[sevenless]

Species evolve into other species all the time, and go extinct all the time. This is a natural, inevitable, and ethically neutral event. Probably billions of species have gone extinct in Earth's history. Nobody's rights are violated if it happens. If it were ethically bad, we would be obliged to somehow stop all evolution and extinctions from happening.

Individual beings (humans, maybe some animals) have rights; groups of individuals are not individuals themselves, and have no rights, not even the right to exist. This is even the case if the individuals are humans; if they are bacteria, the case is much weaker, as bacteria have no right to life (we kill millions of them every second just by being alive).

[xapata]

Are you trolling? The United States and most countries, AFAIK, have laws protecting endangered species.

[logfromblammo]

None of those laws apply on Mars, or anywhere else outside the Earth ecosystem.

The only people who might be negatively impacted by destroying any (or all) native Martian organisms are research biologists and pharmaceutical manufacturers, and they still have plenty of work to do with Earth species.

We can afford to debate the ethics of genociding xenospecies on other planets after we have replicated the Earth biosphere on a second planet. It sucks for Martian life--if it exists--but Earth needs Mars before exporting Solar life to other star systems. Martian species can either evolve enough to make a useful contribution--or at least enough to ask for mercy--or they can die and get out of our way.

That is the cost here. Are you willing to sacrifice every living human (or human successor species) in existence a few billion years from now for the sake of some suspected xenobacteria now? I am not. Protect Martian species at the expense of Earth species at your own peril. Attempting a Greenpeace-style "save the xenobacteria" sit-in will just get you thrown out of the airlocks.

[xapata]

> None of those laws apply on Mars

The article states that the US and the Soviets signed a treaty to protect alien life, so I guess they're saying we have an international law that applies on Mars.

Yes, I know the Soviet Union doesn't exist any more.

> sacrifice every living human

... I don't think you read the article thoroughly.

[logfromblammo]

I didn't think it required a thorough reading. The Planetary Protection Office is a farce, in my opinion. Even if there were species on Mars to protect, they're going to have to fend for themselves against potentially superior Earth organisms. That's how life works; red in tooth and claw. I am actually of the opinion that we should intentionally infect all of our space probes with as many extremophiles as we can before sending them up, on the off chance that if Earth were destroyed tomorrow, that one lonely surviving bacterium might give the next planet a head start on DNA-based life.

And I was referring to the eventual destruction of Earth itself by the expansion of the sun. Or any other mass-extinction event, really, but that's the nearly guaranteed, almost inevitable one.

If humans do not transplant Earth life to other planets as quickly and cheaply as possible, out of fear of potentially destroying any native xenospecies that may exist, the gap in expenses and technical requirements may prevent that transplantation from ever occurring on a grand enough scale to matter. Earth life will then be destroyed when Earth is destroyed. I'm not going to doom trillions of organisms on the possibility that they might infect other planets. Colonizing other planets is the biggest point in favor of having a space program!

--

In the US, a treaty requires implementing legislation to be binding on the subjects rather than just the government. Any such law would only be de facto applicable to American or Russian [0] subjects returning to Earth (and specifically the US or Russia) from Mars. Anyone remaining on Mars could simply renounce citizenship and thumb his or her nose at the blue planet. Without such a law, the US would be responsible for breach of the treaty, and the person doing the act that triggered the breach would be blameless.

It would be analogous to attempting to enforce English colonial laws in Boston after 1783, except it would take the cops 2.5 years to get there before they could even begin to try to arrest you.

[0] I think Russia is the designated successor state to most, if not all, USSR treaties.

[xapata]

> I didn't think it required a thorough reading.

I guess you missed the part where Conley talked about how short her time-frame is for observing any (potentially) undisturbed aliens, because she assumes we'll be sending humans to Mars in the next few decades.

She also didn't discuss the ethics of killing aliens. Instead the article explained the scientific benefits of analyzing alien life.

[JoeAltmaier]

Cute, fuzzy endangered species anyway.