A PERILOUS EXISTENCE

On 7 September 1936 the world's last captive thylacine or Tasmanian tiger died in the Hobart Zoo. The thylacine is the only mammal to have become extinct in Tasmania since European settlement. I have spent a significant part of my life in northern Tasmanian, where many sightings of the tiger have occurred since 1937.

Today, 20 May 2008, in a world first, scientists announced that they have extracted a gene from the extinct Tasmanian tiger and successfully inserted it into a mouse embryo. It is the first time a gene from any extinct animal has been brought back to life inside another living creature. Obtaining the thylacine gene, called Col2a1, was itself a major challenge, because DNA begins breaking down after death. However, the researchers from the University of Melbourne and the University of Texas, say the technology will not lead to the cloning of an entire Tasmanian tiger.1

When the last Tasmanian tiger died in 1936 my maternal grandfather was about to retire on a Canadian old age pension. His wife would die in three years and my mother was about to meet my father. The Baha’i community, which members of my family have been associated with in Canada now for fifty-five years, was, in September 1936, just beginning to conceive a plan to establish one centre in every state of the USA and in every country in Central and South America with ramifications to include every country on the European continent.2 By the end of that plan, a seven year plan from 1937 to 1944, my parents had met and married. On 23 July 1944 I was born, three days after an assassination attempt on the life of Hitler and four days before another planned assassination on his life. -Ron Price with thanks to 1Richard Macey, “Extinct gene brought back to life,” in the age.com.au, May 20, 2008; and 2 Shoghi Effendi, Messages To America, Wilmette, 1947, p.7.

Indeed, the field was immense,
the task gigantic, the privilege
immeasurably precious, but the
time was short, obligations sacred,
paramount and urgent to muster
all our force, our resources, our
faith, determination and energy
to set out, single-minded and
undaunted, to attain exertion’s
heights---as humanity entered
the outer fringes of the most
perilous stage of its existence
and as the thylacine was in the
last phase of its existence—or
so it seemed until the other day.

Ron Price
20 May 2008