Scientists Created Fake Rhino Horn. But Should We Use It?

I recommend trying this approach. Income could be directed to supporting rhinoceros preserves.

It’s ridiculous to think that ground up bone has any sort of medicinal properties. Enough with nonsensical unscientific Chinese “medicine”.

Absolutely not. It is believed to have medicinal properties. It is okay not to believe. It is ethically wrong to put a fake in the market.

I can see both sides. Perhaps fake rhino horns in the market would upset the supply dynamics. Maybe there would be less value to them and less poaching. Maybe there would be more poaching to make up for price with volume. The whole endeavor smells of unintended consequences. Would not it be a better ploy to push Viagra at nominal cost to the public that demands rhino horn? Or some sort of branded supplement that claims rhino horn but is really ground hooves mixed with ED medication and perhaps a mild stimulant?

For once conservationists should put 'propaganda' to good use and spread information to the ignorant and superstitious consumers that the "new" horns are better and far more powerful and result in fewer harsh effects such as birth defects and other bad omens.

Fake horns might create a new middle man in the trading of Rhino horns, a sniffer. A seller pulls up to the black limo. Pops his trunk. Out from the limo steps the buyer accompanied by his prized sniffer man. A small chunk of horn is cut off and ground into fine particles. The sniffer reaches for the chain around his neck and pulls forth a small silver spoon. He ladles a sample. Lifts it to his nose and whoosh, up it goes. A smile crosses the sniffer's face. It's the good stuff. My point is, once fake horns hit the markets, people who spend outrageous sums on illegal rhino horns are going to find a method of determining real from fake. My hopes for the rhino population still remain with controlling the suppliers and the buyers.

Human stupidity. Rhino horns as medicine or food?

The black market most definitely should be flooded with fake versions of all illegal products from endangered species (e.g. rhino horns, tiger teeth, bear gall bladders, shark fin, etc.), just so long as they are all laced with something potently lethal (e.g. cyanide). This will promptly eliminate the customer base.

You can't reduce demand by increasing supply, according to classical microeconomics. Demand is what it is, and the supply curve is what you can control with fake horns. What you can hope to do is decrease the price of horns, and thus make it uneconomical to poach. Important topics like this require careful and precise economic thinking.

In the 11th century bezoar stones began to be seen as cures for poisoning and eventually as cures for all ailments. These stones were prized by royalty. The stones, found in mammal's guts, did react with arsenic in liquid so the stones could remove arsenic from wine and royalty found them useful and valuable. What I heard in a history of science course was that one was traded for a Rhine castle at the height of their value. Then, it was said that Jesuits in India began manufacturing fakes and selling them for high prices. Eventually the value of the stones waned. They were no longer seen as cure-alls. Rhino horn isn't very different from bezoar stones as the reputation is that it's good for sexual dysfunction and other ailments so flooding the market with fakes could reduce the value of the real thing. The fakes are likely to be easy to detect compared with bezoar stones. The best way to protect a species is to protect that species' habitat. Elephants and rhinos require a lot of space but what choice do people have? We have to do better. Maybe genetic engineering can make a rhino horn (grown on pigs) that can't be distinguished from natural horns?

Trade in wildlife parts for traditional Asian medicine should be outlawed by the UN. That practice practically defines the word "quackery" and is single-handedly responsible for the wanton slaughter and probable extinction of wildlife across the world. While the global market for herbal supplements is also driven by quackery (and one or two isolated cases of actual, proven effectiveness), plants are more easily protected and cared for, requiring little more than water and sunlight. Not so for rhinos, tigers, pangolins, seahorses, sharks, bears (gall bladder), etc. Unless a traditional practice utilizing animal parts can pass the minimum standards of the Scientific Method (measurable, observable, repeatable, and falsifiable), the use of those animal parts must be outlawed and strict penalties applied. There is plenty of room in the modern world for Stone Age beliefs, but not when those beliefs threaten the continued existence of an entire species of animals.

Anybody who thinks that taking the equivalent of a dirty toenail is going to benefit your health deserves to be sold a counterfeit product.

What I find interesting about this conversation is that it is one largely made up of jousting theories. I doubt the econometric modeling of the black market rhino horn horn trade is remotely possible due to a paucity of hard data. Ideas for interrupting the trade by affecting supply and/or demand have been toyed with for at least 30 years. I worked on some of those in the early 90s and I recall a unique idea to tranquilize wild rhinos and replace their horns with neon orange fake horns (really - you can't make this stuff up). Some ideas over the years have a hard time passing the straight-face test. Other ideas were more serious - such as legalizing and monitoring trade in confiscated horn - but few of these have really been tested. What it is so hard to come to grips with is that none of these ideas - including the current ones around fake horn - are anything more than theoretical. They are ideas, nothing more and nothing less. But what appetite to rhino range states and conservation professionals have for experimenting with remaining wild rhinos? Have we reached the point where we need to test these theories in the wild? How long would we let such an experiment with international markets run? Could simply conducting such an experiment cause irreparable change to the markets - negative change? The arguments about supply and demand are fundamentally debates about human behavior. I don't believe we should be so hubristic as to think we can predict that.

That there is a controversy over using fake rhino horn to combat poaching is crazy. I can't help but think that the opposition really comes from anti-capitalist beliefs on the part of the conservationists—essentially a mistrust that markets can actually work in a predicable fashion. The key here is that the counterfeit rhino horn will be introduced into the market as if it were real horn. Obviously, if it were labeled as artificial, it won't have the desired effect. Counterfeit horn, however, would have the exact same effect that counterfeit money does on the value of legitimate currency: it decreases purchasing power through inflation and, if prevalent enough, it undermines the public's confidence in the money supply all together, and the value plummets. That's why nations put so much effort into stamping out counterfeit currency. The people trading in rhino horn don't care if it's real or fake. They just want to get paid. So long as they can get passable fake horn cheaper and easier than real horn, why would they take on the added cost and risk of the real thing? The only question here is how good is the fake. The ultimate buyers will no doubt try to find some way to determine fake from legit (e.g. requesting the tails), but scientist will then work on ways to defeat those anti-counterfeiting measures (just like with counterfeit currency). In the end, so long as the fake rhino horn is passable and cheaper than the cost of poaching, poaching will decline.