SAN FRANCISCO and HASTINGS, NEW ZEALAND -- Life may imitate art in an event seemingly plucked from the pages of "Jurassic Park" when a scientific conference convenes in New Zealand this week to debate how and whether to clone an extinct bird back to life.

The July 9-10 conference in Hastings (near Auckland, New Zealand) is sponsored by Cyberuni.org, Inc., a California corporation.  Scientists and ethicists will consider the technical feasibility and moral permissibility of reviving the Huia (WHO-ee-uh), a bird driven to extinction early this century by a fashion craze.

Inspired by Dr. Michael Crichton's novel, the project began as an academic exercise by students at Hastings Boys High School (the extinct bird is the school's emblem), but it may grow beyond a schoolboy fantasy.

"This will be a defining event for our global community," says Dr. Rhys Michael Cullen, a New Zealand physician and a founder of Cyberuni.org.  The Internet start-up, based in San Francisco, offers university courses to students enrolled on-line anywhere on earth.

Among conference participants are The Rev. Dr. Norman Ford, director of the Caroline Chisholm Centre for Health Ethics in Melbourne, Australia; Prof. Diana Hill, who has been investigating the cloning of the Moa, another extinct bird and Dr. David Wells, a bioresearcher and leader of the team which used cloning and in-vitro fertilization to save the Enderby cattle, unique for its ability to survive on a diet of seaweed, from extinction. 

"The use of cloning to save animal species from extinction is a contemporary reality," says George V. Franich, CEO of Cyberuni.org.  "Australia is thinking about cloning the Tasmanian Tiger, using preserved embryos."

Franich says that if conferees believe the Huia can and should be cloned, Cyberuni.org will provide funds for the project.

"Cyberuni.org's mission as an educational portal on the Internet is to encourage people to think and critically examine the world around them," Franich says.  "The moral and scientific debate at the core of the conference is typical of what Cyberuni.org encourages as an educational institution."

In New Zealand, the Huia (which belongs to the starling family) is a bird of great cultural importance to the Maori, the country’s indigenous inhabitants.  They prized the bird’s 12 large, white-tipped, black tail feathers.

The Huia is one of three species of wattlebirds (a wattle is a fleshy growth like the one that hangs from the neck of a turkey) unique to New Zealand.  About the size of a magpie, the male Huia had a short, blunt beak, while the female had a long, curved bill.  The different appearance of males and females led to their initial classification as separate species.

The Huia was not adept at flying.  It lived beneath the forest canopy and nested in tree trunks or in hollows on the ground. The Huia population began to decline as Europeans arrived in New Zealand and cleared land for pastures, cut down forests and introduced natural predators.  Hunters also sought Huia to serve a ready market for stuffed and mounted examples of the birds.

A British royal visit to New Zealand in 1901 sealed the fate of the Huia.  In Rotorua, an old Maori woman placed a Huia feather in the Duke of Windsor’s hatband to signify his royal rank.  A photograph of the event printed in London newspapers made a Huia feather in a hatband a fashion necessity.  First priced at a shilling (few cents) each, the cost of each feather eventually reached five pounds (about US $10) as the birds vanished from New Zealand.  The last official sighting of a Huia occurred in 1907; it was officially declared extinct in the '20s.

If one can be found, the nucleus of a cell removed from a taxidermic specimen of a Huia could be fused with the ovum of another bird to start the regeneration.  In Scotland, scientists used a cell implant to clone Dolly, the sheep.  Alternatively, scientists could attempt to create a clone from a genetic template of the Huia.  This was the process to revive dinosaurs from extinction as described in the novel, "Jurassic Park."

About Cyberuni.org, inc.

Founded in 1998, Cyberuni.org is a California corporation that intends to become "the world's university."  Cyberuni.org offers courses designed for delivery over the Internet.  Through its university-level courses and services in evaluating students' progress, Cyberuni.org also intends to enable smaller colleges and universities, especially those in developing countries to expand their curricula without having to invest capital and attract specialist faculty.  Cyberuni.org will license some courses, perhaps one leading to a master's degree in business administration, from existing institutions.  However, Cyberuni.org will purchase the majority of its courses from qualified providers such as faculty members of other universities.

Cyberuni.org offers its courses in conjunction with discussion groups composed of students, faculty and invited experts.  Cyberuni.org is also creating a virtual campus library on the web, open to students from grade school through post-graduate level.  Ultimately, Cyberuni.org intends to grant bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in fields ranging from business to medicine.