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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.
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.
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?
So we can just skip the artificial insemination and do it the good ol' fashion way...
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
This usually involves burning windmills and crowds who can get their hands on pitchforks and torches.
But from a scientific point of view it would be a TRIUMPH!
Does the article say if he also plans to clone a bride for him?
20 minutes into the future
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.
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
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.
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 !
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.
Now who is the Neanderthal here?
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,....
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"
European culture will cease to exist? Of course not, it will just continue to evolve. Thankfully, because we still have a long way to go to end sexism and racism, and the bad influence of some of the churches.
Well, if you are in favor of replacing on church based culture with another, then you have a point, however the upcoming influence tends to have a much different view of sexism and racism than what Europe is currently used to and probably not in a favorable manner.