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Should We Clone a Neanderthal?
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Nov 25, 2008 12:46 AM
from the they-are-among-us dept.
from the they-are-among-us dept.
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."
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Most of Woolly Mammoth Genome Reconstructed 245 comments
geekmansworld writes "From the Washington Post, 'An international team of scientists has reconstructed more than three-quarters of the genome of the woolly mammoth using DNA extracted from balls of hair, the first time this has been accomplished for an extinct species.' Who wants a pet mammoth?"
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Resurrecting the Mighty Mammoth, Cheaply 322 comments
somanyrobots writes with an interesting followup in the New York Times to the earlier-reported substantial reconstruction of the woolly mammoth genome: "Scientists are talking for the first time about the old idea of resurrecting extinct species as if this staple of science fiction is a realistic possibility, saying that a living mammoth could perhaps be regenerated for as little as $10 million. The same technology could be applied to any other extinct species from which one can obtain hair, horn, hooves, fur or feathers, and which went extinct within the last 60,000 years, the effective age limit for DNA." (The Washington Post article linked from the earlier post was much more skeptical, calling such an attempt "still firmly the domain of science fiction." The New York Times article, while describing the process in similar terms, also calls attention to recent advances in sequencing DNA, as well as recoding DNA for cloning.)
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Yes, because they would make (Score:5, Funny)
Yes (Score:5, Funny)
Cause then it would no longer be socially acceptable for women to call us that anymore.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
The jokes are funnier if I don't have to explain them.
Parent
Re:Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
What if its worse? What if they're smarter?
Parent
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Chances are that the hundred of you would be working in packs with primitive weapons to wipe out the bears within a week.
Parent
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
Put me in a room with a bear, repeat a hundred times and see who comes out on top. Doesn't mean the bear is smarter.
I think it might mean that, actually. You just said "Put me in a room with a bear". Well, duh... you're clearly not that smart.
Parent
Re:Yes (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
I for one welcome our previously extinct smarter overlords.
Parent
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
What if it turns out they are just like us?
I wouldn't worry about that too much. At this very moment, there are several millions of Neanderthals among us, both male and female [somethingawful.com].
CJ
Parent
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
Given the boyfriends my ex has been through in the past couple of years, I think nobody might be a bit strong.
Parent
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
(I can't believe I'm sinking to this level)
It also might depend on just how huge that issue really is. Wink, nudge.
I am speaking of penises .
Parent
Re:Quick question (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, his brain was most likely removed without permission: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein's_brain [wikipedia.org]
Anyways cloning humans isn't against human rights or unethical. Would you debate your existence if someone told you that you were cloned? What if humanity lost its ability to naturally procreate? Would it suddenly change to not being against God's will? Humans play God every day when we take or prolong life, and I say if it's for the better of humanity, I'm sure God would be cool with it.
Parent
Re:Quick question (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that a cloned individual is only genetically identical.
That'll be a Catch 22 if we can clone people and their memories, which isn't reasonably a thing to be expected.
Parent
Re:Quick question (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Geico (Score:5, Funny)
Well, arguably not... (Score:5, Interesting)
Could be (quite the role-reversal?) that they were the thoughtful ones, and we were just meaner.
Who knows? We don't.
Re:Well, arguably not... (Score:5, Informative)
If having a bigger brain was the ultimate measure of intelligence, then elephants would be geniuses [natureinstitute.org]
In fact, brain size does not matter in humans [netcom.com] either. It's just an old wise tale carried over from the 19th century that still haunts us today (as seen here).
Parent
Re:Well, arguably not... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Well, arguably not... (Score:5, Informative)
As for the article you link to, they make the claim that if brain mass is correlated with intelligence, then you should also claim that women and short people are dumber. Although, women and short people also have smaller bodies, which means their brain mass/body mass ratio may be equal or better than men. So, who knows what should be the prediction based on that. And, of course, the correlation is certainly not 1.0, so even if a brain mass/intelligence correlation exists, it's not that clear what conclusions you can draw from large/small brains.
As for neanderthals, their body mass was also larger than humans, so it's unclear whether they would actually be smarter.
Also, I happen to think that elephants and whales are probably pretty smart. Maybe not as smart as us, but if you take the animal world as a whole, I think the correlation is obvious and undeniable. The smartest animals on earth (humans, elephants, dolphins, apes, etc) have the largest brains on the planet. The only real outlier is birds. Parrots can be very smart - evolution apparently found a way to build a small intelligent brain while still allowing the animal to fly.
I also found this claim (also from your article) to be amusing: "Early humanoids had a less developed cerebral cortex and therefore could not attain what we commonly call conscious experience. The same could be said for modern apes and dolphins. An ape's brain could get bigger, but unless the cerebral cortex develops in a certain way, the ape will never achieve "thought"." Ha. It's funny in this essay that talks about debunking myths of brain size, that the author introduces his own unfounded beliefs about brains. Who's he to say that apes, dolphins, and early humans didn't have conscious experience? Apes are actually quite smart. They understand the fact that other creatures have brains and sets of beliefs. Apes can recognize their own reflection in a mirror.
Parent
Re:Well, arguably not... (Score:5, Informative)
It's just an old wise tale
Old wive's tale.
old wives' tale.
Parent
Re:Not so. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Clone 'em??? (Score:5, Funny)
Well (Score:5, Funny)
Religious point of view (Score:5, Funny)
Housing, Nursery, or a Zoo? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
What? (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Evolution (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Evolution (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Evolution (Score:5, Funny)
1) Extinct. Seems a bad move but:
2) Wait for Sapiens clone them up."If they extincted, they cannot be smart"
3) Rule the world! Muhahhahha
I guess xkcd could make a comic with this script.
Parent
This has been on my mind for a few years ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org]. 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
Re:This has been on my mind for a few years ... (Score:5, Funny)
4. We could if we sent it to public school.
Parent
RIP, Phil Hartman (Score:5, Funny)
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.
What I want to know is... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Slave Caste (Score:5, Funny)
Let's bring them back to use as a subjugated slave caste doing jobs that are too hard or dangerous for humans.
What about modern diseases ? (Score:5, Interesting)
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 ?
Re:"The Dead Will Rise" (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:"The Dead Will Rise" (Score:5, Insightful)
But when the inevitable species war erupts, we can end racism.
I wouldn't be so sure of that. Racism is often based on poor logic, so how would this change anything?
Parent
Re:NO (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, it's slippery-slope man!
Parent
Re:Not animals (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:Not animals (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Parent
Re:Not animals (Score:5, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org], but Neanderthals are H. neanderthalensis, while we are H. sapiens.
Though here's an interesting paragraph on the Neanderthal page [wikipedia.org] 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.
Parent
Re:Not animals (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:queue... (Score:5, Funny)
Geico would make an Obscene CLone Fall
Parent
Re:No. (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
Parent
Re:What line? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:What line? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, since the downsides of religions are usually connected with the attempts to suppress other religions, I'd say we would have gotten all the downsides and none of the upsides and thus would be worse off than now.
Parent
Incorrect (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent