “unethical” in the resolution implies a moral obligation. My value criterion is Minimizing Suffering. Prefer this criterion, as suffering is universally experienced, urgent, and provides a clearer baseline for action than abstract ideals. It is a concrete standard for what this debate should be measured by. Thus, minimizing suffering is the only criterion the Judge should vote upon. DEFINITIONS: “De-extinction is the process of creating an organism which is – or greatly resembles – a member of an extinct species.” - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4157387/ “Unethical -not conforming to a high moral standard : morally wrong” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unethical Contention 1: ANIMAL WELFARE De-extinction is cruel to existing endangered creatures and unborn creatures – mammoths and elephants prove. Doyle et al. 25 [David M Doyle, Associate Professor of Law, Maynooth University, Natallia Hlushchenko, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute, and Senior Lecturer in Law, Academic and Research Institute of Law, Sumy State University, Shane Mccorristine, Reader in Cultural History, Newcastle University, and Kevin Healy, Lecturer in Zoology, School of Natural Sciences, Ollscoil na Gaillimhe—University of Galway, 12-19-2025, "Should we patent the ‘Woolly Mammoth’? Ecological and animal welfare objections", OUP Academic, https://academic.oup.com/jiplp/article/21/2/114/8384325]/Kankee B. Animal welfare concerns First, analogous to the formative decisions on the patentability of transgenic animals, if a patent were applied for on a de-extinct woolly mammoth ‘it could raise concerns on the appropriateness of granting patents on sentient animals’.69 As appellant 5 argued in Harvard/Transgenic Animals, one cannot legitimately balance animal suffering against medical use because animals are sentient beings and patenting them commodifies and increases their production and suffering.70 Admittedly, ‘it is a difficult task for the Patent Office to fairly apply the sensitive aspect of morality to the examination of a certain technology’,71 but it can be argued that de-extinct woolly mammoths, confined to zoos or amusement parks, would be subject to ‘unacceptable levels of suffering’ in captivity.72 Indeed, Browning has observed that animal welfare concerns are ‘likely to be most pronounced’ with species such as the woolly mammoth ‘due to their behavioural complexity’.73 Before their extinction, woolly mammoths were reputedly ‘highly social animals’,74 and so rearing a tiny number of them in an artificial habitat, whether in a zoo or in a managed ecosystem, may be deemed a cruel practice.75 Furthermore, the environment in which a recreated woolly mammoth would now live—if released into the wild—would be widely different from the one that was present when the original woolly mammoths roamed the earth.76 Equally, it seems reasonable to surmise that de-extinct woolly mammoths ‘would alter any habitat into which they were released, and possibly in ways that we have not yet imagined’.77 Recreating the ‘social contexts in which mammoths can be placed’ will thus be ‘key to their survival and an additional challenge to overcome’.78 Secondly, Rule 28 1(d) of EPC explicitly includes the words ‘likely to cause . . . suffering’, and thus there are strong arguments that those advocating for mammoth de-extinction must show how the welfare of de-extinct woolly mammoths will be protected.79 True, animal welfare concerns in the context of gene editing are difficult to predict, but they may include physical and psychological distress, ethical dilemmas regarding interspecific pregnancies, reproductive risk or other forms of suffering among surrogate Asian elephants and individual woolly mammoths.80 In Harvard/Onco-Mouse, for instance, various opponents argued that ‘it was inherently immoral to alter an animal’s genetic structure in order to create a painful disease’,81 while in Harvard/Transgenic Animals it was submitted that animals are ‘sentient beings which are not to be gratuitously abused or misused’.82 Moreover, the woolly mammoth does not appear to be a good candidate for de-extinction from an animal welfare perspective83—not least because of its long gestation period (eg for a baby female woolly mammoth to grow up and have a daughter takes twenty years)84—but objections to the de-extinction of the woolly mammoth (and by extension to the patentability of a de-extinct woolly mammoth) could also be raised on a number of welfare grounds, including the risk to, and suffering of, Asian Elephants, which are the ideal egg donors and surrogate mothers for mammoths.85 Although Asian elephants appear to be a ‘suitable maternal host’,86 Nicholls points out that the ‘cost on the elephants is too great’: . . . the individual elephants could develop ovarian tumors or be o

De-extinction is both expensive and ecologically impractical. Millions of dollars are required for research, breeding, and long-term management, while climate change and human development have drastically altered the habitats these species once inhabited. Even if scientists successfully bring them back, there is no guarantee their original ecosystems can support them. It is simply a distraction from focusing on other issues, like climate change. Transformed habitats make de-extinction costly and unlikely to succeed Ehrlich 14 (Paul R. Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies and President of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University, "The Case Against De-Extinction: It’s a Fascinating but Dumb Idea", Yale Environment 360, January 13, 2014) Resurrecting a population and then re-inserting it into habitats where it could supply the ecosystem services of its predecessor is a monumentally bigger project than recreating a couple of pseudomammoths to wander around in a zoo.The passenger pigeon is often mentioned as a target for de-extinction. Passenger pigeons once supplied people with abundant meat and likely helped to suppress Lyme disease. To create even a single viable population might well require fabricating a million birds or so, since the species apparently survived by a strategy of predator saturation. If we do not very quickly curb greenhouse gas releases, the passenger pigeon’s old homeland will be unrecognizable.And if the swarm were synthesized, where could it be introduced? The vast forests the pigeons required are partly gone and badly fragmented at best, and one of the birds’ food sources, the American chestnut, is functionally extinct. The passenger pigeon’s previous habitat is utterly transformed, and if humanity does not very quickly and substantially curb greenhouse gas releases, the pigeon’s old homeland will likely be completely unrecognizable in less than a century. In practical terms, in the near future in which action is required, extinction is certainly “forever.” Reintroductions of surviving endangered species (which are vastly more important than attempted de-extinctions) illustrate the complexity and scale of the task. Culturing and reinserting animals into nature is already known often to require intense and expensive effort (consider the California condor), and even invasions of “natural” species (such as the first two introductions of starlings to North America) often fail to “take.” And as National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore has emphasized to me, zoos are already overwhelmed trying to breed endangered species for reintroduction and thus facing triage conundrums about which species to save and which to let go. Allocating more effort there is far more essential than research into restoring a few prominent elements of earth’s biodiversity with laboratory-created resurrections. De-extinction thus seems far-fetched, financially problematic, and extremely unlikely to succeed on a planet continually being vastly transformed by human action.

We can't go according to your gut. You quite literally conceded to my point so we win the round on the spot. My opponent doesn't prove how much suffering is worth the scientific benefit. We should focus on preventable harms, so de-extinction is considered unethical.

Conceded to my point, there is no need to debate any more

Sure, but you don't respond to any of my points. we win the round beause suffering isn't worth it.