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Should We Clone a Neanderthal?
SpaceAdmiral writes "Forget cloning a woolly mammoth — should scientists clone a Neanderthal? Such a feat should be possible soon, although it raises a number of bioethics concerns, including where to draw the line between humans and other animals."
great hockey players!
Cause then it would no longer be socially acceptable for women to call us that anymore.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Dibs on the TV franchise rights! Neander-thon! Saturdays at 8!
1)Clone Neanderthals
2)Make Geico commercials
3)Profit!
...copyright infringement lawsuits from Geico Insurance
Geico would pay good money for the authenticity.
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since they had bigger brains. Maybe not the same parts of their brains though.
Could be (quite the role-reversal?) that they were the thoughtful ones, and we were just meaner.
Who knows? We don't.
Neanderthals are considered to be part of the Homo Sapiens species. Wouldn't the concerns (and legalities) be the same as any human cloning project?
Since it's pretty clear that it's only a matter of time. we need a constitutional amendment that grants person-hood and citizenship to any and all future Neanderthal clones. Just get that crap out of the way.
Do we really need to clone MORE politicians?
As far as I'm concerned, there really is no point in drawing a line between human and animal. If we decide it's to be treated as a human, then it would obviously be deemed too destructive and unable to cope in society - as many people with mental issues are. At that point, we would segregate it from society in a humane habitat (as we do with mental patients, or at least the ones that can afford it :P). Now, obviously, no scientist would recieve funding for it's creation if it couldn't be studied (remember, it's not unethical to study human beings, if they aren't harmed and if it's consented to by someone with the mental capacity and authority to decide). If we decided it was an ANIMAL, obviously we would treat it like a zoo creature or pet (I'm sure no-one intends to eat this thing, even if that were legal). We would skip the mental evaluation and simply put it in a humane habitat, as we do with animals at the zoo or pets, and study it humanely (it's unethical and probably illegal to cut animals up for study). Either way, the end result is the same - the being is kept somewhere where it's not dangerous to itself or regular homo sapien sapiens, and studied. I don't understand why someone would wish to draw a line between animal and human for ethical reasons, when it would be treated the same due to it being mentally incapable of anything else.
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
Wasn't having one of them run the country for eight years bad enough?
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
God, schmod! I want my monkey man!
Considering that many people feel that Neanderthal DNA is integrated with human DNA, is there any point to this experiment?
Don't we have one running the biggest richest most successful software company in the world?
I swear, Steve Balmer and Bill Gates remind me of Pinky and the Brain. The difference is that before Pinky wasn't in charge of Microsoft - the Brain was, but ever since the stupid neanderthal took over as CEO there have been some royal fuck-ups. I shouldn't even have to post urls to previous slashdot stories in order to prove that.
Wouldn't that be like knowingly bringing someone into the world knowing that they are going to be horrendously ugly and live their life lonely? Wouldn't having sex with them be borderline doing it with a gorilla? What would the ethical ramification of this be?
Absolutely No. It is immoral and not just from a religious stand. Forget religious objections. It is simply ethically wrong. Where would it stop? It would go beyond just satisfying some intellectual curiosity to cloning species to harvest their organs.
No, we definitely do not. FIRST we would need to determine that they were "people", and believe me there would be a great deal of pressure to decide not. And there is a very good chance that they would not be.
We have been very charitable in the West in determining who, mentally and in body, is a "person" and who is not. Perhaps out of guilt from deciding that wrongly in the past? I don't know. Nevertheless we have granted "rights" to "people" who fit the definition only by stretching that definition. Worldwide in recent decades (if we can ignore certain parts of the Middle East and Persia), there has been more tolerance of who is a "person" and who is not, by local society's definition.
Even so, I am sure there would be an outrageous amount of resistance to this. I am not sure that even we Westerners are ready for this quite yet.
Cloning a mammoth is such a likely possibility because we have so many frozen specimens throughout Siberia and Canada. As far as I know, there are no Neanderthal specimens in any reasonably comparable state.
I am not the most religious of people, but does this not sound eerily like Revelation? The dead of past ages coming to life is quite creepy.
On the ethics issue, who is going to raise this child? Real parents? Or a bunch of scientists? I would define a Neanderthal as a human, and that means the clone should have Rights like everyone else. What about people who are prejudiced? I mean, if racism is a tough thing to grow up with, what about speciism ? A bunch of kids teasing him for being an "ape" could not be fun.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
If God have meant for us to clone a Neanderthal, He would provide us the tools and the knowledge to do that!!
Housing, Nursery, or a Zoo?
I think that may become the biggest obstacle.
When that is decided, should we let him/her go to school and socialize or should we let keep him locked up for study.
We're gonna throw dinner rolls at one another? :-P
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
That's like asking "Should I flash linux onto the Microwave so I can use it as a file server?" or "Should I port Doom to the Credit-card reader I bought off eBay?" or "Should I build a deliberately complicated system of relays, pulleys, levers, programs and scripts so that I may control the precise movements and power output by a bog-standard toaster remotely, from 500 miles away?". I mean, really, do you have to ask? Of course we fucking should!
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Such a feat should be possible soon, although it raises a number of bioethics concerns, including where to draw the line between humans and other animals.
that's assuming there really is a line to be drawn. The existence of 'intermediates', rather than forcing us to decide where to draw the line, should really make us question whether the category is as hard and fast as we think it is.
Only worse, imagine the pro-life movement. Now imagine how they'd go on the crusade against cloning. The battle cry right now is to 'protect life'. Do you think for an instant that they won't try to get away with declaring "life starts at conception" along side of "anyone born in a tube isn't actually a person". Do you deny them? kill them? turn em into slaves? Does that ring a bell?
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
Survival of the fittest does not mean survival of the smartest or survival of the strongest. What if Neanderthals are mentally and physically superior to Homo Sapiens? I can't wait to hear the NFL Players' Association bitching about unfair competition. These guys used to hunt mammoths with wooden spears. They don't need protective equipment and they will kick your ass.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
go back to 4chan douchebag
Of course we should clone one...
How else am I going to get a date?
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
we need some advice for not going extinct ourselves
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You have a problem (if that is the right word) if one is cloned.
But what of the problems with a clone that is defective but viable?
Once it learns how to speak, it can tell us what it was like to live back then!
In fact, people of high IQ do in fact tend to have larger brains. This is a statistic that has been demonstrated repeatedly over many years.
Many people like to use Einstein as anecdotal evidence, as he did in have have a larger brain than the average. But all anecdotal evidence aside, there is a positive correlation that cannot be responsibly denied.
BUT... having said that, here is a subspecies that had a demonstrably different brain. How different was it? Which parts large, which parts smaller? Those are very significant facts about which we are mostly ignorant.
Women were not 'persons' under the law until as late as the 1960s in some parts of Canada and the US. They only got universal suffrage at the federal level in the 20th Century.
That's not guilt. That's making right what was patently wrong before.
P.S. Mods, get a grip. Parent is not a troll, it's just plain old garden variety ignorance, which deserves to see the light of day - and then get smacked down by reality.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Honestly? If a group can pull it off, I say go for it. But I don't want to ever be aware of it. (unless I'm a part of said group) It would be the most intriguing experiment of all time, to clone a sample of neanderthals and let them live normal lives, aside from occasional tests perhaps done under the guise of routine checkups. Not only would it be completely ethical from a good number of peoples' point of view, it would tell us so much about them. First of all, would they look enough like us to fit in? Would they turn out being superior? Leaders perhaps? Or would they live relatively mundane lives? Can they understand spoken and/or written language?
I can understand why people would have objections to this, but I think it could work well if executed properly.
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
I am not sure of the exact genetic markers to distinguish Neanderthal from Homo Sapien, but some members of my local Rugby team look like they have most of the documented features.
We're gonna throw dinner rolls at one another?
Amazingly enough, the term bunfight has nothing to do with fighting or buns (or indeed food of any sort).
Oh well, it's not exactly like it's the first time a Briticism has been used incorrectly on /.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
It has nothing to do with the Geico commercials. As other posters have noted, the simple fact of the matter is the "resurrection" of a non-human species, be it homo neanderthalensis (homo sapiens neanderthalensis) or homo florensis, will happen some time this century.
The DNA we have extracted from mammoth hair is from two individual mammoths who died between twenty and sixty thousand years ago. The supposed limit of DNA viability is roughly sixty thousand years. H. neanderthalensis went extinct less than fifteen thousand years ago. H. florensis is thought to have been around as recently as the past thirteen thousand years. I'd say we stand a good chance of recovering genetic material from either, or both of these species.
Should we bring these species out of evolutionary retirement? It's a dilemma:
1. How badly do scientists want to cheese off the world's major religions? I am ambivalent towards this. Ya know, some of the self-righteous pious freaks we have walking around spouting nonsense today deserve a swift kick in the nads. Still, is it worth the potential backlash?
2. Is this ethically justifiable? What could we do with a living genome that we could not do with that genome in a comparative study? How will we justify the potential gain in knowledge versus the rights of the resultant being when he or she is carried to term, reared, and socialized? Will he or she have full rights? Will he or she be able to be valued within society? Is some loony with a gun going to go "big game hunting" or "abominatinon-killing"?
3. Someone else in the comments discussed dealing with this individual if he or she is significantly psychologically and mentally different from us. What can we offer such an individual besides life in a high tech zoo?
4. Some things will be forever beyond us. We'll never hear true Neanderthal language, we'll never observe untainted Neanderthal culture, and a feral child experiment with any of the homo genus we'd be capable of bring back is pretty much unconscionable. Are we looking for answers where there are none?
I guess it comes down to what we can learn versus the risks. I think the one thing we might be able to learn from h. neanderthalensis is how we as a species look to an outside observer. Do we really want them to look us in the eyes and tell us what they see?
I'm not certain we're prepared for it.
-Joe
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
for my comment.
But, in reality, accepting the "life starts at conception" argument makes hypocrites (at best) and murderers (at worst) out of almost everybody. Which is why I reject the concept.
If life starts at conception, then every fertilized egg that does not implant in the uterus, if done purposely, is murder. So the Catholic concept of "rhythm method" is out the door. In fact, the ONLY reasonable means of birth control they could accept (if they were not hypocrites) would be the condom (male or female), since it prevents sperm -> egg contact in the first place. But they have other reasons for rejecting that... so, they are left with nothing. No birth control methods whatever. Since EVERY other form of birth control is accomplished by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine wall.
Not only is abortion murder, but many menses would be as well. What is the percentage of fertilized eggs that get implanted? From what I understand, the percentage is rather low. So even normal married adults having unprotected sex would likely be mass murderers before they every achieve a pregnancy.
The whole concept is so clearly ridiculous that I have a hard time imagining any intelligent people actually entertaining it as a viable idea! My only answer is that they absorbed it from upbringing and accepted it as fact, without logically examining it at all.
And that kind of person is dangerous.
duh anyone who disagrees with me is worse than Hitler.
His name is Karl Pilkington and he had a head like a fucking orange.
I record my sleeptalking
It would certainly stir up the old nature/nurture development thing.
On the other hand, would we have to pay compensation/reparation to the Neanderthal as 'his people' settled the planet first? Where would his reservation be established?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Maybe the Neanderthal would turn out to be really superintelligent, like Khan! Strength, plus intelligence. We better watch out!
I meant to write, "Not only would abortion be murder..."
He's name is Nikolay Valuev, and he is a neanderthal.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'm just a caveman. I fell on some ice and later got thawed out by some of your scientists. Your world frightens and confuses me! Sometimes the honking horns of your traffic make me want to get out of my BMW.. and run off into the hills, or wherever.. Sometimes when I get a message on my fax machine, I wonder: "Did little demons get inside and type it?" I don't know! My primitive mind can't grasp these concepts. But there is one thing I do know - when a man like my client slips and falls on a sidewalk in front of a public library, then he is entitled to no less than two million in compensatory damages, and two million in punitive damages. Thank you.
This question actually got me thinking: shouldn't we try cloning the geniuses of the past like Einstein and Newton? THAT would be an unquestionably good idea that can really settle the nature/nurture debate. Of course I'm no expert in the field so I don't know if that would be as feasible. Can some expert out there mention why this isn't being (to my knowledge) attempted?
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We have been very charitable in the West in determining who, mentally and in body, is a "person" and who is not. Perhaps out of guilt from deciding that wrongly in the past? I don't know. Nevertheless we have granted "rights" to "people" who fit the definition only by stretching that definition. Worldwide in recent decades (if we can ignore certain parts of the Middle East and Persia), there has been more tolerance of who is a "person" and who is not, by local society's definition.
Uh, charitable? At least in America, I think our long history of bigotry, intolerance, and general hostility toward blacks, the poor, native Americans, Japanese-Americans, women, and the mentally handicapped would attest differently. Rather than "charitably," I would use the adverb "grudgingly" to describe much of the rights-distribution experience.
Maybe we're talking about different kinds of "people" or "rights," though. An honest mistake.
When Green's team compared the protein-making portion of Neanderthal mtDNA to that of other primates, they found a pattern of genetic differences suggesting that either Neanderthals were evolving rapidly or that they lived in small groups, which would reduce genetic mixing. ----------------- Lonet My Social Bookmarking Service
He is about to vacate the White House.
And will they taste as good as mammoths? Imagine the bunfight then!
First, correlation does not imply causation.
Second, a statistic can be perfectly valid, but it still says absolutely nothing about a specific case. If it did, you would be able to reliably predict when a coin flip came up "heads".
So you are simply wrong, yet again: I implied no such thing.
Yes, but don't turn this into a new reality TV show.
Raise a number of them in quiet, comfortable conditions, allowing them every chance to aspire. Discover if they are capable of language, reading, writing, and art. Study how they approach problems in comparison with a human control group. Maybe we can learn something.
By no means isolate them from the world, but don't allow them to become some sort of media fascination.
I don't see anything innately dehumanizing about raising someone and studying them like you would a long-term science experiment. Most human children born in this world don't get anywhere near that level of scrutiny and commitment. Maybe we'd be better off if we did.
Anything that is normally raised by a mother (or father) is likely to have behavior that can only be learned and is not "instinctive".
That behavior might be necessary for the being to be happy. Or even if it were smart enough to figure these things out by itself, it might just need "company" to be happy - most of us do (well, maybe not your typical /. reader :)).
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'm just a caveman. I fell on some ice and later got cloned by some of your scientists. Your world frightens and confuses me! Sometimes the honking horns of your traffic make me want to get out of my BMW.. and run off into the hills, or wherever.. Sometimes when I get a message on my fax machine, I wonder: "Did little demons get inside and type it?" I don't know! My primitive mind can't grasp these concepts. But there is one thing I do know - there is a fine line of bio-ethical concern between humans and animals.
ceci n'est pas une
This is a rather ambiguous question, isn't it? It could mean "Would it be ethically right to do?" - which was what I read it as first, but it could also mean "Is this something we ought to do when there are so many other things that seem more necessary?" And then, of course there are all the variants of "Wouldn't it be cool if ...".
So, should we do that kind of things when there is [your choice of current crisis]? Well, yes, I think, within limits. The thing is, in times of crisis, what we need is to think out of the box, so we can find a way out of our problems. Apparently a lot of the biggest and most successful companies were founded exactly in times of crisis - Microsoft being one example. Maybe cloning neandertals (note the lack of "h" - Neandertal is a placename in Germany; the Neander Valley, and it is spelled that way) is a bit out of reach, but we should certainly not cut back on basic research in a crisis.
The ethics thing, then? Would it be right to do it, if we could? Well, according to whose views are we talking here? I'm not sure there is a right or wrong answer here - very often all we have is the choice and the consequences. Now, don't start pulling out religion - it simply hasn't got the answer however much you try to twist it. Even if I believed in a god, I don't think he/she/it would have gone to the extreme lengths of equipping people with the ability to reason and make informed choices only to tell them in minute detail all they have to think or do - we have our brains so we should use to the best of our ability. All we are required to is make our choices and live with the consequences.
So, while I can't tell what is the ethically right thing to do, I can tell what I would choose: I would do it. I would love to know another intelligent species than our own; one that might be our intellectual equals.
Neonderthals are STILL ALIVE! They're just called Neocons today. See Dick Cheney.
No, Cheney is just a cousin.
One George W Bush is enough!!!!
Horse and Donkey are of the same Genus but are considered different species because their offspring are not viable (Horse + Donkey = Mule).
Case and point though is that they do reproduce.
I wonder if a human can reproduce at all with a Neandathal, if so what would we call the resultant offspring (granted that we are of a different species I assume the offspring would be impotent - ala Mule)?
Whatever happened to the wooly mammoth? Years ago, some company was going to try to clone one, and have an elephant carry it to birth. That would have been cool.
A neanderthal, though? I dunno. There's just something creepy about cloning something to study... that can be embarrassed by the fact that it's being studied.
On the upside, I have no doubt that he/she would make it big in fetish porn.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Personally I've no qualms about attempts to clone Neanderthals but I'd be much more concerned if someone suggested cloning kdawson!
It's a question of being able. If we can do it, the only question is, who does it first. And I already have plans for an army of grunts for my evil lair's meat-shield. :D
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Chromosome errors routinely lead to mental retardation such as Downs syndrom and many other defects. It is likely that a clone of the efficient and smart neanderthal will produce a somewhat defective specimen.
Are we to put the result in a side show or in a mental hospital? Or just put it out of its misery?
I can not see any good coming of this before we have the technology to fix almost all chromosome related deceases quickly end efficiently. Until then it would be a crime.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
We're gonna throw dinner rolls at one another?
Amazingly enough, the term bunfight has nothing to do with fighting or buns (or indeed food of any sort).
Oh well, it's not exactly like it's the first time a Briticism has been used incorrectly on /.
Well that's one theory. Here's another.
I would suggest that you go learn some molecular biology before you make comments like this.
Here is how you would do it.
1) Sequence the ancient DNA and assemble it until you feel you have a "complete" genome sequence.
2) Either mutate an existing human genome using the technology Sangamo as or assemble a complete synthetic genome using technology such as that Synthetic Genomics is developing.
3) Replace the genome in an existing human cell with the Neanderthal artificial genome or create a artificial cell using the artificial genome (this is the part which hasn't really been demonstrated yet). Alternatively if one can create an artificial nucleus you could presumably transfer it into an enucleated human cell using the standard nuclear transfer techniques used in cloning.
4) Take the neanderthal cell and subject it to current iPS procedures to generate a neanderthal stem cell.
5) Transfer the nucleus of this cell into a human egg (standard cloning procedures again).
6) Implant said egg (now functioning as a fertilized neanderthal zygote) into a human host (or if synthetic wombs are available one of those).
7) Wait ~7-9 months for either C-section birth or natural birth.
Of course there are a lot of things that can go wrong in this process so one is probably going to have to do it multiple times. But its the same basic methods that will probably be used to resurrect the woolly mammoth.
There is no need to undertake gene therapy on any human child or adult. I cannot see any "unethical" argument because one never has to work with a human embryo. I would also point out that we will be doing human embryo modifications relatively soon to correct genetic defects. Watch and see how the debate develops once the genes for intelligence become more clearly known. Argue the morality of knowingly giving birth to a child of below average intelligence!
You are simply wrong about the rhythm method; it aims to time sex such that the fertilized egg does not implant. That is the WHOLE point of the method! It does absolutely nothing to address whether an egg gets fertilized. (The egg most commonly gets fertilized in the fallopian tubes, one to many days before implantation. There is no way to reliably control or time the release of eggs, so this is effectively random. The only thing that can be timed with any regularity is the "fertility" period, which means timing the menstrual cycle... which means when it is possible for the egg to implant.) The two most commonly used measures for the rhythm method are basal temperature and cervical mucus, which are both tied to the menstrual cycle, NOT the release of eggs.
Second, "murder" does imply intent. And if (as described above) you INTEND to prevent a fertilized egg from implanting (which, again, is the DEFINITION of the rhythm method... look it up!), then you would be committing premeditated murder! According to your own logic.
You did bring up one good point, but you even got that one wrong. Life does not start at conception. A sperm is a living cell. An egg is a living cell. According to accepted definitions of "living organisms".
But if you meant that "human life" starts at conception -- a valid human "person" -- then again, by the arguments above, you had damned well better rethink your behavior. Because you are likely already a murderer.
You said it, I didn't. I am just pointing out where your facts and logic are faulty.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes, of all things, the first thing that came to mind was; They are stronger than homo sapien in it's current incarnation right? Smaller brain, more brawn?
;)
Should they then be allowed to play sports?
Or would be need "Male", "Female" and "Neandertal" events?
we'll just fill in the gaps with frog DNA. what could possibly go wrong.
Compared to where, for example? Do you have an example of a similar-sized nation that shows us to be slow on the uptake in this area?
that my comment has received so many mods as "flamebait". Somebody must feel very defensive about this.
... saying such things could get you modded as "flamebait" as I have been.
Hey, man! Every cell is a "person"! Animals should be able to vote!
I am sure you have heard it all before.
Let's bring them back to use as a subjugated slave caste doing jobs that are too hard or dangerous for humans.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
.. we don't have enough people on this planet already.
Real men read Slashdot articles at -1, bottom up.
It is probable that reviving a human from so far in time means his DNA doesn't have the defenses we evolved against current diseases ?
Would our vaccines even work ?
This is the worst (potentially feasible) idea I've heard of.
Even in a world where moral relativism is pushing the limits of outright folly, there are good reasons to not do such things:
1) We'd be dealing with a human species. That means you'd essentially have a human on your hands, to raise like you'd raise any other kid. Except he'd be ugly, different, and WAY more difficult to handle than your average 2 year old.
2) Someone will have to be responsible for this person for the rest of his life. If he's not at the same cognitive level as us, this will be perceived as a burden. If he IS as smart as us, then we'll have to answer for bringing him into a world where he is the ONLY representative of his species.
3) We might have the unintended consequence of resurrecting ugly social movements/ideas like racism an phrenology. The "speciesm" we will be committing and legitimizing by the act of creating a human being for research will have spillovers into racist thought.
4) We will have to deal with having created a human being for scientific research purposes. The ensuing debate about balancing research interests with human rights will NOT end with human rights getting the upper hand.
5) For those of us who know there is a God, I don't think I have to speak of the hubris of doing such a thing or the possible consequences beyond what is outlined above.
Next up: vat grown ninjas?
Dear pro-lifer. You are fundamentally uninformed about how birth control works.
Please note that birth control prevents fertilization from ever occuring, and "morning after" pills do not "chemically burn" the fertilized egg either.
"I don't understand why someone would wish to draw a line between animal and human for ethical reasons, when it would be treated the same due to it being mentally incapable of anything else."
Is that fact though? Do we really know what their mental capabilities were? is there any reason they most definitely wouldn't be able to learn an awful lot of the things a normal Homo sapien child does?
What if we cloned the DNA of our own species from a body from the same era? Have humans really changed that much? I was under the impression the outright majority of whats changed between then and now is simply what is inherited, not physically at conception but socially as we're brought up by our parents and at school.
And instead of creating one just bring a Neanderthal kid from his own time into an stasis bubble.
It's interesting how Asimov thought about such an experiment in "the ugly little boy" but didn't anticipate cloning.
It was ok, but a #2 would be fun if Schinder did it :) Bigalo Neandtho
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
and that is that some hormonal birth control methods are actually contraceptive (as opposed to contra-implantive). But that has no effect on the Catholic argument. If anything, it is strengthened: shouldn't the Catholic church embrace hormonal contraceptives? Because it would prevent so many murders (by their definition)?
Or even (to be charitable), unintentional loss of human life?
But if you know that only a small percentage of fertilized eggs normally get implanted (true), then you know, if you are trying to cause a pregnancy, that a large number of lives are likely to be terminated before you succeed! Naturally or otherwise, a great many human lives will be lost, in order to bring one to viability. And that is preventable! So by the very act of trying to create life, you are murdering a great many more. Yes, murder, because you knew that and went ahead anyway. Premeditated.
This is not my logic, it is theirs.
So the only way to sure that you will NOT be a mass murderer, then, is to not try to procreate at all.
But that is against their principles as well.
So the Catholic Church (and a good many other churches, I am not trying to single them out) is either advocating murder, or they are hypocrites. There is no escaping the logic; it is quite valid, and again, it is their logic, not mine.
would certainly not object.
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IMO, he could as long as he does not break any laws (otherwise he would go to jail just as homo sapiens do).
Just remember that there are rights and then there are responsibilities...
What about the kid that had brain cancer, and they removed like 90% of his brain, but he was just as smart, zero reduction in ability.
Surely that prooves, size does not equal processing power, like gates does not equals MIPS in cpus.
Isnt 90% of the brain redundancies and backups. Who knows maybe nurons have qantum access in time, and store information in a time warp, rather than atoms.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
But its the same basic methods that will probably be used to resurrect the woolly mammoth.
Even assuming you're basically correct, there is one major difference, a mammoth genome could be placed in an *elephant* cell and implanted in an *elephant* host mother. Could a Neanderthal be placed in a chimpanzee host, or would it require a human? Regardless of the practical difference, a Neanderthal "child" created from a human cell and born by a human mother will be viewed as very different from one born by a mere "animal". Ethical positions are likely to be formed more by this than by the actual nature of the Neanderthal "child".
Why yes, let's clone us up a species that has a good chance of being (a) sentient, and for all intents and purposes "human", and (b) mentally inferior to Homo sapiens humans.
Clearly, we as a society are very well equipped to deal with such things.
sic transit gloria mundi
But my argument is against those who say they DO know, and make it religious doctrine. What they accomplish by doing that is endless suffering and cruelty, with no noticeable accompanying benefit to humanity.
Except to make some people comfortable in their hypocrisy. I suppose that could be called benefit, in a masochistic way.
but I have read more recently that it is not so simple.
When I was young, I used to wonder why pocket-sized dogs (which demonstrably had smaller brains than very large dogs; it isn't all thick skull) were not abysmally stupid in comparison.
Then I read that brain / body mass ratio was the determining factor. But that is not the entire answer either. If it were, the Chihuahua would probably outsmart the Great Dane. In any case, within the same species, I don't know if any of the generalizations hold.
Brain/body mass ratio is a pretty good general indicator of an animal's intelligence, but it is not the sole determining factor.
It is known that there is a general correlation in humans between brain mass and intelligence. But again, that is not the only determining factor. So it is difficult to draw hard-and-fast rules.
We are all animals. It's like saying where do we draw the line between snails and other animals. Makes no sense (except that they are not snails!)
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The Neanderthal is considerably smarter than we are.
(Unlikely but possible.)
Resolution: It could be smarter than a human, but is extremely unlikely to be smarter than all humans. A team of people could take it down if necessary.
6) There are many, many diseases around today that didn't exist before Neanderthals went extinct. He would be so vulnerable to modern disease that he would have to live in a plastic bubble. And congrats on being the only commenter who actually thought this through.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
It's only a problem because you consider a Neanderthal to be a "mere animal" rather than a human. That seems a particulary unethical stance to me considering what we already know about them, OTOH perhaps you are just ignorant of that knowledge.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
that humans are animals?
where to draw the line between humans and other animals.
Realise the truth: there's no line
--- Back to the trees, back to the trees !
And here comes another question : who would be picked to be the surrogate mother, and how would she deal with such a baby ?
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
Oh, FFS ! Send it over here to Europe then. We seem to have developed some tolerance to atheism while you remained stuck in the 19th century with scarlet letters and witch hunting...
Seriously people. You will always have a few clusters of ignorant, racist, bigoted a**holes in remote areas. Why not deal with them, instead of thinking that there might be a problem with atheists ?
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
Actually, look at the evidence we have for Neanderthals. They
- built tools to build other tools with. Chimps build improvised tools for the moment, then discard them. Building a hammer, so you can build an axe with it, is a human trait and implies quite a bit of intelligence.
- apparently had at least some level of work specialization and that would imply some form of commerce. At least as in, "me give you dead antelope, if you make me big strong stone spear." Again, that's not something chimps do. (Though Bonobos seem to have figured out stuff like "I'll give you two bananas for sex.")
- they built crude musical instruments (but then it took H. Sapiens a long time to make any better ones too.)
- they seem to have had (primitive) ceremonial burial, which in turn implies _some_ concept of afterlife or at least remorse. That's a bit of abstract concept there. You don't see a cat giving her dead kitten an elaborate burial.
- they decorated themselves with crude "jewellery" and paints (i.e., basically cosmetics). Again, it seems to suggest some kind of society and the brain power where that kind of thing matters. E.g., the concept of a social status. You don't even bother carrying, say, a necklace of sabertooth teeth unless that tells the others something about you martial prowess and that matters somehow. Or maybe if you have some kind of a mythology where that invokes the power of that tiger, but that's even more complex thinking.
- they skinned animals and made primitive clothes and shelters. (Well, primitive by our standards, but quite ahead of just digging a burrow like an animal.)
- apparently some figured out how to use coal, where it was easily accessible. (Homo Sapiens never really bothered too much with it until the industrial age.)
Etc.
I'd say that's clearly ahead of animal level. I'd say it's at the very least Forest Gump level.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Hey, just because someone is an unmitigated bastard and an a**hole at the time does not make him a Neandertal.
Unfortunately, jerks are not even a subspecies of human beings. I tend to believe that it's a cultural thing, though inbreeding only makes it worse.
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
A Bishop from the catolic church is against this. I dont think religious people should have anything to say in this matter. The ethics about this cloning should be handled by the scientists or atheists. History have shown that religion is the greatest killer on this planet. So when some catholic (A believer in the teachings of Cathol:) wants to prevent this, I think he is out of line. He should only address issues regarding his own religion, and only be allowed to talk religious matters to people over 18.
Cloning a neanderthal is certainly an interesting idea, but if I may I'd like to go somewhat tangential here.
It seems like there would be more obvious value in cloning our direct genetic ancestors. If the oldest homo-sapiens are extremely close to us genetically, cloning them might give us interesting insights into such things as the Jungian concept of genetic memory. Would they perceive the world differently, even if they were raised identically? Perhaps certain archetypes which we take for granted would be non-obvious for them. I suspect we could learn a lot about our own psychology by studying the behavior of a genetically ancient homo-sapien raised as we are raised today.
Just because you don't like moral relativism doesn't make it folly. It's just like your belief in god; I'm not crazy about it, but that doesn't make you wrong.
...as a rugby player, I don't think we should one is enough. (Here is Chabal's profile at the Sales Sharks rugby union team.
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
Bullshit.
The issue is about how such a person would be able to function in a world where he or she is the only member of an inferior race.
See some of the troll comments in every story on /. right here to see the sort of cruelty that would be visited on such a person.
Making someone who is guaranteed from the outset to be a permanent stranger is a very offensive idea.
It has nothing to do with old books, or supernatural beings, or magical 6-day creations.
It has only to do with raising a child.
Leave it to the /. types to want to clone a neanderthal. There are plenty of those here already!! What is needed is a whole bunch of Einsteins. So obvious even a caveman would agree.
and George W Bush was a failed experiment
5) For those of us who know there is a God, I don't think I have to speak of the hubris of doing such a thing or the possible consequences beyond what is outlined above.
You could've said the same thing about the earth not being the center of the universe, gunpowder, medicine, or automobiles.
Ah I see, if it seems wrong to you, it must be wrong in god's eyes. Create your own religion much?
the Neanderthal is within all humans, there is a theory that as different branches of the human race evolve a few would have interbred and you know the law of the jungle - "he who hesitates is lunch" so naturally only the strongest and/or smartest survived to make us what we are today...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Canada
They would be smarter. In case anyone has missed this, Neanderthal Man had a larger brain than us.
In fact recently some other 'early modern' human fossils from I believe South Africa have been dug up that have significantly bigger brains than us.
Whales and Elephants, etc have bigger brains too. Brain size isn't necessarily an exact correlate to intelligence.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Indeed. What I want to know is what attracts them all to YouTube.
I hate printers.
Neanderthaler clones you!
You want a record label from the future?
I think we should call PETA. No bear deserves that fate.
It's been a long time.
Why should we even bother cloning a caveman when we can just go to Encino California and thaw out Pauly Shore?
Harter's Law.
"As a /. discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving George Bush approaches one."
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Duh ! Because clearly we didn't have anything like the exciting array of weaponary we have today back then. Sure clubbing them to death was satisfactory but we've been waiting 40,000 years for the opportunity to napalm those suckers and boy I can't wait to get started. The tale of when those neandertals killed my great ... lots ... great uncle when he just stepped out from the cave for more wood is still told in my family and boy does it get me wound up.
"Such a feat should be possible soon"
One top scientist was quoted as saying, "It's so easy a caveman could do it".
Hypothesis: if they do manage to clone a Neanderthal and raise him in an approximately normal environment, they'll find out he's pretty much the same, in every way that matters, as a clone of a modern human. If anything, the Neanderthal is probably less inbred (and therefore likely to be healthier and smarter) than the average human today.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
In Korea, only old people talk to cloned Neanderthals.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
People, often ignoring reality, say "Just because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD." Well, that's cute, but the bottom line is that if you CAN, someone WILL. Once we CAN clone a Neanderthal, it's a done deal. it's just a matter of where and when. So why not?
BFG9000...seriously, have you no respect for the tools of your craft?
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
One Ballmer should be enough for anyone!
Be gone from my sight or prepare to feel my flaming wraith!
Only if we call him Steve.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Didn't I see this in Sliders, but I think in that world they were "Cromags" or some sort...
Maybe I'm ready to slide now, before they break loose and take over the alternate realities.
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
What if human antibodies are incompatible with neanderthal physiology? What about the symbiotic bacteria living within the gut? All mammals today have some bacterial system living inside them. Is neanderthal physiology similar enough to host the same bacteria as humans? This would be a very sick individual.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
The GP only said that cloning of dead people was unethical, they didn't say anything about God (Do you believe that only religious people can be ethical?). Doing any medical procedure to someone without their consent, even after they are dead, is unethical. It doesn't matter whether the procedure is cloning, medical experimentation, or harvesting organs for transplant. As your own link states, it is debatable whether Einstein consented to any experimentation on his brain, and he certainly did not consent to being cloned.
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...I till say clone Jimi Hendrix. I'd really love to hear some good music being produced again, no telling what he'd come up with!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
First of all we CANNOT as far as I can see actually create a genuine neanderthal individual. We don't and probably never will have a 100% certainly complete neanderthal genome. At best we might do something like take a human genome and modify it in such a way that it incorporated all the differences we DO know of between our genome and theirs. So the resulting individual would not be exactly genetically identical to a neanderthal, it would have neanderthal characteristics, or at least some sort of characteristics that were different in some respects from us. (The same would be true in the case of a mammoth, it would be a 'modded' elephant).
Second it would have to be brought to term in a human host mother. This means it would be subject to the intrauterine environment of a human, not a neanderthal, and that would be bound to have some developmental implications.
Third we have no really clear notion of the role of epigenetics on organisms. Even assuming the DNA was 100% neanderthal these genes would have to be inserted in a human ovum since we certainly don't have any viable neanderthal cells to insert it into. It is entirely unclear what exactly the effects of that difference are.
Reasonably we could therefor expect the result to be an organism with some similarities to neanderthal man, but we would never be certain what exactly the degree of similarity would be and any conclusions we could draw from studying it would be subject to interpretation.
We can also draw a number of fairly reliable conclusions about the mental capabilities of this neanderthal simply from available evidence.
We know for example that neanderthal's lived in social groups, we know they made complex tools and made tools using other tools, they traded materials over distances, they decorated their bodies, buried their dead, made clothing, and exploited a wide variety of food sources.
Sounds like they were NOT dumb. Not at all. Given some anatomical differences in brain organization that seem to have existed vs modern humans they certainly may have been cognitively different, probably were, but chances are the differences were not all that radical given that they seem to have been technologically and culturally fairly close to the same level as modern humans, at least until late in their history.
Now we can consider the cultural environment our clone would be subject to. Even on the assumption he/she was not treated as a human it would be likely the clone would be brought up in an environment where it was provided with a wide range of opportunities to interact on an ongoing basis with humans. It certainly would be brought up in our culture and, as its faculties permitted, allowed to participate in that culture. Given the vast uncertainty we have as to the effects of environment on HUMANS we really can't say how that would impact our clone. It certainly wouldn't be going too far to say that it would obviously try to be as much like us as it could, just like a child reared in a culture different from its parents grows up with the values and traditions of the adopted culture.
Given all of this my question would be 'would this experiment have scientific value?' Potentially, but much of the same value might be achieved simply by creating some cells containing some of these neanderthal genes and studying them in culture (IE in a 'test tube'). This is what I would predict is a lot more likely than anyone ever making a clone individual. I just don't think that individual would be super useful. It would always be doubtful how close it really was to being a neanderthal at any level, and in many ways it would be MORE difficult to study its biology than to study the biology of tissue cultures. After all, the thing IS going to strike many/most people as being worthy of some rights. I seriously don't see anyone being allowed to conduct arbitrary experimentation on it.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
You could make a very good argument that the atomic bomb created a much more stable post-WWII political atmosphere. How many people would have died in a US-USSR showdown?
Every post seems to assume a neanderthal would be some sub-normal freak. What if we clone him and he arrives with a 100 IQ and an average grasp of reality?
In short, what if 'he' is 'us'?
That would be a little awkward. Scientists couldn't really keep him locked in a lab for eighty years, could they?
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
Doitdoitdoitdoit
Tell that to the Germans and the Japanese, both of which were close to finishing their bombs. We were lucky to win the race.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
We shouldn't clone just one but enough for a family group with enough genetic diversity for breeding. Being higher level mammals, they would certainly need a cultural framework provided for upbringing. The ideal environment would probably be one where human researchers live with a troop of docile primates -- not chimps because they're too violent but along those lines, go the whole Jane Goodall route. The Neanderthal children will then have exposure to a more typical ape society as well as human. With this exposure, we can see if they're more human or ape-like in development. Can you imagine the scientific excitement if we discover they can speak? And just imagine our surprise if they do fall within the range of average human intelligence.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
My wife is a molecular biologist, and I've taken enough classes in it to know *exactly* what I'm talking about. I'm pro-choice and pro-stem cell research, and my wife and I (well, mostly her) have gone through several rounds of in-vitro fertilization, so I'm not objecting to this on any sort of "embryos are sacred" grounds.
The details of the process are irrelevant: what matters is the outcome. I said "something that would have been born a human baby" rather than "embryo" deliberately. Whether you touch an existing human egg or not, you're following a procedure that would generate a human baby, and using it to create a child that is definitely *not*.
This child will be different enough to the rest of humanity that she could never live as a normal person. Her race was different enough from ours that our ancestors either deliberately slaughtered her entire race, or simply out-competed her race for food and resources. Either way, even in this more enlightened times, the child would be so deeply disadvantaged (in every sense of the word) that creating her deliberately would be an act of heartless cruelty.
Check out my other reply to this thread. My objection is not to the modification of germ cells themselves, but the act of turning those deliberately-modified cells into a living breathing sentient person.
You and your girlfriend are probably doing everything you possibly can to *avoid* creating a living breathing person, so I got no problems with you.
The entire argument against cloning is coming from well-meaning, do-gooders who for the most part, lack the capacity to understand the implications of cloning. There seems to be this thought that a cloned individual would be lacking in some capacity or held up as a carnival sideshow.
You may recall that back in 1978 the same furor erupted over the idea of a test-tube-baby. Louise Brown was raised as a normal child, had a normal upbringing and has her own family now. I would bet that if you asked her what her opinion is on being a test-tube-baby, she would look you in the eye and wonder how your head is screwed on.
Maybe the fears really revolve around our definition of what is intelligence and the seat of the soul. Intellect, development and the human condition are easy to define. The theocratic's will argue on the state of the soul (an intangible as we know it). To put the brakes on bringing a clone to life because of our fear that they would not have a soul is in the land of isty-misty bogeyman stories.
Cloning, even from an intact cell, should not raise such a visceral reaction, unless there is some belief that this will "steal" a soul from heaven or hell. Cloning of the long dead (even from pieces of DNA re-assembled in a laboratory process) is no different from a theological standpoint.
We are not going to create a "neanderthal park" where people will come and gawk at the nearly human. But we do need to define what is an intelligent being (dolphins, apes, neanderthal's, etc...) before some intelligence comes to our planet and decides that we are amongst the least intelligent on our own planet.
Tisha Hayes
If you do this, and then we suffer a major catastrophe wiping out our technology and records, and you have a few of these guys running around, you're going to really confuse folks in the future.
Now they were there, then they weren't, then they were there again?
They are going to find one of those guys frozen in ice on a ski resort somewhere 10 million or so years in the future when the sun goes into a solar maximum and the whole of society is beating themselves up because they are arrogant enough to believe they are the cause of global warming. They are going to find traces of Pizza and Cappuccino in his stomach use it to speculate about the plants and animals that existed at the time of his demise.
Then some fat professor is going to espouse a popular theory that we evil human beings exterminated most of the Neanderthal 100 million years ago with genocide and left no remains to be unearthed. They will create fancy computer animated models 'proving' to the public just how bad we were. There will then be midnight vigils and a renewed effort to clone the Neanderthal once again. Affirmative action will insure they get a top notch education and preferred jobs and opportunities even though the only thing they can do is swing a club and grunt. Finally, both races eventually end up in extinction and the earth can finally rids itself of the vermin and disease that roamed its surface for millennia.
I think it deserves a Darwin Award. But who will be around to give it?
I welcome our cloned Neanderthal overlords.
Now that you have made me aware of the sanctity of the human germ line, I'm going to do everything I can to protect these gametes.
If the Pythons hadn't already done that, you need to hand in your geek card at once.
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."- Winston Churchill
... and stronger, but did not breed as fast as us, thus being overcome by sheer numbers.
We know that they had similar capabilites when it comes to tools, society and culture as us.
Thus given the fairly large range of intellect among us, we can be pretty sure that a Neanderthal raised as a human would fit perfectly well within our range of intellectual capability.
Would they look different? Sure, but given the shear range of appearance among us, it is not unlikely that a Neanderthal may appear human.
However, given that people KNOW they are different, they will be treated differently and may thus have a very unhappy life.
I guess you could arrange for a family to take the child with a secret identity, but sooner or later the child would find out, and imagine the horror of finding out you aren't actually the same species as everyone else, but cloned from an extinct branch considered 'primitive'.
I thought Neanderthals actually had *bigger* brains than we do.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
where all kind of ethical lacking, greed, bastardliness goes around. they would be exploited to hell.
cloning and bringing to life a lost specie is like having a child. only a responsible civilization that is past preliminary stages of being a responsible society should be allowed to.
Read radical news here
So what happens if Neanderthal contracts a catastrophic sickness? What if it develops cancer? Who/what agency determines if any type of treatment will be provided? And by whom? Does it become a true lab experiment for testing purposes? Testing cancer treatments? What if it needs an organ transplant to survive? Holy cow, can you imagine the flame-throwing that would occur around THAT debate?
Sexually active women using the pill get fertilized eggs from time to time, they just don't implant in the uterus.
So, maybe use the google before getting on your soapbox.
semantics are everything!
"I thought Neanderthals actually had *bigger* brains than we do."
... unless that is, Elephants are so intelligent, that they can hide their intelligence from us! :)
An Elephant has a much larger brain than a human. That doesn't make Elephants more intelligent than humans.
e.g. http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Elephant-intelligence
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
I've seen horrendously ugly people reproduce. Well... Not personally, but you get the picture.
Only if you call him Ponter Boddit.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I oppose cloning for none of the reasons you state. Biologically, a clone is the same as a twin. Theologically, twins have souls, and so would clones. They're just people whose genes happen to match someone else's.
My problem with cloning rests on two things:
Neither of these are bogeyman ideas. The first reflects a definition of "human life" that you may not share, but for which there are valid arguments.
The second reflects the way oppressive governments already view people, but makes it worse. If you haven't read "Brave New World" with its descriptions of people bred with jobs in mind, including being slightly brain-damaged before birth so they'd be content with dumb jobs, you should. Ask yourself what guys like Kim Jong-il would do with that ability.
The Germans were close but would probably lack sufficient Uranium (amongst other resources) in time before the end to finish anything. The Japanese were still a ways off.
...in bed
We don't need any more republican voters.
They could show me how to order my car insurance online! I'm only a pre-simian.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How about a BBG9000? lol.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Though these days, I believe 'chav' is the proper name given to them.
They did, which is why the zombie plague outbreak of 32,612 BC wiped them out but left a few humans.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
If I understand cloning correctly, we would do it by taking a homo sapiens (fertilized?) egg and replace the DNA inside with Neanderthal DNA. That seems like a more drastic form of gene sculpting (i.e. designing an embryo so that it is a specific sex, has a specific hair color, etc); and worse, it's done in the name of experimentation, where the result may be disastrous for the resulting person. I'm not sure where I stand on that, but I know there is going to be strong public disapproval (even beyond the usual "it ain't natural" objections).
Then there is the question of how the resulting child is raised: does s/he have all the rights of a human being? I would want that question addressed by government BEFORE the child is born, so that we don't have to have the court battle while the child is alive (and maybe sitting in a cage somewhere-- yes I've read a lot of scifi. :)
Obligatory: The Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov (of course)
Come on, people, this is the like the pink elephant in the room.
Who would carry the neandertal embryo to term???
We don't have artificial womb technology that's worth a damn yet (and not in the foreseeable future either), so we would need a volunteer. But how would that work? There are all sorts of issues surrounding surrogacy NOW, when it is the same species. Do we pay them? (Is that legal?) Who has more rights to the child, the woman bearing the child or the genetic donors?
With a different species it gets even more complicated. Who are the genetic donors? The scientists? Is it ethical to ask a woman to carry an embryo from a different species? What if the volunteer bearing the neandertal doesn't want to give up the baby to the scientists that cloned it? How the H do you work that out in court?
We inherit much of our disease resistance in the form of antibodies prenatally, so the neandertal child would have much of the same immunity as the surrogate mother that volunteers to carry the child to term.
Someone needs to play professional football, or flip my burgers if it doesn't work out for em.
We will need to clone them to take care of the cloned Mammoth infestation. Once that is dealt with, we can just let climate change take care of the rest. Perfect!
Solar can kiss my butt, I'll make a grunt-powered sledge out of my car when petrol runs out!
Reference: Donkey + Horse = Mule
Equus asinus +
Equus caballus =
Equus caballus + asinus??
Of course it only works for one generation.
Would make Ultimate fighting a lot cooler !
Just think of it: We could have a better scapegoat for society than Mexicans, Muslims and homosexuals.
I bet we already have! We probably cloned aliens from Area 51, Hitler, and Mozart... someone's keeping it all hush-hush.
... thinking ahead to 2012.
Have gnu, will travel.
They did, which is why the zombie plague outbreak of 32,612 BC wiped them out but left a few humans.
Contrary to popular opinion, zombies don't eat just brains, nor do they talk and say, "Brraaaaaiinnnssss". They are opportunists, and will eat any organ or bits o' flesh they can sink their rotting teeth into. Brains are actually rather hard to get to, being encased in the cranium and all.
Hmm.. a neanderthal zombie.. now that'd be scary.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Would there even be a question of Neanderthals had become extinct last week? Of course not - we would assume we were the cause and therefore it was out responsibility to bring them back.
Since it really was our fault that we killed them all off by evolving into something better, I think it's our responsibility to bring them back.
or else!
Prior art here: http://earthfirst.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/bush-neanderthal.jpg
|You could've said the same thing about the earth not being the center of the universe, gunpowder, medicine, or automobiles
You might have a point about gunpowder. I will also add biological warfare, nuclear warfare, oppression, torture, slavery, and other evils man inflicts upon man (or woman), to the evils for which we might get judged by a just God. I'm hoping mercy will overcome judgement.
You need not subscribe to a particular religion to see for yourself that the points about medicine and Geocentricism are nonsensical. Just because some religious people were horribly wrong in the past does not invalidate all discussion about what we should fear from a just God.
Even if you are an agnostic, it should be easy enough to see that creating a thinking, living human being who might suffer in our world just to satisfy our scientific curiosity is something we ought to think twice about
The title character of Asimov short story "The Ugly Boy" is a Neanderthal child subject to scientific investigation in our time. It makes a good cautionary tale for those considering cloning a species so close to our own. For me the ethical considerations against such a project outweigh the potential scientific value.
By that logic, you would advocate the use of abortion against children born with uncorrectable birth defects. Life should be joyous. Even if you are not quite the same or as smart as others. Also, as to 'inferior', I think that term is not appropriate. From what I have read, Neanderthals were less creative, but otherwise as smart as humans.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Yes we should.
Why is this even a question?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
But the big question is, when is America going to get its first Neanderthal President?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
This should never be attempted. Neanderthal went extinct due to killing and competition from homo sapien. They were us before we come along just as species before them. They would have the right to live their lives as they saw fit yet I doubt they would be allowed to, save for being kept on reservations or zoos. Just because we could make the atomic bomb it does not make it right to use that technology either.
It's not the size of the brain that matters, but the surface area since the cortex is on the surface. Hence our convoluted brain. waiting for a "size matters" joke...
'Know?' Not until he gives you his business card you don't.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Seriously though. It would be the advertising coup of a lifetime.
___ I don't respond to Anonymous Cowards, and I Never Mod them UP.
Here's something I've always thought to be a bit hokey and religious of contemporary science: why do we assume Neanderthals were less intelligent than we are? Their brains were larger than our brains are or were. Somehow, this is meant to mean that they were less intelligent - they needed more brain mass to work their body. Yet, we've got massive dinosaurs which had the smallest of brains. And human brain size seems linked to intelligence to some degree.
There could be any number of reasons why they died off and we survived that does not include intelligence. They might have been susceptible to a different diseases; they may have hunted themselves out of existence, they might have had homosexual preferences or a lack of sex drive and may have simply dwindled in population to the point of unsustainability.
And another thought: have we concluded that their genome is significantly/markedly different than that of homo sapiens? I ask, because I recall hearing postulation that neanderthals really weren't anything different than us - just old/sick/etc. homo sapiens or those with significantly different dietary inputs (ie all meat instead of meat + grains which could account for the shorter lifespans, larger brains, longer periods between pregnancy, and more prominent features).
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
A reasonable question, to be sure. I'd say because you don't do it the same way: the cat doesn't give its turds a few grave goods for the afterlife, nor mark the grave, nor bother making sure that each of them are placed in the same prescribed position in the grave. E.g., you (or the cat) don't make sure that the turd is laid (or crouched, or whatever a particular culture favoured) in a certain way in its "grave", nor that it's aligned in a the exact same way as your other turds, etc. When you have signs that there was something ritualistic or prescribed about a burial, there must be something more about it than about hiding a turd.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I am so not worried about this one.
I don't see cloning a dead, probably-intelligent species as being much different from AI research or SETI, from an ethical viewpoint. The big question there, is: can you handle meeting someone new and different? The question is also pretty damn close to deciding to have a baby, except that there's more uncertainty about the result.
Worst case, it has weird health problems. Guess what? We already deal with that routinely. People die; it's part of life, so get over it. If you did your best to take care of it/him, then it's not any different than having a messed-up baby. Considering people's fear of "GATTACA world," I think most have already accepted that is an acceptable risk, and preferable to not rolling the dice.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I assume the religious right will have no problem. Go ahead and clone some unicorns, too! And dinosaurs! good luck!
No SIG for you!
1) no, not human. Why would he/she be more difficult then a 2 year old?
2) That is true with anyone brought into the world, and we could bring more then 1.
3) phrenology?? why we that come back? that makes no sense at all. Maybe you look down on people with a bumpy noggin', but the rest of us do not.
4) You mean like test tube babies?
5) Know?? proof please.
So you are against invitro fertilization? test tube babies?
Ironically, the only neanderthals we need to get rid of is that kind of thinking.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You ahve no idea how diseases work, do you?
Idiot.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Ok seriously, why would we clone a Neanderthal? What make them a prison spectacle in a cage? Just because we can does not mean we should. This is one that we should not clone. Didn't they see Jurassic Park? Well not exactly the same thing, but who knows, that Neanderthal could have some disease that could kill all humans. Or we could kill it with a cold.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Actually, he poses an very insightful thought.
Perception of it's rights will depend on the mammal that hosts the fetus.
It won't make a difference to rational people, but people who don't like change or new things will latch on to this, regardless of the fact that it doesn't matter.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well, if you compare the probability of the world ending due to nuclear proliferation vs the probability of a major war between the US and Russia... Personally, I'd take the large war over the world ending. Keeping all these apocalypse weapons around makes me a bit uncomfortable personally.
So it seems you are arguing that creating an "individual" which could never fit into society is cruel and therefore immoral.
This precludes a host of interesting genetic evolutionary pathways that I consider quite desirable, e.g. hyperintelligent or non-aging transhumans. Perhaps even more importantly is the simple solution to eliminate the objection that the individual "might feel alone" can be resolved simply by creating a Neanderthal "family".
I always thought Bush was called a monkey because of his behavior. He doesn't bare any particularly strong resemblance to a monkey.
I also didn't get why the GGP's post was being called racist at first either. My first thought was that he was making a "Look out! America could elect an idiot!" joke.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Make that GGGP...I'm gonna disable post reparenting now.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The real question is... will you be around to care?
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
"We have been very charitable in the West in determining who, mentally and in body, is a "person" and who is not."
We have not, and now OUR human rights record sucks. We have white supremecy, illegal detention, offshore prisons, illegal aliens, and your Black Muslim Bakery.
The first thing we would try to do is convert the Neanderthal to chistanity! Remember the proof we have that Neanderthal's had life threatening injuries that healed over time? What was their culture?
A Neanderthal is a COMPLEX, i.e. very complex genetic structure. Best of luck even getting 98% of the genome right, vs 99.9999% needed for a vialble clone. ( for refrence a 99.9999% human, could carry every single gentic inherated disease, 100x over! ).
Is possible, yes, but it would be a hell of a lot easier to fly around the solar system, like walking to 7-11.
From what I see, the ethics of cloning are headed in the wrong direction. Which of the following is likely to become legal first?
* Cloning a human for the purpose of harvesting organs or stem cells
* Cloning a human to "give a second chance" to the parents of a beloved child who was killed in a tragic accident
I know which one should become legal first, but with people like Peter Singer influencing our ethical debates, I'd put money on the other one.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
It would give Bush and Cheney someone to golf with during retirement, and give America a better third party option to vote for next election.
"Let's go bowling and then hit the Water Buffalo lodge - Hey where's Barney?"
I mean seriously, take a step back and look at what you're saying.
You're saying that the couple trying to have a child is in the same boat morally as someone who knows they are pregnant and aborts a child.
This is absolutely absurd and I'm pretty sure nobody would accept it. So you have to re-tool your argument to fit reality.
Intent matters. All institutions from courts to religion recognize this but you are intentionally ignoring it for the sake of whipping yourself into a frenzy over how stupid "those people" are.
It's a silly straw man.
I may not understand your "ethics" and "cloning" technology... I'm just a caveman! But there's one thing I do know... my client deserves to be compensated for the blatant theft of his genetic intellectual property!
The did have larger brains. Although its the extra layers in our neocortex and extra wired that makes humans smarter than apes, not just brain size.
High intelligence may eventual extinguish our race like the Neandertals.
Seeing as how the Cold War passed and entered us into an age of disarmament, I'd say I'd choose 'discomfort' over a massive war.
We already have Encino Man.
The objective answer will come when cognitive science figures out what type of information processing gives rise to the phenomena we call "consciousness" and thus mind. Then it is simply a matter of finding out when said information process in the human brain "comes online".
Trust me: we are never going to discover this succinct, objective definition of consciousness that you dream of. We will always wonder, to some degree, about human life. Erring on the side of human life, although it may become less popular, will always be the right thing to do. And thank goodness for that.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
If you don't want to read a technical treatise on neanderthal society or its possible differences from human society, may I recommend a trilogy of novels? Robert J. Sawyer wrote the very good and fun trilogy Neanderthal Parallax. The individual titles are: Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids. He posits a quantum physics experiment that connects two realities via a gateway: (1) our modern Earth with homo sapiens as the ascendant intelligent species, and (2) a world in which neanderthals became the ascendant species.
In particular, I thought Sawyer did a good job of describing the social differences between the humans and the neanderthals in a way that was both interesting and plausible.
On the whole, I found Neanderthal Parallax to be an entertaining and satisfying story that fully delivers in all three books.
I for one welcome our previously extinct smarter overlords.
A planet where APES EVOLVED FROM MEN??
IT'S A MADHOUSE! A MAAAD HOOUSE!
Bow-ties are cool.
I would prefer an intrinsic definition of life (based on what we are) rather than some extrinsic qualifications (what we can do).
As nerds, we value things like "mind" as the qualification. But, remember, the people making the laws do not value that.
They value popularity, and money.
It is much better to say any unique human organism should be granted human rights. That means embryos and any cells taken from early stage embryos (effectively a form of asexual reproduction, which covers twinning).
Speak for yourselves, I'm entirely human!
could it be?
I meant to reply to the GP (larryau).
Protip: Humans are animals, I fail to see how having a living link is any different then knowing the link is there.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
I really wish I had mod points. Bravo
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
Who would give birth to it? Would anyone even volunteer?
There are real ethical issues in bringing back a potentially intelligent being:
1. Does a Neanderthal have "human rights". Are we allowed to keep it in a cage? Does it have a right to own property? Does it have the right to get married?
2. How much of Neanderthal's limitations are due to nurture vs nature?
3. Is it right to bring a severely crippled being into the modern world for people to treat it like a cage animal?
I think it would be very cruel to bring a potential "person" to this world w/o giving him the rights a "person" deserves. If we're just bringing second class citizens then it cannot be a positive thing.
Don't we individual humans depend on a great variety of micro-organisms living inside us? For example, helping us to digest our food.
Even if we could clone a Neanderthal or mammoth, would he/she/it survive without all the other organisms that kept it alive?
Just asking. . .
What will they have in their junk DNA, and what will happen when modern influenza, common cold and herpes viruses get their grubby little gene sequences inserted into it? Best case, the poor neanderthal will die of chicken pox or any number of other diseases for which he's unlikely to have any immunity. Worst case, something like herpes zoster plays swap-the-sequence with a fragment from an ancient virus that Mr Neanderthals's prehistoric gene donor had as a child, and which will make Smallpox look like a coldsore.
Of course, you could keep all such cloned individuals isolated in sterile conditions - but what would that say about those who chose to create the clones and their view of human life?
I could just be talking through my arse, since I'm not an expert on molecular genetics or what I guess you could the emerging field of paleogenetics - but we've had interesting pandemics appear from seemingly nowhere in the past, and fatal results when new diseases were introduced to populations that weren't able to handle them, so a little caution seems prudent.
Strawman argument.
Tough call on the uncorrectable birth defects question. A fetus with uncorrectable birth defects is already present in the world, and his parents have a very difficult dilemma.
Artificially resurrecting a single person or even small group is to "quicken" a life or lives knowing a priori that they face huge challenges.
Simply not analogous.
It is unknown whether neanderthals would be inferior. But I believe there's plenty of historical precedent that shows how miserably humans treat "others" when there's a disparity in their capabilities.
Humans are far too immature, too undisciplined to treat a created person/entity with the respect that the created person deserves.
As I am pretty sure it is an old wive's tale, not an old wise tale.
Not so fast. We're anything *but* disarmed. Last I looked we still have loads of deployed nuclear weapons pointing at each other, and are now entering an age of increased geopolitical instability and acute resource shortages. Oil, fresh water, metals... all are going to be in short supply. This is not the time to become complacent and think we've dodged the nuclear bullet as the varying large superpowers and superpower wannabes try to out-dick each other for what's left of an ever-decreasing pie.
How many people would have died in a US-USSR showdown?
Which one, Korea, Vietnam or to a lesser degree, Afghanistan in the 1980s? Nukes certainly did provide some stability of sorts, but US/USSR relations haven't been bloodless. We just killed each other by proxy.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Should we? No. This wisdom of our ancestors demands that we respect their choices:
Why did our ancestors feel it necessary to kill off the Neanderthals and why did they erase this genocide from their histories?
Did they know them better than we? Can we trust they made the right decision for us all?
It may be that the Neanderthals were the biggest danger to humanity ever forgotten...
Spooky,
And in fact that was my main point. I do not believe that they can hold such a view without being hypocrites, because it contradicts itself. In my opinion, arguing that the loss of one fertilized egg might be murder (and there are a lot of people who do say that), but that it is moral to not bother to lift a finger to save all those other fertilized eggs that escape, is morally indefensible. You are saying that they are looking at it differently, and I understand. But my question is: is it justifiable to do that? My opinion is: no.
They argue one way when it is convenient for their faith, and another way when that is convenient, and say that faith is enough to excuse and justify this. I disagree. I am not trying to put down faith, but logic does work!
And the religious do in fact argue from a biological standpoint, the instant they assert that a meaningful human life begins at conception. If they were not arguing biologically, they could as easily argue that life begins at the time of intercourse, and be done with it. (Actually, that would make some of their other moral arguments more tenable.) But they don't... they insist on using a biological reference point.
Indeed. What I want to know is what attracts them all to YouTube.
Well, I can't speak for all cave dwellers, but I go for the free food. And the chicks are cool.
Get your dogma outta my yard!
Sounds like a Sci-Fi channel Saturday night movie-you should copyright that idea.
I have often wondered about this - what makes a fertilised cell so special, as opposed to, say, a skin cell? Or, if that is too specialised, a stem cell of some sort?
This is a general question to those who believe a single cell is a human - I genuinely would like to know what the difference is.
Who would own the neanderthal or will he/she be accepted my our society?
They had enough nuclear weapons to kill everybody on earth several times over.
How many would be left?
None.
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Some considerations:
...' go out the window. He/she'll be an equal citizen, you don't get to tell him/her shit on what to do and what not to do!
1. A regular human (homo sapiens sapiens) has never been cloned. (At least not in a scientific study) This means that when you clone a Neanderthal, you'll never know if the things you are observing are traits of being a Neanderthal, or traits of your cloning process. You simply HAVE TO also clone a homo sapiens sapiens to get any scientific value out of it, and likely several of both. Then you need to treat the cloned homo sapiens sapiens in the same way as the neanderthal to obtain scientific information. This may be a hurdle.
2. Legal status and human rights have been mentioned a couple times. "Do we allow it to.." type of questions have also been mentioned. However the former can make the latter irrelevant. IF you give the Neanderthal equal rights as humans, then all issues of 'do we allow him to
3. Also the question of 'do we make just one of them or more' goes out the window if he/she has equal rights. If a human scientist had the right to clone a Neanderthal, so will the neanderthal have that right to clone another one, or to get a scientist to clone another one for him/her. (Assuming sufficient intellectual capability)
If he/she's anything like us then he/she will not just want the right to reproduce, he/she will feel it's his/her DUTY to reproduce!!! Consider if humans became extinct and the next intelligent life form on this planet cloned me. I'd feel a strong sense of duty to make sure I reproduce and re-establish humanity. 'Reproduce' ; that's what life forms do anything for to achieve, and not just humans.
The beginning of the slavery abolition movement was started in the late 1700s, but it took another century for most governments to officially abolish it. The UK beat the US by at least 20 years.
Fun fact: Britain abolished slavery in 1807, but the slave trade and ownership of slaves throughout its colonies didn't end until 1833.
It was just too profitable of an enterprise to give up all at once, hence my word "grudgingly" rather than "charitably."
Well it's a hell of a lot safer then cloning huge dino's ...
Maybe clone them and put them right into a theme park ...
Is the neanderthal a human? To begin with, is not an Homo Sapiens. And I think the "human" is just another animal (it got a taxonomic classification, to begin with), so if you can clone animals, you can clone humans, from the ethical point of view. From the technical point of view, with my knowledges of biology, it is as easy to clone a "human" as is to clone some other animals and, in fact, some animals are harder to clone than a human.
I bet like our brains a whole lot of it is doing nothing else then interpreting feelings. I bet elephants have more than twice the amount of sensors than your average human.
Wow MindKata, what a brilliant observation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Was_a_Man
Wait, what? We might use human host mothers for birthing cloned woolly mammoths?
Christopher S. 'coldacid' Charabaruk -- coldacid.net
I don't appear to have any belly-button!
And some guy that looks like Harrison Ford keeps trying to kill me!
And I'm tired of eating this crappy Chinese food in the rain. Any advice?
.
- aqk
F U
No. We use elephants for woolly mammoths. We use human mothers for Neanderthals. Now what we use for the various ice age tigers I'm unsure of. Real tigers perhaps but they aren't exactly so abundant that one might use them to help resurrect extinct cousins.
Now of course there are potential problems with compatibility between fetal and maternal protein signals. This may require some "fudging" of the genomes being resurrected to prove more biocompatible with their modern counterparts. These problems presumably go away once artificial wombs are developed. (I believe the Japanese are working on the development of such technologies, presumably in part due to their own declining population).
And I should clarify, too: I did mention Catholics but they were perhaps not the best example. I am not trying to single them out.
I was just trying to be witty, but it seems I've been only half. :p
Christopher S. 'coldacid' Charabaruk -- coldacid.net
"The beginning of the slavery abolition movement was started in the late 1700s, but it took another century for most governments to officially abolish it. The UK beat the US by at least 20 years."
The UK had also been around as a nation for about 800 years. The US was less than 100 years old. Tell me again which one was more precocious? ;)
Also, the entire movement had far less to do with human rights than with the industrial revolution, and the economic shift away from human labour. The REAL reason for freeing the slaves in the U.S. was that northern industrialists wanted to cripple the South's economic base, by depriving them of labour (which the South was still heavily dependent upon). But that doesn't sound near as good.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
pretty pictures... Colour and movement always entertains the stupid.
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1