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There was a lot of hype and hoopla, deservedly so in my opinion, over scientists ability to implant the embryo of an African wildcat into a domestic cat resulting in a live birth. This has lots of implications and possibilities for helping to save a wide variety of endangered and threatened species.
Of course from an animal rights perspective, what happened here was an abomination. No, I haven't seen any animal rights groups formally slam this mini-miracle, but it is inevitable. If it is wrong to keep animals as pets or use them for medical research, certainly its wrong to use domesticated animals as means to perpetuate another species, even one closely related from an evolutionary point of view.
If society and researchers were to follow animal rights philosophers such as Peter Singer, it would be necessary to grant equal moral consideration to the domestic cat's interest in living freely and the African wild cat's interest in perpetuating its species (though its unclear even from Singer's writing and other animal rights positions that the latter is a valid interest at all).
Columnist Jay Ambrose understands well both the amazement this sort of advance creates as well as what it says about our species,
Human beings - a species that comes in for a lot of criticism - are using that which makes them different in kind, their extraordinary intelligence, to do something that a number of other species would be grateful for if they could understand it.
Reference:
"Kitty kudos", December 17, 1999 Scripps Howard