Would Lab-Grown Rhino Horn Stop the Poaching?
What if we could synthesize rhinoceros horn, would that squeeze out the illegal trade of the real thing? Three companies have been working on such a scheme for over ten years, but nothing has come of it; all three are either out of business or about to be.
The problem is not the technology. The magic ingredient in rhino horn – keratin, which is believed (incorrectly) to cure cancers or hangovers – can be synthesized in the lab. Huyen Hoang, founder of Rhinoceros Horn LLC with his twin brother, tells NPR: “We both wanted to do something new and courageous, something meaningful.”
The issue is particularly poignant to the Hoangs because their interest in rhino conservation began in 2011, the same year the Javan rhino was declared extinct in his home country, Vietnam. But Rhinoceros Horn LLC, which had launched with significant investor interest, went under in 2016. Oddly enough, opposition to the venture came mainly from conservationists.
“They saw us as undoing the work that they've been doing and the programs that they've had going,” Hoang said. “So there was just no room for us in their work and their solution.”
More specifically, conservationists are worried that fake rhino horn or keratin will only make the real thing more valuable to the type of idiot who would ingest it in the first place, or that some other unintended consequence will undo the good intentions. That would be bad news for the already endangered species.
“If you want us to experiment on this technology, do it with another species that's not going to be wiped out within five years if it goes wrong,” says John Baker, the chief program officer of the conservation group WildAid. “You have no room for error.”
So the Big Idea appears to be dead in the water. The two other companies vying to Pembient and Ceratotech are struggling to stay afloat as investors have gone awol.
As for the rhinoceros, about 27,000 are left in the world. A hundred years ago there were half a million, but poaching and habitat loss have decimated the populations. International trade of rhino horn has been banned since 1977, but hundreds are still killed in Africa every year.
The Hoang brothers are out of business for the moment but have hung on to their synthesized keratin, just in case there’s a future market for the stuff. “I learned it's not easy to try to make the world better,” Hoang says. “The question as to why that is, everyone needs to find that answer on their own.”
Photo credit: Andew Wegst / WildAid
