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Scientist Seeks 'Adventurous Human Woman' For Neanderthal Baby
theodp writes "Harvard geneticist George Church recently told Der Spiegel he's close to developing the necessary technology to clone a Neanderthal, at which point all he'd need is an 'adventurous human woman' to be a surrogate mother for the first Neanderthal baby to be born in 30,000 years (article in German, translation to English). Church said, 'We have lots of Neanderthal parts around the lab. We are creating Neanderthal cells. Let's say someone has a healthy, normal Neanderthal baby. Well, then, everyone will want to have a Neanderthal kid. Were they superstrong or supersmart? Who knows? But there's one way to find out.'"
With that sort of gestation time, it's no wonder Neanderthals went extinct.
They should ask one of those Kardashian women. They'll do anything for money as long as they can put their name on it.
Were they superstrong or supersmart? Who knows? But there's one way to find out
Well I don't know about the former, but given they are all dead I'm pretty sure about the latter.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
He's not seeking such a woman, nor is he planning to do so. He is just thinking out loud, what if...
It would make sense to clone a mammoth first, using an Asian elephant as a surrogate. The last mammoths on Wrangel Island were alive only 2000 years ago, so their DNA should be much more intact. If we can clone the mammoth successfully, then we can do the neanderthal next.
Having spent some time in rural Northern Germany, I believe Neanderthals are still alive.
They need "humans" with thicker skulls after all the brain damage lawsuits.
Table-ized A.I.
Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov. They all resulted in failure (allegedly, some conspiracy theorists insist he was at least partially successful). I don't think that he'll have difficulty finding volunteers, only finding a place with neighbors who aren't keen on pitchforks and torches.
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
I found one to have my potentially ugly baby.
I realize that this guy's intentions are honorable, well maybe not, but this sounds like something that really shouldn't be done along the lines of Jurassic Park. With all of the problems in the world, we have a guy here who is trying to bring back an extinct race of people? Somehow I think that the old Nazi era eugenics movement never stopped. Next thing you know we'll have immigrant Neanderthal workers takin our jobs! Let's just leave the bringing old species alone and keep Neanderthals where they belong! Extinct! I don't want to see a Mammoth roaming about, besides with global warming it would lose its hair and it would be killed within a few short years for the ivory.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I don't mean to sound too flippant about this, but isn't this around the time in the movie that a Morgan Freeman type of character says "People were not meant to play at god!"?
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
Schwarzenegger is afraid of the competition
Table-ized A.I.
Call Spielberg. I've got a movie idea - though I might be thinking of something I saw on one of the "adult" channels...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
O.K. Fine. Whatever. I'll go make room in the trailer park for another trailer. Stupid ass scientist making more work... /grumble
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Yeah, but that got us Danny DeVito, too, so it wasn't a TOTAL loss.
I consider myself very scientific, fairly worldly, and pretty open minded.
But to me this is unethical.
Ask yourself just some simple preliminary questions such as: If the resulting semi-human is self aware, what rights will it/he/she have? Will it/he/she be a cage animal? Will it be sterilized or allowed to reproduce? And if so, with which other species or semi-species? Is this fair to it/he/she? Will it/he/she be allowed to vote? To own property? Be allowed or required to work? To choose a field of education? To be free of staring, poking prodding?
This will definitely give the bio-ethicists something to chew on.
Credo sim. - I think I am.
If this actually happens, I hope that the kid beats the living shit out of the asshole who wanted him for a lab animal.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
So we can just skip the artificial insemination and do it the good ol' fashion way...
That saying about the sum being greater than it's parts, only applies when you know how the parts fit together.
Moron. Alfred Nobel's calling. Will you accept the charges?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
There's been a lot of mutual adaptation of humans to their pathogens the last 10k years that Neandethals would lack. Might mean they'd die easily of common benign infections, of less likely not get them at all.
Oddly enough, when it's born, it'll look just like Dr Church.
They were probably neither super-smart nor super-strong, just super-horny. They screwed their way into oblivion...or was it immortality?
OCTO MOM. Think about it... this is genius.
How would this 'adventurous human woman' collect from the dead(beat) dad?
I seem to recall this being a sci-fi short story somewheres a long time ago... "Jerry Was A Boy"? or something similar to that as the title.
'Jerry Was A Man...' by Robert A Heinlein. The ebook is floating around the net. Can't recall for the life of me what short story collection it was originally in, though, as it's not part of his Future History/Lazarus Long series.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Bad how? That this unnatural "experiment" could find its way out of labs, end up fucking (or fucked by) humans, and then unknown genes be introduced into the human gene pool? That the government will declare that this experiment is close enough to being a "human" that it should get all of our rights too, and not consider it a scientific research project--and allow such insanity to happen? Nah... how could anything possibly go wrong?
They do it with non-human animals all the time.
The Neanderthals didn't pay their rent, so God killed them. You want 10%? What if not charity (neighbor) but toward God? To make beautiful God things -- cathederals? Zoos? God says... C:\Text\BIBLE.TXT Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do. 5:12 And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; 5:13 And to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake. And be at peace among yourselves. 5:14 Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men. 5:15 See that none render evil for evil unto any man; but ever
Half life of DNA is 500 years, http://www.nature.com/news/dna-has-a-521-year-half-life-1.11555 myth busted. So you can forget about dinosaurs, neanderthals and the like.
Was the native american wiped out by lack of smarts?
I wasn't aware they were all dead. Oh wait, they aren't.
Incas wipes out by lack of smarts?
They had the same period of time to develop guns the spanish did. They did not. Therefore...
The book goes on to point out advanced weapons aren't in the hands of advanced individuals, but merely individuals who've had the benefit of living in fertile areas that could support an educated class.
I am curious what makes you think Mexico is not extremely fertile.
The book actually argues that while advanced civilizations make advanced things, they also lower the bar for the culling of dumb individuals, and suffer more of them.
Well I can't really argue with that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) didn’t go extinct because they were outcompeted. They weren’t a separate species. They were a subspecies of Homo sapiens. Our superior numbers drove them into extinction, not our ostensibly superior technology, intellect or planning.
Our Paleolithic ancestors said, “Me love you long time,” and they simply disappeared into our gene pool.
HRH The Duke of Windsor
The idea has a strange appeal.
But surely, we can do this with a 3D printer at home? Let's fill up the test tubes by other means.
20 minutes into the future
Germany is one of the countries that is most radically opposed to human cloning. Usually, the aversion is justified with "Germany's Nazi past", but it's really just the Catholic church and its hangups about reproduction. So: wrong country to be discussing this.
How in the world are we going to find a woman that can live 30,000 years to have this baby?
It is so simple, even a caveman can do it!
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
What I'm more concerned about, is how he will be treated : what rights will he have . What is the legal definition of 'human' ?
If it's not covered by law, we need Neanderthal rights as soon as possible, or they might just start experimenting on him ( which I find horrible for any animal though, but it's currently still legal ).
Slipping shoelaces ?
Bad how? That this unnatural "experiment" could find its way out of labs, end up fucking (or fucked by) humans, and then unknown genes be introduced into the human gene pool?
It would be an increase in genetic diversity, which could be a plus.
If the genes reintroduced are useful, then they might spread far down the generations. If they are extremely bad, then they statistically won't get very far.
In language, Neanderthal means someone stupid, slow and rather ugly. If I called you a Neanderthal it would be an insult... but what were they really like? And from that, what is homo sapiens (us) really like?
Our self image is rather that we are the smartest animal and the best hunter, the strongest, the brightest, the best looking. What if we weren't? What if we just were a rather vicious monkey that just fucked faster?
There are a LOT of theories about how Home Sapiens came to be and how the Neanderthal came not to be.
Some "facts" (It is a fast moving field and there is a lot of stuff that journalists might have made up/mis-quoted):
Current theories is that we interbred (DNA evidence) but HOW? Did we freely mingle? Did one or the other keep each other as (sex) slaves. Did we rape each other in conflict?
A thing to remember is that if Neanderthal is a separate species, how can they interbreed? Breeds within a species can interbreed easily (see dogs) but between species it isn't supposed to be that easy. Of course there are exceptions, zebra/horse tiger/lion.
When Darwin published his work, the shock was NOT that Genesis wasn't true, they already knew that. The shock was that nature was nasty. Similar, it would be a shock to find out that Neanderthal was the smarter, stronger ape. Lets face it, how many of us want to be vicious Chimpansee who slaughters the Bonobo just for the fun of it? (Not saying the two do that but when we acknowledge a link to the apes, poop flinging is NOT mentioned.
Shrunken heads originate from a tribe that is often said to be the most nasty humans who ever lived. Did we outnasty the gentle Neanderthal? OR did the already established Neanderthal in Europe take that new tribe as sex slaves and then found that the slaves bred faster and replaced them from within? Or was the Neanderthal really just a dumb brute and we outwitted them? Did we mercilessly slaughter them or keep them around as slaves or did we just happily live together after all and we just merged?
Ultimately it shouldn't mean anything but people have based entire religions/dogmas on lies with terrible results, maybe it is time for our origin story to be based on truth.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Were they superstrong or supersmart? Who knows? But there's one way to find out.
See whether they can navigate the Geico website?
[Just kidding ... apologies to my caveman friends.]
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Everyone knows that there are animals that are stronger than we are. I also don't think that humans are the best hunters, nor do I think too many people think they are. And of course "best looking" is not an objective trait. What most humans do think is that we are the most intelligent, and that this more than compensates our other weaknesses, because we can just outsmart all other animals.
BTW, what is the difference between "the smartest" and "the brightest"?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
t of us (excepting most Africans and Chinese) have Neanderthal genes in us.
I suggest you go back and do more study.
Of all the human sub-species only the Africans do not have Neanderthal genes.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
For example, most humans alive today bear some resistance to the plague and influenza H1N1 because they killed such a large portion of our population.
They would have the advantage that -- plague and H1N1 are not prevalent. Things humans are highly resistant/immune to are not likely to be floating around for the neanderthal to catch. Flu bugs are things a neanderthal could be vaccinated against as well.
Bringing back a Neanderthal would subject them to diseases 30,000 years more advance in the evolutionary arms race.
It's also entirely possible, that it doesn't matter much, seeing as humans have been around for a million years or more. 30,000 years is not that long; it's only a few hundred generations. Viruses evolve very rapidly, and humanoids' resistance to infection evolves very slowly.
The Neanderthals differences are potentially more of an advantage than a disadvantage.
A human child gets sick very frequently, and builds up resistance as a child, and some resistances and allergies may be transferred from biological parent to child in the womb, I expect a Neanderthal baby would not be extremely different.
Secondly, a lot of viruses embed themselves in our genome. It's almost guaranteed that if a Neanderthal caught the virus, so could modern humans.
If the virus is in the Neanderthal's genome, chances are fairly good the Neanderthal did not die from it.
When an endogenous retrovirus gets incorporated to DNA, it very quickly loses infectiousness and becomes deactivated due to mutations, deletions, recombinant deletions that occur.
Species do not fight for habitat between themselves, unless habitat is very, very crowded.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Being intelligent don't ensure your survival. You needed a lot of intelligence to build atomic bombs, and see what could had happened.
Anyway, intelligence is just part of the equation. Culture is another, an important one. How much different should be a neanderthal intelligence to be distinguished from one of us if grows with our culture? And maybe more important, if with our culture is more or less like us, at least in the way of thinking, will be falling in the same kind of moral problems like growing kids on labs?
I agree intelligence doesn't seem to be that important for survival. Dinosaurs lasted for 150 million years without brains to speak of, until they were nuked from orbit, an end which our superior intellect would not have protected us from either, at least not in the first few hundred thousand years of our existence as modern humans.
As for the demise of the Neanderthal: no need to look at culture or intelligence, simple environmental factors will do. The last ice age was particularly long and brutal. The Eurasian mega fauna, which the Neanderthals depended on for food, died out. Modern humans in Eurasia could be replenished from their habitat in Africa, with much more favorable conditions, while the Neanderthal was trapped in Europe and western Asia.
Kind of like a Darwin's Radio type of thing? The Neanderthals have an arsenal of deadly (N)ERVs that would wipe us out? Our genomes actually are CHOCK full of broken, deactivated endogenous retroviruses, but I don't have any numbers for how old they are, or how long it's been since they were last active.
Hectice, baby, Mercator says hello to you
Moron. Alfred Nobel's calling. Will you accept the charges?
So the dynamite flinging zombies have risen. Prepare to fight.
Dogs are more vicious then humans, but we humans completely dominate dogs. Cats are vicious bastards but the number of incidents of cats killing people are remarkably low (because cats are very good at hiding evidence no doubt).
Viciousness is NOT a survival trait unlike what a LOT of people believe. Darwin shocked people NOT by telling them they were descended from monkeys but by telling them nature was nasty and so were monkeys. BUT more recent research among monkeys has filmed evidence that for instance a male monkey that beats the old male leader and then goes to town on the females WILL be beaten up by ALL the females and then the old defeated male will be put back in power, with the help of some trusted lieutenants and an understanding he no longer has exclusive access to the females but still access. The defeated vicious monkey is all alone and will die from his wound without a group to protect him.
What monkey sires more children? The old wise leader who knows not to push his position? His lieutenants who can learn peacefully under a wise leader while fucking their brains out? Or the vicious monkey who had access for just a few days?
Genghis Khan is often called vicious but was he? His military approach was to kill the elite in a country and then treat the peasants pretty damned nicely. Gosh and who tells us he was a bad guy? Our elite... because they prefer to have their peasants kill each other off while they sit miles behind the front. That is how wars are supposed to be fought, destroy the body so you can strike a deal with the head. While GK killed the head and then was nice to the body.
French revolution is often said to be brutal. By the English... nobles who damn well knew that if the idea of a benevolent revolution and rule by the people was to spread, their necks would be next on the block.
Which ape is more successful, the Chimpanzee or the Bonobo (the make love not war ape)? Fact is strive costs a LOT of energy, the more relaxed you are, the more you can survive in hard times. There is a group of Baboons (typically a vicious monkey) that lives peacefully in gigantic groups because their environment is so poor in nutrition, they have to remain peaceful because fighting requires to much energy.
The thing to remember here is that there have been load of vicious cultures in human history. And they died out. Image if we acted like cats and each time we saw another cat, a half hour staredown was in order. How would we ever make even a small village work? Let alone metropolis with tens of millions of people living statistically in perfect peace with each other.
We are NOT a vicious monkey, are the industrious ant or the harmonious bee. Sure there are incidents but statistcally speaking all the murders in NY are insignificant compared to the total amount of human interaction going on. Netherlands Amsterdam, 1 mil people, 40 or so murders. A bee-hive, 44k a dozen murders (new queen killing other queens) and that is NOTHING to say of the killing off of elderly or sick bees, euthanisia is legal in Holland but it is not the "lets round up the oldies on Friday" that Fox news told you it was. It is Thursdays.
It has been proven that sleeping together with a loved one reduces stress, lowers heartbeat (slower is better as you only get so many beats per heart) and prolongs life in humans and chipmunks. Hell, indoor cats can be evil all they want but exceed 20 years in lifespan while their relatives on the street barely reach their teens. Viciousness doesn't pay of long term. oh, sometimes there are hickups but overal, the human race has grown ever more peaceful. And YES, long standing conflicts like the middle east or Afghanistan and Iraq PROOF this. The OLD way we saw all to recently in Ruwanda. It hasn't happened in a long time, not on that scale. Even the holocaust was different, Ruwanda was the people killing people. The germans have at least pretended (even if it is part a lie) that it was a small group that did the actual killing. The rest just stood by
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Talk about aptronyms!
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
A few months ago Wired had an article with a list. Here's a link to a writeup about iton the web in the UK's Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8702999/Unethical-scientific-experiments-going-to-extremes.html
Very interesting article that could be the base of it's own discussion. "Ask slashdot: Which scientific experiment would be worth performing if ethics would not matter?" Scary avenue to follow. Even scarier once you realize that some have already been done.
Intentionally bringing an evolutionary throwback into the world is an act of scientific sadism. Imagine yourself a child unable to fit it, and then learning that you were instantiated merely to satisfy a sociopath's curiosity. Have we returned to the 1930s?
Now who is the Neanderthal here?
I kind of think that the ethics board should seriously look into this. Is the newborn going to be classified as a human? If it is, then is it fair for it to be subjected to all the DNA defects induced by 30,000 years exposure? Is this safe for the mother?
But aren't humans the best hunters? Is there an animal that a human can't hunt successfully (with human made tools)? Or does only purely physical effort count when hunting? If that is the case, then wolves are pretty lousy hunters too, since they need to cooperate to bring down prey, most cats are lousy hunters since they need to ambush their prey,....
I was thinking more along the lines of Asimov's The Ugly Little Boy.
You are missing the posters point. If we have the ability to reproduce much faster than we are not able to stop the mass of people.
Let me illustrate, and PLEASE nobody call this racism.
How many children are produced in the Western world? How many children are produced in the emerging world? Who is the less ignorant? BTW I use ignorant, and not less intelligent here. Drum roll, less children in western world, and less ignorant people in the western world. You could argue that the western world is being drowned out by ignorant emerging world people. The irony here is that as we become more knowleagable we produce less children, dooming our society so to speak. However, with enough generations that ignorance is removed.
In essence the Neanderthal could have indeed been the one with the more brains or life experience or what you want to call it. But they were drowned out by the number of people reproducing. Remember that back then people used clubs on each other and there was not much civility.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Really? Ever read Farley Mowatt and the lost people?
Let me give you the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Farfarers:_Before_the_Norse
I did not think that habitat was very crowded in the North...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
BTW before you say, "Oh Farley Mowatt a man of fiction..." He postulated many things that later proved to be correct. He is a man of history who combines it with some reasoned leap of faith or as I like to call it deduced reasoning.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Quick! Run a simulation!
Neanderthals on trained mammoths vs. dynamite flinging, undead industrialists!
We need to pitch that idea to The Asylum. That's just about their level of sophistication.
20 minutes into the future
Well? Which one is it?
Self-indulging in a thought experiment like that only works when you are a philosopher. It's attention-whoring in any other field.
20 minutes into the future
But before that there were neanderthals which were a bit crap so fuck 'em.
C:\Text\Izzard.txt
Some liberties WERE taken with the source material, mind you.
20 minutes into the future
Last documentary I saw on the subject of neanderthal DNA suggested that they had only come to find the neanderthal DNA by pasting different strands together from various individuals. The likelihood of serious genetic defects must be quite high. If this is so, the child may not live, or even if it does, it could very well be stricken with serious genetic illnesses, making it as useful as a source of information as a child with Down Syndrome would be as a source of information on modern humans. Or did I miss something?
And then there are the implications in the form of human rights for the child. Neanderthals were quite clearly both sentient and sapient, so the child should have the same basic rights as the rest of us. There is a whole ethical mine-field here.
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
I grew up literally an ocean away from the Washington monument and yet I speak and write considerably better than most of those who grew up near it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neandertal
Seriously, what sort of life would this baby have? Growing up being an extinct race, being poked and prodded by scientist, being a public figure, from birth. Then on top of that, you have whatever Neanderthal's have, big forehead, mono brow (that is going to go over big in school), and that not even going into how intelligent it is.
This baby would be born into a live of hell.
Be seeing you...
Never mind all the hundreds of millions of malnourished humans all over the world. Best hunters, my ass.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Talk to Sylvester Stallone's mother. She might have some free time.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Is there an animal that a human can't hunt successfully (with human made tools)?
That depends on how you define human made tools. If you include higher order tools, then we can probably hunt almost everything. If you include only tools made directly by man, and not with other tools, we're just good, not great.
Creating tools for creating tools seems to have happened after the Neanderthal era, so I see no evidence for why we would be better hunters than them. Perhaps just better at procreating and migrating. Perhaps just better at homicide.
If that is the case, then wolves are pretty lousy hunters too, since they need to cooperate to bring down prey
No, they don't. A large number of wolves are solitary.
They often hunt in packs when they have a pack, because it's effective - both the hunt itself, and bringing down larger animals that can feed the whole pack.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_pregnancy#In_humans
Don't stop where the ink does.
Why make a distinction between 'orders' of tools? Should you count a spearhead as a higher order tool, if it was made using a sharpened rock?
Any yes, wolves can hunt alone, just like humans can hunt without tools. But they are both pretty bad at it, compared to a wolf-pack or an armed human.
And how many prey animals are there left in their habitat? If there were herds of elephants roaming all over Africa, then the food shortage wouldn't exist there (at least not for very long). If anything the hunters did too well, exterminating potential prey.
For American football, wrestling and rugby.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
Nice link, thx. There is a Republican in Michigan -- who has run for several offices -- named Rob Steele.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
So is this how the future Earth will become inhabited by ape-like creatures?
I was born without my choosing. I was forced to spend nearly 18 years in an institution, giving me tests of both my physical and mental abilities. Due to my flawed genetics, I sometimes had to go see a physician, where I'd be poked and prodded, then given drugs that'd usually make me feel worse before better.
I was a typical child.
Reading through all these ethics concerns, I really don't see much difference. The kid could go to school like any other, he'd just be watched with more interest. He might look different. So what? There are only like 3 kids in a school who look like people on tv anyway. He might get sick sometimes, but a lot of people get sick. Heck, he'd probably have a better upbringing than 95% of the rest of us, with all the financial support he'd need to do whatever he wants.
If you want to prevent this from happening, you should go out and sterilize all the dregs of our society who reproduce *all the time* already. But then you're into preferred selection, and you go into another realm people balk at.
it's a site.... where you find .... adventurous women *drops mic*
Just another second banana
She seems to be collecting one of everything.
... the humanity we have is the humanity we deserve.
We are meant to play god, but we alone have the freedom to choose to do so only in the most godlike manner possible. I say this without attempting to inject any one of countless Cosmic Muffin Persons we have imagined over the years. I mean it in the sense of ethics and morality and mercy.
Even if they manage to splice in Neanderthal DNA with full length telomeres so the critter would not suffer the fate of Dolly,,, even if the synergy with human DNA was smooth enough to produce a critter viable enough to survive... despite the ethical question of bringing a one of a kind creature into the world bereft if its own kin... the odds say that this child-combination would experience problems with natural growth, nutritional uptake and modern disease resistance. Every branch of DNA alive today has evolved alongside its environmental pathogens. Producing something with a full lifespan on the first attempt would be an almost impossible long shot.
So how many attempts would there have to be? How many numbered pickle jars in the basement?
The best case scenario, where you bring an exotic and possibly-super intelligent child into the world who is beloved and comfortable with its uniqueness -- not likely. The odds favor a tormented justifiably resentful individual.
This happens with natural born children too, but the parents can rightfully shrug and play the biology card.
What would Morgan Freeman say when the Neanderthal project turns sour and the specimen runs amok? Well the Evil Morgan Freeman would destroy the specimen, retire all the scientists with his trusty pistol, burn the building and shred all the files. Except for his personal copy.
EVIL MORGAN FREEMAN: Anita, take a memo, to the director of Central Intelligences. "C-Systems... no longer a viable entity. Will be in contact." That's it.
~~From the movie 'Chain Reaction' [1996]
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Who says there isn't womb for science in our classrooms?
You must have a lot of faith in mankind's artificial fucking with nature to even consider that the genes produced in a clone of a species that has been extinct for thousands of years will be beneficial. Assuming there's not genetic damage in the first place (I wouldn't bet on it).
I tend to trust in nature over synthetic crap made in labs, which is why I would trust in morphine over the latest patented man-made drug of the week, or naturally-grown, non-tampered-with plants over genetically modified. This humanoid thing they want to create fits firmly in this group.
But they were drowned out by the number of people reproducing.
Alternatively, humans may have perfected warfare. Sounds more plausible, because the world is pretty friggin' big.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Ah, thank you, kind sir.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
I think your point has some validty to it. This even manifests it self at a smaller case in the Western world. Look at the US for instance. When you go into the bible belt they breed up the place like rats. Ignorance=breed,breed,breed. it may seem that ingnorance to a certain extent is good for procreation.
Just to add to your post. People complain about third world countries and the rate of their population increase, while first world (ie Western) countries now have birth rates that cannot sustain their culture/civilization. The massive influx of Muslims into Europe is not because there are too many Muslims being born elsewhere and they have no place to go. It is that there are too few Europeans being born and to sustain their economy and society, they need immigrants. Since most of the European countries are in the same boat, the influx is coming from Muslim countries. The consequence of the declining birth rate in Europe, however, is that what the world has taken for granted as a European culture will cease to exist.
This isn't unique to Europe, the same thing is happening in the US. The difference is that the influx is coming from Central and South America and Southeast Asia. The cause is the same though, too low a birth rate to sustain the economy and society. There will be similar results, too.
And worse of all is China, with their one child per couple policy (usually male). Even if today they changed that and everybody who was of child bearing age got pregnant and started having girls, by the time they sexually matured, it would be too late to turn around the decimation that has occurred.
While over population can be a problem, the planet is not (and was not) suffering from that. That was a ploy to allow for the unequal distribution of resources to continue and while successful in the short run, it is disasterous in the long run.
Here's a question, and I don't mean to be a troll. But Neanderthals are considered separate because of physical charecteristics of their skeletal structure. How do we know that this is simply not an adaptation to their environment? For instance, anthropologists can tell an Asian skeleton from an Eastern European skeleton because of various traits. We have already learned that a lot of the classes and phyllums in biology that were based on similar characteristics were wrong, once we had DNA to evaluate.
Obviously, to do this experiment, they must have Neanderthal DNA, so that begs the question of whether or not Neanderthal is a separate species or just a variation of us? And, if just a variation, would such an experiment be ethical?
Genetic transfer doesn't require interbreeding. Many virus's can take genes from the host when they mutate, and pass them on to others.
For something like this, "adventurous" or not, it's best to recruit someone who's already had some experience.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This would result in legal changes, as they are not "legally" human. Next you'd have other species getting legal recognition as "people".
> But a neanderthal is not a human (not as we know it). Most consider it to be a different species. Could any (non-human) primate that exists today fit in with our society as a citizen? Not likely. Neanderthals on the other hand were *culturally similar* to humans. They had musical instruments [discovermagazine.com] and had similar cultural habits [ucdenver.edu]. If one were born today, giving them full citizen rights would seem to be the most logical thing to do. They could probably learn basic human language at *least*, and probably lead a somewhat normal life in a human world. My question is are *we* culturally mature enough to handle them. It was just 40 years ago African American humans in America had to reassert their rights.... and even having a black president stirs some folks' pots. Can we handle Neanderthals with respect, or would we treat them like Bigfoot?
> But a neanderthal is not a human (not as we know it). Most consider it to be a different species.
Could any (non-human) primate today fit in with our society as a citizen? Not likely. Neanderthals on the other hand were *culturally similar* to humans. They had musical instruments and had similar cultural habits. If one were born today, giving them full citizen rights would seem to be the most logical thing to do. They could probably learn basic human language at *least*, and probably lead a somewhat normal life in a human world.
My question is are *we* culturally mature enough to handle them. It was just 40 years ago African American humans in America had to reassert their rights.... and even having a black president stirs some folks' pots. Can we handle Neanderthals with respect, or would we treat them like Bigfoot?
What's tragic about preemptively eliminating future cops/TSA agents?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm just surprised that no one cited "the ugly little boy". I remember reading the novel when I was a kid. The similarities could be striking. If you take out the "time travel" part, obviously. ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_Little_Boy
We don't need the google translate version, there is an official one: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/george-church-explains-how-dna-will-be-construction-material-of-the-future-a-877634.html
While Dolly did take quite a few tries, cloning goats proved to be a whole lot easier.
That said, humans are probably trickier, as we have hidden estrus and a longer gestation process.
Evidence suggests that Neanderthals were better hunters then Homo Sapiens. They could throw a spear longer and father then us.
The difference may have been soft skills. Neanderthals communities, IIRC, were around 30 members. Humans were around 300. Having larger communities meant a larger skill set (e.g. fishing when game was scarce), so a more heterogeneous set of skills to weather bad times.
Trust in nature? Excuse me? Nature is the craziest chemical lab ever existed, period. The sheer amount and variety of things and substances it manages to produce is simply astounding (we probably know about only a fraction of them), and a lot of them are incredibly bad for your health. Viruses transport genetic material between species since the dawn of time. That doesn't mean that cloning a neanderthal would be a good idea, or that we can't produce unhealthy things (we can, we can). It simply means that your reasoning is fallacious, or that you're not reasoning at all. Chances are, 99% of food you eat in your daily diet has been artificially selected by humans by trial and error: it's composed by plants and animals that never existed in nature (and would never had existed in nature). Today, bioengeneering permits us to do the same things, faster, better and safer. If there's a problem here, it lies in intellectual property laws and excessive regulation, not in science. We should grow out of this useless natural-vs-artificial dicotomy, and embrace new possibilities in a way that is both open and responsible, based on rational facts and not on witch hunts. Turns out that a rational analysis of GM foods shows that they could be good for both our health *and* the environment. On the GM food topics, hear mark lynas, he is way more convincing than me: http://www.marklynas.org/2013/01/lecture-to-oxford-farming-conference-3-january-2013/
If the genes are extremely bad then they'll create a lot of people with birth defects. Some of these may be so severe that the people need to be taken care of on a permanent basis and will likely not reproduce, the others may merely have a genetic disorder along the lines of Huntington's Disease or some such. Your assumption that natural selection will weed them out is not how that works. Their rate of reproduction might not be quite as high as another person's, but a lower rate of reproduction is not the same thing as competitive pressure. All that means is that they won't become the norm, but they'll always be there - a group of people burdened with this defect for a fully avoidable reason.
But the survival and procreation probability for a newborn in the industrialized world is way higher than in the countries with higher birth rates.
In the case of swarm queens, you'll note that the workers control who gets to fight and who doesn't.
The workers control which swarm cells get destroyed and which don't.
The workers affect emergence in severely crowded brood conditions, allowing afterswarms (which are a bet with a small cost and a big payout, and a queen elimination strategy). Among peer queens, those of similar lineage submit, older allowing themselves to be killed (look up the normal queen bee fighting research). If the genetic lines differ, the war is on.
Sick bees are not killed - when they fall to the floor they are dragged out, same as the dead bees. Sure would make things easier if they were. Old bees are not killed - they serve as the outer layer of the cluster, with abdomen temperatures at ambient, burning out their last supplies to keep the cluster warm.
The colony, in effect, operates as a single creature, whose cells happen to be capable of independence, but never doubt that it is the workers in control, and the most bitter battles are those fought to defend the entrance to the hive, because it is the gateway to the brood and the food.
www.voiceofthehive.com - Beekeeping and Honeybees for those who don't.
All that means is that they won't become the norm, but they'll always be there - a group of people burdened with this defect for a fully avoidable reason.
OK.. so you've in essence also made the argument for genetic testing of embryos as soon as pregnancy is detected, and mandatory early abortion of babies that have genetic defects, as their conditions are avoidable - by not allowing these humans to be produced :)
Erm... I didn't make an argument for mandating anything, but I certainly do support early screening for birth defects and subsequent abortions. And yeah, I guess I support it for the same reasons. Interesting that the argument for "not playing god" is a pro-abortion argument in this case.
Supersmart? ... Probably not.
Elton John found someone to carry his baby; how hard can it be?
This is one of those days I wish I had a uterus.
I just met you
and this is crazy
so here's my number
have my cave baby..
How many children are produced in the Western world? How many children are produced in the emerging world? Who is the less ignorant? BTW I use ignorant, and not less intelligent here. Drum roll, less children in western world, and less ignorant people in the western world. You could argue that the western world is being drowned out by ignorant emerging world people. The irony here is that as we become more knowleagable we produce less children, dooming our society so to speak. However, with enough generations that ignorance is removed.
Your argument (though a bit shallow) is entirely the reason why having porous and fair immigration policy is a good idea - if we attract the best and brightest, teach, and employ them, or if we attract the hardest working (i.e., undocumented workers are some of the hardest working folks in the USA), the country as a whole will prosper.
Closing the country's borders? Yeah, the society will age like Japan's did.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
You're about 30,000 years late to the panic party. Those genes have already long since been introduced into the H. Sapiens gene pool. Unless you're pure sub-Sahara African, somewhere between 1 and 4 percent of your genes are Neanderthaler genes.
(An aside: I always found the racist implication that blacks are by nature more 'primitive' or 'ape-man/cave-man'-like than whites to be most amusing in light of the fact that they're the only ones who don't carry DNA from an older species of human around with them. FWIW, I'm white.)
The successful outcome of an experiment such as we're discussing here would be a viable H. Neanderthalensis, a member of genus Homo and therefore a human.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
At least what happened 3,000 years ago happened naturally, not with some clone engineered in labs. I just do not see mankind doing nature's job better than nature itself. Science is great, but at times people take it too far.
When Darwin published his work, the shock was NOT that Genesis wasn't true, they already knew that. The shock was that nature was nasty
There wasn't any such shock.
What do you mean "They" ? Less than 0.1 percent of the world's population was even interested. Of them, large proportion equated God and Nature. Story of Job proved that God could be nasty. So Nature being nasty is not even a surprise.
Anyone denied any privilege feels "life isn't fair". Just another way of saying God/Nature is nasty.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
That's the reverse of what I read in his post. He claims that if there were no immigration then solving ignorance would doom the country. He says that the immigrants are saving the western world. I feel he has a point.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Different species.
Not human races, ethnicities or societies (or any other groups within the same species).
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
It's usually the bastards that win. So maybe Neanderthalers were too friendly for their own good..
Yep, me too. I thought about modding it up, but decided instead to let everyone know that the parent's link is a link to an extremely good short story and/or novel, and that they should therefore all read one or both of them.
Good thing we're just talking about cloning, not time travel. Or at least not the time travel of that book.
I don't think that most animals care much about eating their own species when they get really hungry. That does make humans rather poor hunters, doesn't it? :)
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Yes, most of us (excepting most Africans and Chinese) have Neanderthal genes in us.
Neither do Native Americans.
Guess what you white foks ARE! Neanderthals!
News for you: my family has a dirty little secret: we have NorthAm Aboriginal blood in us from sometime back. I'm proud to have it. My parents and grandparents, not so much so.
You dissing Neanderthals makes you look stupid, btw.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
I don't use those devices to post to slashdot but I see it as a futile and annoying exercise for people to play teacher and correct the mistakes of those that do. Blaming me for a general situation that I mentioned but am not part of reveals that you are not paying much attention to what you are reading - so please fix your reading comprehension skills before playing teacher (or it's much better if people don't use their pride in their spelling bee win to think they get to correct everyone else on this casual site).
A correlation between what you call "ignorance" and population growth may be demonstrable, but this does not demonstrate a causal or real correlation. Hence it cannot be proven that "as we become more knowledgeable we produce less children" (which, by the way, should be "fewer children"). It would be more fruitful to surmise that some real correlation exists between the present motion of Western culture in its present direction and the decline in births. This culture is not wholly separate from our growth in scientific knowledge, but it cannot be proven by mere statistics that this scientific knowledge itself is the cause of the decline in child bearing. Merely pointing to scientific advances in contraceptive measures does not establish this point, either, because it is still necessary for the culture to desire to use these measures that science has developed. (This is analogous to the fact most often contraceptives do not actually achieve their theoretical efficacy in prevention because of faulty use by impassioned lovers.) In other words, intelligence is not what pushes Western society to thin its growth; culture is.
But this is further complicated by problems in the basic distinction between the Western 'intelligent' world and the 'emerging world.' Our assumptions, based on Eurocentric and U.S.-centric biases and present political and cultural dominance, make us assume that this part of the world is somehow more intelligent as a rule. Yet the possible genetic gap between homo sapiens and neanderthal that may have established a measurable gap in intelligence does not hold between the current varieties of humanity, such that the current scientific dominance of the so-called "first world" is not due to some genetic superiority. The multiplicity of Indian doctors and scholars, who come from a culture marked by a vast population, cast doubt on the claim that intelligence and lack of children correlate causally. On the other hand, much of what we consider 'intelligence,' in fact, is already judged according to Western standards that are designed from the outset to exclude other peoples and other histories, in order to deny their intelligence before they open their mouths. Simply because their thought does not always take the forms cherished by Western rationalism does not mean that they are actually unintelligent.
I don't at all mean to accuse you of racism, but I do think that your theory could benefit from some in-depth analysis and postcolonial thinking.
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
Knowing humans for what they are, it's likely some corporation would get them classified as non-human so that they can be used for experimentation without the same ethical issues as human trials present.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Let me illustrate, and PLEASE nobody call this racism
Hans Rosling does a much better job than you at illustrating it. He also completely disproves your fears.
www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies.html
it's in my head
Actually humans are very formidable hunters for one simple reason: Virtually all predators on land will have to break off and try again after resting if their initial attack fails. Humans just shrug and set out at a comfortable jog after the one that got away and try poking it with a stick, and then when it runs off that time we'll keep following it again. And again. And again. And again, over and over until we've either killed it directly or until whatever we're hunting is simply too tired to move anymore.
We're pretty much the only species capable of that kind of sustained physical activity, almost everybody else is stronger or faster only in short bursts.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."