I have been involved with the current interest in de‐extinction since early 2012, nearly its beginning. I have given a lot of thought to the potential risks and benefits of de‐extinction. But only recently, after deep immersion in discussions around CRISPR‐Cas9, the hottest new tool in bioscience since polymerase chain reaction, have I thought about a more fundamental question: how, if at all, is de‐extinction special? Are “revived species” just another kind of genetically modified organism, raising essentially the same general concerns? I answer, for the most part, yes. De‐extinction is not (very) special. New biotechnologies are giving humans even more power to change the biosphere but more directly, more quickly, and more utterly than ever before. De‐extinction is just one possible, and probably small, use of those technologies. Our attention, for the most part, should be on the bigger issues of regulating this power, rather than focusing specifically on their application to de‐extinction .

A New Ethics for New Science? Once upon a sunny morning, a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn with a golden horn quietly cropping the roses in the garden. The man went up to the bedroom, where his wife was still asleep, and woke her. “There's a unicorn in the garden,” he said. “Eating roses.” She opened one unfriendly eye and looked at him. “The unicorn is a mythical beast,” she said, and turned her back on him.1 The wife in James Thurber's fable was and is right—for the time being. But in twenty years, which billionaire will have a living unicorn genetically constructed for a daughter's twelfth birthday? I have been involved with the current interest in de‐extinction since early 2012, nearly its beginning.2 I have given a lot of thought to the potential risks and benefits of de‐extinction. But only recently, after deep immersion in discussions around CRISPR‐Cas9,3 the hottest new tool in bioscience since polymerase chain reaction, have I thought about a more fundamental question: how, if at all, is de‐extinction special? Unicorns are not an extinct species, but a mythical one. Yet how would “reviving” a wooly mammoth or a passenger pigeon be meaningfully different from gene editing cattle to not have horns—or gene editing horses to have one long horn growing from their foreheads? Put another way, are “revived species” just another kind of genetically modified organism, raising essentially the same general concerns? I answer, for the most part, yes. De‐extinction is not (very) special. New biotechnologies are giving humans even more power to change the biosphere but more directly, more quickly, and more utterly than ever before. De‐extinction is just one possible, and probably small, use of those technologies. Our attention, for the most part, should be on the bigger issues of regulating this power, rather than focusing specifically on their application to de‐extinction. I will start with some background on our capabilities, old and new, to modify the biosphere. I will then examine some concerns that modification will raise. Finally, I will discuss what, if anything, is different about de‐extinction.

The Increasing Power to Change the Biosphere For at least the last forty thousand years, humans have changed other life‐forms, directly and indirectly, intentionally and accidentally. One of our first powerful interventions was causing extinction. The extent of human responsibility for the late Pleistocene extinctions of Northern Hemisphere megafauna, such as mammoths, remains controversial. Human hunting is generally considered to have played a role, but its impact compared to climate change is uncertain. What is clear is that humans played a profound role starting forty thousand years ago in the extinction of much of the then‐indigenous fauna of Australia, and, starting twelve to fifteen thousand years ago, in North and South American extinctions. The more recent devastating effect of human settlement on native species can likewise be seen on isolated islands like Madagascar, New Zealand, and Hawai'i. More recently, our role in the destruction of the dodo, the passenger pigeon, the great auk, the Steller's sea cow, and the long, sad litany of other extinct species is undeniable. Humans have not just destroyed species, though. We have also created new species and organisms, through intentional hybridization and selective breeding as well as by making both clones and chimeras, organisms that mix cells or tissues from more than one species. Today's domesticated plants and animals are radically different from their wild ancestors. Our farming ancestors used both hybridization and selective breeding (sometimes together) to make new plants and animals. They hybridized three different grass species to create wheat, combined two different species to make tobacco, and completely transformed corn simply through selective breeding. They mated horses and donkeys to create hybrids—male donkeys with mares to create mules, and female donkeys with stallions to create less‐prized hinnies. Largely through selective breeding, our ancestors made domestic cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens vastly different from their wild predecessors. Perhaps the most amazing feat has been what we have done to the wolf: metamorphosing it in the span of thousands of years into everything from St. Bernards to Chihuahuas and dachshunds. Darwin himself studied and conducted pigeon breeding in order to understand better how artificial selection could produce substantial changes. We have also intervened to create specific new individual organisms. Cloning is widely used in agriculture: taking cuttings from one plant with prized characteristics and using it to create new individuals genetically identical to the original plant. We have long made chimeras as well, at least in plants. These organisms are made up in part of one species and in part of another. They are not hybrids (the sexual cross of two different species) but, rather, the combination within one organism of cells and tissues from two distinct species. Wine grapes provide a wonderful example of both cloning and chimerism. The chardonnay, pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon, or zinfandel you enjoy did not (any time recently) come from seeds, but are from clones of each varietal—cuttings taken from a vine that produced grapes that made good wine transplanted onto a new, young vine. Moreover, those grapevines are almost always actually chimeras, made by combining two different species. The branches and fruit for all high‐quality wine come from the European grape, Vitis vinifera. In the late nineteenth century V. vinifera grapevines all over the world were nearly wiped out by a Western Hemisphere pest—the almost microscopic, aphid‐like phylloxera, which attacked their roots. Since then, almost all wine grapes are grown on roots from one or more North American grape species (or occasionally on hybrids between V. vinifera and American species), onto which V. vinifera branches have been grafted. The North American species make inferior wine, but their roots resist phylloxera nicely. As a result, we drink the product of chimeric clones, intentionally invented and near universally implemented over a hundred years ago. Much of the change humans have wrought has been unintentional. For example, our fishing practices, even when not driving species to destruction, often exert a form of artificial selection by changing the harvested species’ size or behavior.4 Our agricultural, pastoral, and domestic habits have also had unintentional effects on the abundance of different species. We have vastly increased the numbers of our favored species—livestock and grains among them—and thus made less room, physical and ecological, for other species. And species that we do not like but that find our presence useful, such as common species of rat and cockroach, have also migrated with us and thrived, putting pressure on other species. Perhaps least dramatically, but most importantly, we have, in the last few hundred years, increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from 250 parts per billion to over 400 parts per billion, with consequent effects on climate and on the acidity and temperatures of oceans, lakes, and streams. The long‐term effects of these changes are unknown, but they have a distinct possibility of affecting every organism that lives in water or on the surface of the land. (Microbes deep underground might escape unscathed.) These effects, like those of our other conscious or largely unconscious interventions, may destroy species, create new species, change the numbers or ranges of species, or change their genomes in less dramatic ways by modifying the selective pressures they undergo. Consider the famous example of the changing ratios of light‐ to dark‐colored moths in the English Midlands before (high), during (low), and after (high again) the period of sooty industrialization.5

The Potential of New Technology The simple fact of human interference, intentional or otherwise, in the genomes, phenotypes, abundance, and very existence of species hasn't changed, but its potential scope and pace have been changed utterly by new technologies, as have some of the reasons for that interference—not just subsistence or profit but also possibly conservation, or research, or wonder. Some of these are new technologies in transportation, communication, or hunting and fishing that have made, and are making, our longstanding interventions more powerful. The railroad and the telegraph, along with the shotgun, have been held responsible for the incredible destruction of the passenger pigeon, taking their numbers from somewhere between three and five billion down to zero in less than a century. Today, the rising number of people and goods moving quickly around the world have increased the spread of exotic and invasive organisms that have devastating effects on some forms of life—whether HIV and humans, chytrid fungi and amphibians, or the fungal Panama disease and banana trees. But our new powers, at least for intentional changes to species, go deeper and faster, not just selecting traits with a genetic basis but remaking those genes and their associated traits. Efforts at intentional human selection for traits have long involved looking for individuals in sexually reproducing species that displayed traits that we liked and breeding them, choosing those whose traits we liked best to breed the next generation. We were selecting among variations that had “natural” (or, at least, not intentionally human) causes. In the twentieth century, we moved beyond this, using ionizing radiation to create mutations, some of which would have variations we liked, and then using the favorable mutants for future breeding. This was not targeted mutation but random wholesale change, driven by hope of spotting a small percentage that would be mutated in directions we liked. Many crops were subject to this treatment, but so were various laboratory model organisms—from fruit flies, used as early as 1927 by Hermann Muller, to rodents and other species. The early 1970s gave humanity its first opportunity to make specific, targeted genetic changes to organisms. Recombinant DNA used bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, to move specific DNA sequences between organisms and species. Nobel prizewinner Paul Berg's method for recombinant DNA was difficult, slow, inefficient, and small scale, but it raised concerns. These concerns prompted the famous 1975 Asilomar meeting, leading to a voluntary moratorium on recombinant DNA research until the technology could be proven sufficiently safe. In the years since Asilomar, researchers had gotten better at intentionally adding and subtracting specific sequences of DNA from living cells. In recent years, two of the major technologies were zinc finger nucleases (ZFN) and transcription activator‐like nucleases (TALENs). Each was increasingly widely used in research, as well as in efforts to develop human gene therapies, but each was slow, expensive, and inefficient. The discovery of CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) has changed the world of biology. CRISPR systems, initially employing a protein called Cas9 (CRISPR‐associated protein 9), are fantastic for cutting out designated sequences of DNA, and they can be combined with other methods to insert specifically synthesized DNA sequences at the location of the cut. These abilities make DNA editing substantially faster, easier, cheaper, and more accurate while extending its reach to all species. CRISPR‐Cas9 can also be used to create a process called “gene drive” that makes the effects of DNA editing spread rapidly through a population of a sexually reproducing species, changing “normal” DNA variations in subsequent generations to the desired variant. This raises the possibility of spreading a particular DNA change across an entire wild population of a species in the span of a few generations. (Assuming that the gene drive is effective, the number of generations would depend largely on the size of the population, the number of CRISPR‐Cas9‐edited individuals released into the population, and their breeding success.6) Therefore, CRISPR‐Cas9, and whatever still further improved forms of DNA editing follow it, are likely to unleash a slew of genetically modified species of all kinds, developed for many different reasons. It is already being used regularly to modify research animals, and it is beginning to be used to try to develop better livestock and crops. It also is being tried as a tool for modifying or eliminating wild populations of disease‐bearing mosquitos. It could be used to modify pets and garden plants; to create curiosities (unicorns or dragons); or for biofuels, bioremediation, or biowar. And it could be used for de‐extinction. Although gene editing is only one of three plausible methods of de‐extinction—alongside backbreeding and cloning—it has the broadest scope. Except in unusual cases (such as cloning where the extinct species has close extant relatives and has left well‐preserved cells behind), it is the method most likely to be used.

What Should Concern Us about Gene‐Edited Species? Of course, prospective uses of gene editing need to be analyzed to see if their benefits will outweigh the costs—although the question of benefits and costs to whom may be contentious. Beyond cost‐benefit analysis, five things about gene‐edited species should concern us: the welfare of individuals in such species, environmental effects, consequences for human societies, the potential for intentionally malicious uses, and the implications for the relationship between humans and nature. For some, but not all, organisms, we appropriately worry about the pain or suffering we may cause individuals. Few if any of us are concerned about causing pain to plants or microbes. Even when looking at animals, I will lose no sleep about the treatment of animals with small and poorly developed nervous systems, whether C. elegans or mosquitos. But gene editing could produce discomfort, pain, distress, or other forms of suffering in some modified organisms. It is possible that in some species that might even involve a form of psychological distress. In many cases, it will also involve risks to individuals in the “starting” species—particularly female mammals that will be required to gestate and possibly care for the first generation of gene‐edited animals. The only unusual things about these animal welfare concerns in the context of gene editing are that negative effects may be hard to predict and that the processes involved have not been effectively “immunized” from criticism by their long histories of human use. (Some products of selective breeding, such as bulldogs, with their susceptibility to respiratory diseases, are controversial, but the process is not.) Environmental effects also will need to be considered, at least in some cases. The concerns will be about ill effects, although it must be remembered that there may well be environmental gains or, in many cases, minimal effects in either direction. For example, if a modified species is to be used only in laboratories or other isolated environments, such as zoos or animal parks, this concern would largely be limited to preventing the successful escape of the modified organism into the outside environment. The decision to keep a modified species isolated can be crucial, as is who gets to make that decision. But edited species intended to be used more freely would, in effect, be exotic and possibly invasive in the environments into which they were released. They might cause kinds of harms like those of such noted invaders as kudzu in the southeastern United States, rabbits and cane toads in Australia, rats and feral cats on hundreds of islands around the world, and countless others.7 In short, these exotic species could harm the existing environment by killing native species, displacing them, or serving as vectors for disease. Gene editing can also affect human societies more directly. Much of the criticism of genetically modified crops, for example, has focused not on the environmental risks from the crops but on their contribution to potentially detrimental changes in the lives of farmers by increasing their reliance on expensive seeds. Any gene‐edited organism that is very useful carries the potential to disrupt industries, creating economic winners and losers. For example, widespread use of gene editing to produce biofuels could harm people and entire regions involved in the petroleum industry. A fourth consideration is biological warfare. While some may use CRISPR‐Cas9 gene editing to create useful new products, the same technology could be used to create powerful new biological weapons. In theory, CRISPR‐Cas9 could make possible even biological weapons that could be targeted at certain families or ethnicities. Imagine that a particular DNA variation, benign in itself, in an essential gene were used as a guide to let CRISPR‐Cas9 make a disabling deletion of a large section of that gene and the CRISPR‐Cas9 complex were then loaded into, say, a human respiratory virus. The result would be a weapon targeted at individuals or groups who carry that particular variation, making the complex harmless to others. Even more subtly, one could take aim at particular economies. An edited pathogen that killed maize would affect some countries much more than others; so would ones that afflicted rice, cattle, pigs, or sheep. It might take years before anyone even realized that the problems came from an attack rather than a natural phenomenon. The last issue is the hardest to define and to evaluate, though in many respects it may be the most viscerally and politically powerful. A short version goes, “Gene‐edited species are categorically wrong. They are against the will of God, the workings of evolution, the integrity of species’ nature, or are just plain unnatural.” Given the vast array of ways that humans have, for thousands of years, intentionally and unintentionally changed the distribution, characteristics, genomes, and even the very existence of millions of species, the intellectual case for this argument is difficult. It has been pointed out to me that this “playing God” reaction, in either its religious or secular form, comes more from bioethics than from environmental ethics, where a powerful, and perhaps dominant, approach has aimed at finding the right balance between human‐benefiting changes to nature and the preservation of nature in the face of human wishes. I come from the world of bioethics discourse, and I need to understand environmental ethics better. It does seem to me that, from an environmental ethics perspective, de‐extinction would pose case‐by‐case questions, depending on how any proposed species reintroduction affects that (possibly hard to define) balance. De‐extinction could, in fact, possibly be understood on either side of that dichotomy, as a human‐benefiting change or as a protection to (an historical if now lost) nature. (Alternatively, if an environmental ethic viewed “preservation of nature” not in terms of achieving a sought‐after state of “nature” but as an injunction against [too much?] human intervention, de‐extinction might always seem inappropriate—as might many human efforts to preserve endangered species.) It will be interesting to see whether the bioethics or environmental ethics frame dominates general public discourse about de‐extinction: will the dominant concern be “unnaturalness” or “upsetting a natural balance”? One test may be to compare reactions to de‐extinction confined to “separate” spaces—zoos, animal parks, or farms, for example—with reactions to such species introduced in “the wild.” Whether the distinction is based on unowned or owned territory, publicly versus privately owned, or wilderness versus “used” land (or water), some such distinction seems to have force with many people. When release into the environment is contemplated, people may have a greater sense of common ownership, or of a “public trust,” in “nature” that could have ethical, emotional, and political weight beyond the actual environmental consequences of broader releases, discussed above. This list of concerns is not exhaustive, but I think its categories capture most of the reasons people should or will worry about gene‐edited species. We now turn to the point of this essay: what concerns does de‐extinction implicate?

Is De‐extinction Special? Yes, in a few ways, but not very importantly. The welfare issues, which will apply only to de‐extinctions attempted with vertebrates (and maybe a few invertebrates, if we know of and have DNA from any, say, extinct octopi), seem the same as for any gene‐edited species with one possible occasional exception. One might argue that for at least some revived species, the absence of an appropriate number of fellow members of their species could be problematic, especially in a social species. This could also be true in some other forms of gene editing, if, for example, unicorns turned out to pine for the company of other unicorns. But many cases of gene editing, even in social mammals, may not create enough differences to prevent socialization between the edited and unedited members of the species. Cattle genetically edited to lack horns seem unlikely to be ostracized by their otherwise peers with horns. We have no idea whether, say, mammoths need other mammoths around or whether they could herd with Asian elephants. And successful de‐extinction may well produce sufficient numbers for comfort in a social species. The environmental issues would be substantial and hard to determine in advance. A species reintroduced into the environment (the only justification some people see for de‐extinction) would be another exotic species with all of the attendant risks and occasional benefits. Would those risks be higher or lower than the risks of other gene‐edited species? There's no reason to think that the risks would be systematically different. It could be argued that the fact that the species had existed might make them more of a threat as a potential invasive species. One big problem with that argument is that the environments those species lived in usually no longer exist or have changed dramatically. Eastern North America is drastically different from its passenger pigeon‐infested nineteenth‐century version, including the near demise of the American chestnut tree as a result of an imported blight. More fundamentally, the risks of a runaway invasive species will depend enormously on the species. It should not be hard to find, track, and recapture wooly mammoths; it would be much more difficult with passenger pigeons and could be impossible for smaller animals. Of course, the same is true of other kinds of gene‐edited species. The environmental effects of released gene‐edited species, like those of any exotic species, demand attention; revived species seem to be in no special position. The implications for human society seem likely to be small to nonexistent. It is hard to imagine a revived species leading to major economic changes, either broadly or in small areas. Maybe some areas with charismatic revived species would see an uptick in tourism, but such effects are likely to be small and diffuse. Malign uses also seem unlikely. Rationally designed bioweapons seem much more plausible than unleashing an extinct animal, plant, or microbe. Stampeding mammoth herds make an unlikely weapon. An exception might be known and now extinct species or strains of disease‐causing organisms—smallpox is (almost) extinct but could be revived; the influenza virus from the catastrophic 1918‐1919 pandemic has already been reconstituted. But bringing back a known pathogen from extinction seems unlikely to be a better strategy than either using gene editing to make a lot of a known, extant microbe or modifying an extant microbe to make it more dangerous. From the perspective of animal welfare, environmental and economic impacts, and biological warfare, then, the risks of de‐extinction are not substantively different from those associated with gene editing. So, we are left with the “just plain wrong” argument. Again, a revived species would seem to be just as unnatural or ungodly as any other gene‐edited species, except for one argument. Some might urge that extinct species are “supposed” to be extinct, either by the will of God or (in a deep misunderstanding of evolution) by the will of natural selection, and that bringing them back is even “more wrong” than other unnatural species modifications. For extinctions where the cause seems to have been “entirely natural,” this might, from certain perspectives, be plausible. But for many of the more recently extinct species, most likely to be the subjects of revival attempts, the major cause of extinction is known to be human interference. It seems hard to argue that it would be wrong for humans to interfere with God's will, nature, or natural selection by bringing back a species—or, more precisely, a proxy or a version of a species—that humans themselves had, often wantonly, driven to extinction. That very fact can be used to make an argument that is appealing, though hard to justify rigorously, that humans may owe a duty to bring back species we wantonly slaughtered. Does using gene editing for de‐extinction raise any different issues from using gene editing for crops, biofuels, pets, and other purposes? I can see only three: “false advertising,” moral hazard, and small benefits. De‐extinction promises to bring back an extinct species, but what does this really mean? Even the most optimistic proponents of de‐extinction do not foresee the ability in the near term to use gene editing to make an exact DNA duplicate of a member of an extinct species. (Cloning would do this, but its use will be limited to only a few, recently extinct species.) De‐extinction will start with an extant relative with a similar genome and edit it to conform to the DNA sequenced from samples of the extinct species. No one soon will make the millions of base‐pair changes needed to change, say, a band‐tailed pigeon genome into a passenger pigeon genome. Instead, scientists will make a small number of changes that seem most likely to be important, starting with genes known to be involved in traits that differ between the two species and then moving out to other genetic variations expected to change traits. Even if a perfect DNA duplicate were made, the individual would still be different from its extinct model. It would almost certainly have different epigenetic markings, turning on and off some genes. It would certainly have different microbiomes, the clouds of thousands of microbial species that live with animals (and, though less understood, with plants). It would definitely be in a different environment, if only due to the atmosphere's carbon dioxide level, the highest in at least eight hundred thousand years. And, for some species, it would have a different “culture.” The things mother mammoths taught their calves will not be taught by mother Asian elephants to their unusually hairy offspring. The worst aspect of this question of the identity of the revived species is our inability to know just how close we got. We cannot measure many of the epigenetic markings, the microbiome, or the environment or behaviors of the extinct species. Even for many species still alive today, we lack detailed knowledge of these things. Our chances of knowing, in any definitive way, the full characteristics of even recently extinct species, like the thylacine (also known as the Tasmanian tiger) or the passenger pigeon, are de minimis; of the wooly mammoth or saber‐toothed cats, this knowledge is nonexistent. At best, the revived species will be a simulacrum, a model, a proxy of the extinct species. De‐extinction can be useful, interesting, and even awe inspiring, but may also be oversold. De‐extinction also carries a risk not present, or present to a lesser degree, in the general gene‐editing context: moral hazard. Despite the term's religious and philosophical aura, “moral hazard” comes from the insurance industry. It is used to describe the greater likelihood that someone who chooses to be insured will incur the loss covered by the insurance. For example, someone with flood insurance is more likely to build in a more flood‐prone fashion or in a more flood‐prone area than someone without the insurance. De‐extinction creates a very real moral hazard. If one could argue that an endangered species could be brought back from extinction, then avoiding its initial extinction can be made to seem less important. In a context where protecting endangered species often incurs large financial and political costs, de‐extinction can be a very tempting excuse for doing nothing. Or, even worse, it can become a powerful excuse for voting, say, to repeal the Endangered Species Act or against the level of appropriations needed to make that Act effective. To some extent, this will be true of other uses of gene editing. Using gene editing to make crops more resistant to the effects of climate change could decrease the motivation to fight for lower greenhouse gas emissions, but that connection is much more tenuous than with de‐extinction. To me, this is the single greatest problem with the idea of de‐extinction. Unfortunately, the saber‐toothed cat is out of the bag. This moral hazard argument will be made because of the plausible “idea” of de‐extinction, which already exists—as the growth of gene editing seems likely to make clearer. At this point, the argument will be made whether or not de‐extinction is actually real, as long as it appears plausible. The last argument with particular force against de‐extinction is the weakness of concrete benefits to bring to a cost‐benefit analysis. At least five benefits are advanced for de‐extinction: learning more about the extinct species (undercut to some extent by the proxy nature of the revived species), secondary uses of the technologies developed for de‐extinction, possible gains to some ecosystems from their reintroduction, rectifying the injustice of some of the extinctions, and providing a sense of awe, wonder, or “cool.” Compared with curing or preventing human disease, improving agriculture, creating nonpolluting biofuels, bioremediation of environmental hazards, and many other proposed uses of gene editing, these benefits seem vague and insubstantial. Of course, compared to some other possible uses of gene editing, such as modifying pets or flowers or making novel creatures for exhibition (let alone biological warfare), the benefits do not seem so small. These examples point to a useful question—benefits as measured by whom? If those who will bear the costs view the benefits as outweighing those costs and there are no significant costs borne by third parties, then outsiders have weak grounds to complain. The more general concerns discussed above, both those shared with other gene‐editing ventures and those more specific to de‐extinction, are in the nature of possible externalities, affecting people beyond those who would pay for the de‐extinction project. If those are minimal (or, in the case of moral hazard, inevitable), would anyone have any better grounds to stop a person from trying to revive the passenger pigeon than from trying to create a truly blue rose or a chartreuse‐colored poodle? Conservation biologists, including, notably, those represented in the International Union for Conservation of Nature, are understandably and appropriately concerned that de‐extinction will eat into the already inadequate resources they need to prevent additional extinctions. This argument is weighty; I find it hard to imagine a de‐extinction project that I think should get governmental funding, let alone funding that comes out of the small existing budgets for conservation biology. However, if members of the National Pigeon Association want to contribute twenty dollars each to efforts to revive the passenger pigeon, or Foster's beer wants to sponsor the return of the Tasmanian tiger, or a Silicon Valley billionaire wants to forego a third vacation home in favor of financing efforts to bring back the saber‐toothed cat, and the consequences for the rest of the world are minimal, I do not see why anyone should intervene.

The Many Uses of Gene Editing De‐extinction is one plausible use of gene‐editing technology. Whether it would be a good use or a bad use should be governed by the same general concerns that apply to any uses of gene editing. Few, if any, of those concerns are special to de‐extinction. Whether someone wants to use CRISPR‐Cas9 to increase drought tolerance in crops, prevent malaria through modifying mosquitos, create new rose varieties, “bring back” an extinct species, or make a unicorn, almost the same issues will be in play. These issues are real and deserve concentrated attention, both generally and, as in almost all situations, in the context of the facts of a specific case. I have been frustrated that most of the attention paid to the implications of CRISPR‐Cas9 has focused on inheritable genomic modifications in humans, a risky technology that is decades away, and not its use in nonhuman organisms, where work is rapidly proceeding. We need to avoid being similarly distracted by de‐extinction, perhaps the gaudiest nonhuman use of gene editing, at least until someone makes a unicorn. Although I am not entirely sure how it applies, the moral in Thurber's fable of the unicorn in the garden seems to resonate here: “Don't count your boobies until they are hatched.”8