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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.
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.
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.
But when the inevitable species war erupts, we can end racism.
You mad
If God have meant for us to clone a Neanderthal, He would provide us the tools and the knowledge to do that!!
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
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
Hey, it's slippery-slope man!
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
They are not Homo Sapiens.
They are Homo neandertalinis.
Look it up!
And furthermore, humans are animals. So "not animals" only applies to plant life.
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!
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?
We both belong to the Homo genus, but Neanderthals are H. neanderthalensis, while we are H. sapiens.
Though here's an interesting paragraph on the Neanderthal page that I didn't know before I browsed around on Wikipedia:
For some time, professionals debated whether Neanderthals should be classified as Homo neanderthalensis or as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, the latter placing Neanderthals as a subspecies of Homo sapiens. Genetic statistical calculation (2006 results) suggests at least 5% of the modern human gene pool can be attributed to ancient admixture, with the European contribution being from the Neanderthal.[10] Some morphological studies support that Homo neanderthalensis is a separate species and not a subspecies. [11] Some suggest inherited admixture. Others, for example University of Cambridge Professor Paul Mellars, say "no evidence has been found of cultural interaction"[12] and evidence from mitochondrial DNA studies have been interpreted as evidence Neanderthals were not a subspecies of H. sapiens.[13] Homo sapiens mtDNA from Australia (Mungo Man 40ky ) is also not found in recent human genomic pool and mtDNA sequences for temporally comparative African specimens are not yet available.
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!
Neanderthals were social, tool making beings. A solitary human being, raised in isolation, is not more more capable than a Neanderthal. This same human being will also be very maladjusted and unhappy, and thus not display "normal" behavior.
So, we must be fully ready to accept this thing as a sentient being, or not at all. Simply assuming that it could be kept locked up in a zoo or like a mental patient will reflect poorly.
And don't get me started on the obvious religious objections this project would face.
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
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 ?
Very good point. To take it a little farther:
Cloning is not magical powers. The clone will be born as a baby, grow up to adulthood over time. Any neanderthal culture is long gone; it would have to be raised either as an animal or a human being. Assuming that we're not being monsters here (not the only possibility, but the one I'm going to go with), let's assume that we want the neanderthal to do well, and to be treated according to its mental ability.
So we're left with a few possibilities.
Case 1: It has sub-human intellect to the point where it is satisfied/only capable of the animal level of mental function. This is the easy one; we can treat it like a zoo animal, with only the moral considerations usually involved with such. Physical evidence says this is pretty unlikely, but we don't really know.
Case 2:It's capable of the lower levels of human functionality. Say, somewhere between Forest Gump and a chimpanzee. Well, in this case, we have an intelligent being, who is a ward of the state, and who is unlike any other being on earth. It has no family, and potentially no human rights. It's entirely subject to the whims of its creators, or to the vagaries of laws that don't cover it. And who is it going to play with as a child? What is it going to do when it's older? How much experimentation is legally and morally allowable? What if it's below the legal threshold of mental function for consent, but is undeniably intelligent?
So, huge minefield there. Awesome.
Case 3: The Neanderthal is as smart as we are.
Fuck. We have all the problems of Case 2, and more. We just made a person that is, by definition, part of the world's smallest and loneliest minority. He or she will never be able to live a remotely normal or fulfilling life. Furthermore, he's coming into the world with ready-made enemies in those opposed to cloning.
I'm genuinely conflicted about this. If someone went ahead and cloned a neanderthal, I would want to talk to him/her more than anything else in the world. Talking to an intelligent being that's not human... that would be an amazing thing.
But seriously... I can't see any way that this could really be morally ok.
So "not animals" only applies to plant life.
And once again our fuzzy friend the fungus has been ignored.
Mushrooms have feelings too you insensitive clod.
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.
Indeed. What I want to know is what attracts them all to YouTube.
I hate printers.
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?
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.