Solving the Rhino Horn Problem

Well, it’s official. Mozambique has no more Rhinos. The last one was poached this month. I wonder if the poachers in question knew that they were making this type of history before carrying out their evil deed. I wonder if their greed felt satisfied, if they were able to check this accomplishment off their bucket list. Will they brag about this to their children?

I think there is a special place in hell for the person (most likely in Vietnam, where the market is the greatest by far) who spent more money than one would spend by weight on gold or cocaine to consume the horn in question in order to cure his hangover. I’m sure the selfishness and arrogance spills over into other parts of these peoples’ lives and that can only presage their eventual downfall. The thinking must be, “I want to spend a fortune to drink something that’s the powdered equivalent of my very own toenails so that people will think I’m special. To hell with the fact that it spells the destruction of an entire species.” Can this type of ignorance really persist? Does the nation of Vietnam not feel the shame? It’s too late for Mozambique, but as long as there’s a rhinoceros left in the world, we must take action to protect it.

The first step has to be education. People must be taught that the keratin in rhino horns can also be found in hair and fingernails. Personally, I’d feel like a fool consuming this substance. It must also be taught that there is NO scientific evidence that rhino horn cures ANYTHING. But there is proof that it destroys the rhinos. If there’s increased education, the demand will decrease and the price will go down, and then the poachers will not find it profitable to slaughter an animal that has done absolutely nothing to deserve it.

I envision public service announcements on televisions throughout Vietnam, and going viral on the internet. A bunch of hip, upper class Vietnamese professionals at a party where the alcohol is flowing. Suddenly one takes off his shoe and starts chewing his toenails. “This is what you’re really doing when you consume rhino horn,” the announcer says. Then cut to a bloody dead rhino carcass. “This is also what you’re doing.” “Don’t you feel like a fool?” “The best cure for a hangover is to not get so f***ing drunk.” Once these videos go viral, and the lower classes, who can’t afford rhino horn to begin with, begin laughing at the stupid, selfish rich people rather than envying them, the market will collapse.

But I have another solution for the Rhino horn problem. People have been talking about domestically raising rhinos and harvesting their horns, but I have a mental image of rhinos trapped in cages their whole lives for no good reason, and then destroyed when they’ve outlived their horn producing usefulness. No. The solution to this problem is stem cells.

We have shown that with human T-cells we can produce various organs and body parts such as ears, and even heart cells that actually beat in the petri dish, so why not get rhino T-cells and produce horns? This would yield several positive results:

• It would flood the market with rhino horn, thus reducing the price, and that would make the product much less “cool” because anyone could get it.
• The reduced prices would make it less worth it for poachers to break the law and kill the rhinos.
• Scientists would get more practice working with stem cells, and learn more about them in the process. stem cells have always been a morally charged avenue of experimentation, so maybe we can educate ourselves by using non-human ones first.
• Rhinos could keep the horns that they were born to have. They are, after all, the only ones with a right to them in the first place.

The selfishness and stupidity of the human race knows no bounds. But that can change if we want it to.

The following image comes from a blog that I highly recommend: http://fightforrhinos.wordpress.com/