Here’s something straight out of the land of philosophical thought experiments. Scientists in Germany have now mapped 65% of the Neanderthal genome, and could bring one of these hulking fellas to life. Neanderthals are a humanoid species that split off from homo sapiens about 300,000 years ago. For some reason there was little interbreeding between the two species, despite very strong genetic similarity. One of the most interesting findings is that Neanderthals had some of the genes critical for language.
Dr. George Church, at Harvard, says Neanderthals could be brought back with existing technology, at a price of about $30 million. The trouble, says Richard Klein, a paleoanthropologist at Stanford, is that you wouldn’t know whether to put Neanderthals in a zoo or at Harvard.
Klein’s question flies in the face of a very sensible sounding view called “moral individualism,” put forth by the always clear and insightful ethicist James Rachels (sadly now deceased). You ought to put Neanderthals wherever they belong, based on their own individual characteristics, he would say. If they were smart, you’d have to let them into Harvard. What would it matter what species they belonged to?
These scientists really seem to set great store by species. The “recipe” for creating a Neanderthal using modern techniques allows you to start with a human cell, and tinker madly (see article for what “tinker madly” means), or start with a chimpanzee cell. The article says–
To avoid ethical problems, this genome would be inserted not into a human cell but into a chimpanzee cell.The chimp cell would be reprogrammed to embryonic state and used to generate, in a chimpanzee’s womb, a mutant chimp embryo that was a Neanderthal in many or most of its features.
How does this avoid ethical problems? The idea seems to be that the resulting creature would be a mutant chimp, not a mutant human, so it would be much easier to justify poking, prodding, keeping it in a lab, etc.
If Rachels were alive to discuss the case, he’d find this the height of nonsense. How could anything be relevant to the way an individual is treated but the character of the individual itself? The special deference we feel toward anything that happens to be classified human is groundless, and not innocently so either. The flip side of the deference for humans is dismissal (relative or absolute–to make Mary Midgley’s helpful distinction) of all that is not human.
If you tinkered with human cells to create Neanderthals, would you thereby be placed in a position of having stronger obligations to them than if you tinkered with chimpanzee cells? Or put it this way: say one research team starts with human cells and creates Neanderthals, and another starts with chimpanzee cells. Do we owe anything more to the human-based Neanderthals?
I think Rachels view is sensible–as I said–but this isn’t really a simple matter. Your thoughts?
Hi Jean,
I think the reason for avoiding human cells is the outcry from, I should think, mostly religious groups that would come about.
I’d be outraged irrespective, of bringing back a near-human just for scientific purposes. Neanderthals died out for a reason. They couldn’t compete with h.s.s. It’s extremely hard to see that the Neanderthal could possibly fit in our society except for experimentation purposes.
I don’t have the same problem with bringing back lower animals, especially if they could be bred back from extinction.
There are lots of bad reasons to care whether you’re creating mutant chimpanzee Neanderthals or mutant human Neanderthals–like the religious reasons. But I’m trying to figure out if there are good reasons. Or is “moral individualism” the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
You know, I read Singer’s “Animal Liberation” when I was 16. I’ve never forgoten his arguments about speciesism. It’s just part of our deep seated tribal instincts. Heck we still struggle with RACEism let alone SPECIESism. We’ve got a long way to go.
Could you unpack the term “moral individualism” a bit more? I’m pretty sure I know what you mean, i.e. “You ought to put Neanderthals wherever they belong, based on their own individual characteristics, he would say. If they were smart, you’d have to let them into Harvard. What would it matter what species they belonged to?”
But I think you could flesh this out a bit more. For example “moral individualism” is associated with existentialism. Is the sense in which Rachels used it?
I think irrespective of the use of a chimp or a human host for the DNA, the result would be due the rights of a human. I believe this because the reason for resurrecting the species is interest in their humanity. Rachel’s wait and see approach is flawed because Neanderthals were raised by Neanderthal parents. Lacking these the neo-Neanderthals are going to be raised in a different environment, no matter how biologically similar they are to palaeo-Neanderthals. A failure to behave sufficiently human could be a failure of the carers/keepers rather than the Neanderthal. That would suggest that the choice would be between Harvard and a specialist hospital, like it is for other humans.
It follows that if the interest in Neanderthal resurrection is the humanity, then this is related to the question of whether or not it is ethical to create humans for experimental purposes.
Faust–
Moral individualism is the view that the way we treat an individual should depend only on the attributes of that individual, not at all on the kinds the individual happens to belong to. In some contexts, the individual’s intelligence might be important, or the individual’s susceptibility to pain, or the individual’s ability to make autonomous decisions, but in no context can it be directly important whether an individual belongs to a particular race or gender of species.
I say “not directly important” because kind membership can be a kind of heuristic. If you’ve got to decide who gets into Harvard quickly, you ought to exclude non-humans, because general speaking humans are smarter. But human/non-human is not a genuinely relevant distinction (according to moral individualism).
In the present context, the researchers are thinking there’s an ethically very important distinction between a mutant-chimp Neanderthal (you start with a chimp cell) and a mutant-human Neanderthal (you start with a human cell). But these two individuals are probably going to be different in species, not in attributes as individuals. So a moral individualist would find it absurd to think one is owed more consideration than the other.
Alun–Neanderthals are “humanoid” but not humans as far as I understand it. Neanderthals split off from homo sapiens 300,000 years ago. They’re as different from humans something like as lions are from tigers.
A friend of mine wrote a short story about how an intelligent and peaceful species, the Neanderthals, were exterminated by an equally intelligent, but killer species, us.
As a “living” case-study in neantherdal “ethics” why not study George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and their neo-”conservative” fellow travellers
Jean,
In my comment I answered the question:
“How does this avoid ethical problems?”
which you specifically asked as regards to the scientist’s use of the word “ethics” in using chimpanzee cells over those of human ones.
It seems that the “ethics” you had in mind was different than the one you asked about, i.e. the philosopher’s as opposed to the scientist’s.
Perhaps I should apologize for thinking you so naive that you wouldn’t understand the latter one.
I didn’t really ask about the scientists’ ethics. I think I understand the nature of their ethics. They think there’s something morally special about being human, so that there’s more of a problem growing neanderthals starting with human cells, and winding up with mutant human neanderthals. I’m also not asking about philosophers’ ethics. I mentioned one philosophers’ view, but I’m asking for us to actually think about the matter ourselves–to reason about it. Would it be reasonable to think a neanderthal grown from human cells had higher moral status? Does humanness confer some kind of specialness? I have some thoughts about this myself, but figured it would be interesting to see what people think.
Does humanness confer some kind of specialness?
I’d say no. Certain qualities that human beings may have confer some kind of specialness: intelligence, self-awareness, awareness of their own mortality, sense of justice, but not all human beings have such qualities, and our hypothetical neanderthal may have them.
Jean,
I take my apology back. I think you are at least a tad naive.
What leads you to believe that scientists “think there’s something morally special about being human, so that there’s more of a problem growing neanderthals starting with human cells?” Scientists work at furthering science while trying to make a breakthrough in their field. They experiment with animals and humans all the time, morality is stretched to its limit if not entirely disregarded.
So my original comment stands.
Ralph, If you really think scientists take the same attitude toward experimenting on humans and experimenting on animals, you are not just “a tad naive” but completely wrong. Consider the fact that there are extremely elaborate human subject review guidelines at all research institutions, while the regulations governing animal experimentation are very weak. In fact, consider the article I linked to, or even just the quote in my post. Obviously, these scientists do think it would make a difference whether you created a neanderthal out of chimpanzee materials or from a human cell.
Jean,
You’re right. I’d be wrong
“If you really think scientists take the same attitude toward experimenting on humans and experimenting on animals.”
But I don’t.
Where’d you get the idea I do?
You say,
“Consider the fact that there are extremely elaborate human subject review guidelines at all research institutions”
Yes, consider the fact. Why are the guidelines so extremely elaborate? Could it be that scientists left to themselves could be wishy-washy about their ethics?
I did read the quote in your post, several times, and the link mentioned that it came from. Both say the same thing, because of ethical reasons, human cells would not be used. They didn’t say it was their ethics that prohibited the use of human cells. I say there talking about the ethics of those who would want to skin them alive if they tried something like that.
Notice they didn’t even blink at the ethics involved in bringing back a neanderthal under any circumstances.
Discussions on this (ethical) issue throws light on how philosophers have gained that notorious fame of “making simple things complicated”. Perhaps at this point we should call to mind that “simple,” convenient but easily-neglected theory—“Natural Ecological Recycling.”
This world is created by God (to believers) or evolves by Nature (to evolutionists), but at least all agree that the world is not brought into being by us. One underlying assumption is that there is one Great Mind that is by far superior to human intelligence. To average modest minds, what complex and delicate system is involved and how it is arranged are still far beyond us, so non-intervention may be a wise choice.
Everything has its place in this complex order, and everything has its time: fallen leaves, withered grass, things be, things no more. Neither can humans be independent of this order—they “come from dust, and will return to the dust” In this process, everything severs each other.
So we needn’t be burdened with guilt at the unfortunate ant trodden under, or refrain from eating meat merely out of a troubled conscience of consuming “another life” (we ourselves are also being consumed by life in other forms), or bring what does not exist back to life, all these for the simple reason—everthing has its time and order, and all serve each other. But as for those that are alive, there is no reason to inflict pain on them, simple because witnessing another in pain is undergoing pain itself.
In view of the above, I will be of the Nauturalism school, instead of the Specialism school (this term carries an emotional prejudicial overtone that one is superior to another, which attitude I do not hold in fact), and I believe all things belong to, and will be ultimately merged into that universal cosmic order.
Ralph, I do think scientists today generally have ethical scruples. They have a sense of there being limits on what can be done to human beings that are fairly stringent, and a sense that almost anything is permissible if the experimental subject is an animal. Sure, regulations force people to have even higher standards, and you can think of examples where the standards were violated. But on the whole, the research community is not without ethics. It’s just a highly “speciesist” ethic–it puts humans on a pedestal. Anybody who doubts this ought to read Peter SInger’s book Animal Liberation.
All human choices imply both a standard AND a purpose. I can imagine it might be useful to create such creatures for use as ‘spare parts’ but such a choice would inevitably conflict with the standard of ethical behaviour – man’s life as required for the survival of *man qua man* i.e. by the terms, methods, conditions and goals required for the survival of a rational being through the whole of his lifespan.
Recreating Neanderthals would be like creating a race of mentally disabled children – any hypothetical benefit would be irrelevant in the light of the conflict with the standard of morality, see Tara Smith, ‘Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist’. Cambridge University Press ( 2006)
Jean,
You recommended Peter Singer’s book. Since I wanted to get back to our discussion before 2009 is over I had to satisfy myself with a book review. Interesting, but I miss the point. I’m sure if I read the whole book I’d be better informed of what you’re getting at. I thought we were arguing about medical ethics with humans mainly in mind.
This is from the link you provided:
‘Dr. Church said he had no plans for such an experiment [the neanderthal cloning], but if someone were eager to supply the financing, “We might go along with it.” ‘ This statement comes after some lame talk about ethics. Doesn’t the quote strike you as lacking real interest in the ethics of the proposed experiment? Sounds to me he’s ready to go.
Let me recommend a book that should open your eyes to scientist’s willingness to experiment on humans, “The Knife Man” by wendy moore. True, the material in this book is set in the 18th century, and things are far better, ethically, now, although I still doubt it because of of how moral scientists have become. If you need some modern evidence, Wikipedia’s post on “Radiation Experiments on Humans” might convince you of the point I’m making. They say in spite of stringent guidelines for such testing:
“there have been a number of experiments that may constitute unethical human experimentation.”
Ralph,
What’s relevant in the book is the way Singer massively demonstrates that people today take different stances toward research on animals and research on humans. Research on animals is practically unlimited, often grotesque, and often pointless. Scientists look at humans in a completely different way. This is our prevailing ethos–very low status for animals, very high status for humans.
The article we’re talking about fits that ethos to a “t”. Amazingly enough, the researcher thinks if you made neanderthals starting with a chimp cell, it would be OK, but it would be ethically problematic to make them starting with a human cell. Since the first would be non-human, and the second in some sense human, they think there’s a big ethical difference. This is actually a very striking instance of the prevailing ethos, since in fact there would be so little difference between a mutant chimp neanderthal and a mutant human neanderthal. Yes, as you say, the researchers don’t seem to be extremely interested in ethics, but they are interested enough to make that distinction.
Our attitudes about experimentation have changed a great deal over time, and certainly since the 18th century (re: the book you mention). Even in the US, in this century, attitudes have changed enormously. It used to be that there were very lax standards for experimenting on children and “mental defectives” (as they were called), even among mainstream US scientists. There are the famous Tuskagee syphillis experiments that could be cited and the horrors of Mengele in Nazi Germany. Yes, some unethical experiments probably continue to be done. However, the difference between the way humans are used in research and the way animals are used truly like night and day.
I think human/animal is a distinction that runs very deep in the ethical think of the vast majority of people. It plays a role in this article that’s striking, and that’s what I wanted to talk about.
Jean,
Thanks for the clear and lengthy explanation. I think we’ve come full circle now, and there’s nothing different that I’m ready to say right now.
None of us really understand the probabilities of what happens around us.
William Golding also wrote a novel on the subject of the last neanderthals (The Inheritors, 1955). It was a follow up to Lord of the Flies and I am sure would exercise your imaginations.
Excellent article. What the hell is the thinking behind the claim that there are no ethical problems if we use chimp cells? (No human cells were harmed in the making of this Neanderthal). Other than the religious stuff or anthropocentric stuff, I mean. Anything?
Causal history can matter metaphysically sometimes (e.g. sunburns) but I don’t see how to get from that to the silly chimp cell conclusion. Am I being thick?
Ok I’ve finally had time to read this article and think about it some. It seems clear to me that the reason behind the ethical distinction has to do with an assessement of the value of the genetic code as such. What makes a human cell “human?” It’s a CELL, but it’s a “human” cell because is a cell defined by its genetic code. On this view altering a HUMAN genetic code does “violence” to the “source” of humanity. By messing with a human in in potentia you are messing with a human being as such. This is clearly related to the same line of thinking that privileges human fetuses, as their value is essentialy a value in potentia. I should add that I don’t really have a strong problem with this line of thinking. I don’t see the difficulty with evalutating actions on the basis of how they interact with future possibilities. In any case if we were to all have a discussion about the ethics of messing with cell DNA it is clear that we would at least in part be dealing with arguments about future possibilities for that cell.
The other half of the ethical question is what happens after the cell completes its development and becomes the fully expressed fleshy manifiestation of its genetic instructions, i.e. the “mutant” human or the “mutant” chimp. I’m not sure that “mutant” is the right word here. The genetic instructions have not mutated, they have been completely re-programed. So really we have a “reprogrammed” human or chimp. The question here is if the signifiers of “human” and “chimp” have any genuine meaning whatsoever anymore. What are they refering to? The genetic code was completely altered. Where is the “humanity” or the “chimpness” located in the entity post reprogramming? If I am sitting at a potters wheel making a bowl and I change my mind and make my clay into a cup did I just make a re-programmed bowl?
In the end I think this question inevitably boils down to the status of the genetic code itself and whether we have the right to mess with potentials. Once we get an actual expressed result we have to deal with that result as a unique entity and its unique capacities, It matters not a whit what its origins were.
James, I think this article does amount of a reductio ad ridiculum of the idea that sheer humanness matters. I mean it really does seem immaterial whether you make your Neanderthal starting with a human cell or a chimp cell.
Faust, Nice job of trying to make it seem less ridiculous, but here’s something I’m wondering. The article says to make a Neanderthal you start with a cell–just any cell. A skin cell, a germ cell, but just one cell–as I interpreted it. You then have to “reprogram it to embryonic state” (whatever exactly that means). So my impression was that the cell you started with was no more sacrosanct than the skin cells we’re shedding all the time. Taking a human skin cell and turning it into a Neanderthal (wow, nice trick!) shouldn’t really bother someone on pro-life type grounds. A human skin cell isn’t deprived of a future by being killed or by being subverted into Neanderthal-dom. It didn’t have a future to begin with.
Now, if they were taking human embryos from infertility clinics and giving them a future as Neanderthals, I could at least see better what the worry is. It would still seem weird to think you could eliminate all ethical problems by just starting with a chimp embryo. But that’s not what we’re envisioning…is it?
I think the NYT ought to print a more detailed recipe in the Living section: “How to Make A Neanderthal.” They need to give us a clearer ingredients list.
Yes if one thinks of it as a skin cell, rather than a zygote then it gets even more clear that we are talking about an idea that the human genome has value in and of itself, something that we should not do reprogramming violence to, a consideration we do not apply to other genetic codes.
Another question: where is this neadrathal going to do its gestation? In a chimp? wouldn’t it grow too big? How does this work?
It says in a chimp. Hmm, you’re right. Sounds like there might be some size problems. Would it bake long enough? I’m not sure about this…
Maybe we’re wrong in thinking anyone would consider it unethical to use a human cell. I started out with the idea that there would be an outcry from religious sorts with messing around with a human cell. But maybe not. If the end result was human then I have no doubt there’d be loads of hostility from many religions because the creation of humans is supposed to solely the job of god. But we’re not ending up with a human. So what would be their problem?
Ralph,
There is an inconsistency in your statement. You did fine until you said that you have no problem with bringning lower life forms back.. Didn’t they become extinct for similar reasons as Neanderthal? They could not compete in their environment any more than Neanderthal could.
Marci,
Yes, I thought so too. But I thought with lower animals there might be a chance of regulating their environment, zoo-like. The species would probably always have to live in such a way. Mind if I take back what I said about having no problem cloning such animals? Except for scientific purposes, I’m not sure why one would want to inflict the poor animals to such an existence.
OK, how about this? (Devil’s advocate mode on.)
Some things really are what they are because of what they are made of, maybe even how they are grown. You can’t make GEN-U-INE sourdough bread with instant yeast or fresh yeast. You have to use wild yeast that you have captured and fed and grown in a certain way. Maybe people have to be made of a certain stuff which comes together in a certain way too. That’s true, isn’t it?
Maybe you’re an animalist, and you think that our metaphysical nature consists in our animal nature. I am a particular human animal — not a soul or a brain, but this body right here. I wouldn’t survive a transplant into a vat or copying into a computer. Lots of people hold that.
Maybe you think, too, that human beings are the only kinds of person — we’ve got no evidence for the existence of nonhuman persons, no angels or aliens or anything. And you think that only persons matter in the right sort of way to deserve full-blown moral treatment (not just care but the lot).
Then do you get to worry that you might accidentally make a new sort of person if you build it out of a human cell but not a chimp cell?
If the Chimp-Neadnerthal grew up and wanted to vote, you could say no. It’s a deluded chimp which thinks (falsely) that it’s a person. It’s not made of the right stuff (bit like a robot telling seeming to say something intelligent — Searle thought this kind of thing, no?) But if it’s made of people stuff, maybe it is a person.
Hmm, lots of things going on there. I can see thinking I am this hunk of matter, and couldn’t have been made starting with a different cell, and can’t be copied, etc., but those are facts about token me. It doesn’t follow I couldn’t make another person starting with another type of stuff–chimp as opposed to human stuff.
I think Searle thinks you need specific stuff to get genuine intentionality, consciousness, etc., not that the stuff is important in and of itself. So would chimp stuff be limited in a similar way, incapable to exuding the right properties to yield a person (defined non-biologically), after genetic modification? Surely not.
Here’s what I think might be the best case you could make that you shouldn’t make Neanderthals out of human cells. The argument might be that we have sort of a social contract which says we will pretend all humans are the same and have the same rights. We enter into it out out of fear that some day we will be disabled, or our children or parents will be. Such a contract encompasses everything human…even the human-based neanderthal which in some strange sense “could have been me or my kid.” But why extend this self-interested protection to chimp-based neanderthals? One of them definitely could not have been me or my kid. If you created neanderthals out of human cells, maybe you would have to give them more rights.
I actually think there’s something to this but what doesn’t follow is that chimp-based neanderthals could get kicked around any which way. Just because they didn’t have human rights, it wouldn’t follow that anything goes. That’s what strikes me as bizarre about these guys–that the non-human world seem to them so easy to dismiss.
“That’s what strikes me as bizarre about these guys–that the non-human world seem to them so easy to dismiss.”
I don’t know why this is bizarre to you. It’s standard us/them thinking. Tribalism. Me/Other duality. Same reason religions collide and hard core ideologues want to destroy the enemy. Animals are “other” they are “not us.” Therefore we get to do whatever we want to them. Culture conflict has rational elements if you are willing to take a certain kind of “meme level” view of “what counts.” And the animal use and abuse is an extension of the same logic. (Or maybe its the other way around.)
In fact it may be that the meme level view of things, i.e. that some coherent cultural symbolic entity e.g. “white European settler” stands over and above “primitive indigenous inhabitant.” that is getting replicated at the gene valuation level “human genetic code” stands over and above “chimp code.” The latter can be messed with (on this view) because it is an information assembly of lower quality.
If find much of this thinking quite troublesome. But It is not suprising to me that it exists. It seems very intuitive.
Garvey’s example includes some of this thinking, this “right stuff” idea which as the cultural level is defined as “holding the right ideas about things” and at the physical level is “being composed of the right kind of things” where “kind” means “produced via the right set of instructions.”
For my own part, while I am sympathetic to argumets that are concerned with potential, I have no sympathy for arguments that have to do with “the right kind of stuff.” In my view all that matters is what kinds of experience things have, I don’t care of what they are composed. In other words, I hold that what gives humans value is the fact that we are sentient and have experiences. Everything that is important about humans is containted in our capacity for “having experiences” (and what that means varies depending on who you read) and that we are capable of thinking and feeling. To the degree that a Neaderthal has thoughts, feelings and sentience it is deserving of the same “rights” whatever those are, as human beings.
All this talk is getting me thinking about David Brin’s “The Uplift War.” Any of you folks read that?
Your welcome, Jean. I’m glad I could be of help, that you were able to use the photo from my family album for this blog.
Forgot to mention. He didn’t usually look so peeved, but Neal really didn’t like having his photo taken. Fortunately we got the film out before he grabbed and ate the camera.
oooops. Your welcome should read you’re welcome. There’s a philosophical distinction their that shouldn’t be ignored. Ummm….they’re.
Well, I always found Searle’s Chinese Room Argument completely convincing, and it does make you think that there’s something about brain stuff that makes for intentionality. So “right stuff” arguments are not always bad.
Re: tribalism, us vs. them, etc. It’s interesting that humans didn’t breed with Neanderthals after they split off from them 300,000 years ago. Even then, I guess they must have been viewed as too “other” or “animal.” Kind of funny thinking of the cavemen looking down on the Neanderthals as a bunch of louts.
Re: family album. Ahem.
Mmm yes.
Well
1) I don’t find the Chinese Room convincing. I think Searle is wrong. I am in Chalmers camp re: the Chinese Room.
2)Really the chinese room is irrelevant to the chimp/human example because the “stuff” we are talking about is bio-stuff. The chinese room would only enter into an AI example, or some other fuctional isomorphism example.
Basically we have two things: a bio-code string that makes chimps, and a bio-code string that makes humans. The question is: is it less immoral to upgrade a chimp code than to downgrade a human code? The chimp code is being “uplifted” to a higher state (or so we think) and the human code would be getting de-evolved. We think of the latter as being “violent” as we are going backwards in evolution. But does the code really have any value as long as it remains unimplemented, i.e. only syntactic and not semantic? It’s just a set of instructions, manipulating it is no different opening up uncompiled computer language and copying and pasting stuff around.
Once the program is IMPLEMENTED and we get a fleshy thing to grow out of it, then what results is a particular set of capacities that are emergent properties of that implementation. It is these capacities that will generate our obligations to whatever is produced.
I may add, that it also has to do with the POTENTIAL capacities. If it turns out that the neadertal has the CAPACITY for language and we deny that capacity by not providing an environment in which those capacities can be exercised than I think we are abusing it, in much the same way that a human child that was taken and not provided an opportunity to learn language would be considered abused.
I’m with Faust on the Chinese Room Argument; I think Searle is wrong. In fact, find Searle’s conclusion to his thought experiment disappointingly naive. So much depends on the definition of intelligence, yet I can’t think of any aspect of one that couldn’t be programmed. If anyone wants details on position I’d love to present them.
Well, maybe we need a special purpose Chinese Room thread, because I agree with Faust that it actually has no relevance here. We got into this through a series of false turns. If we were going to discuss the Chinese Room, I think we’d need to do it very, very carefully. Searle is making an argument about intentionality, not intelligence, and not consciousness… well anyway, I’d say let’s save it for a rainy day. (Maybe it will rain soon.)
Faust, I like the way you frame the issue. Is it somehow better to upgrade chimp code than to downgrade human code? That’s nice and clear. On the other hand, surely the most important question is about the welfare of the creature. I’d care about that whether the creature was an upgraded chimp or a downgraded human, and whether Neanderthals are just humanoid or human. In very subtle ways these species issues might matter a bit, but surely the basic question is about the welfare of the thing created, whatever it is.
So I had this additional thought.
This is all reminding me of Huxley’s Brave New World now. What if we could make Deltas like in Brave New World. What if we could without using monkey or human cells, but whole cloth from the ground up, using nothing but protein soup create an entirely NEW humanoid that had JUST enough intelligence to do all the menial things we don’t like doing. We could add some glands that released soothing happy time chemicals to keep them even happier. They would be like big friendly supper happy highly intelligent dogs.
I can’t help but think when I start thinking about genetic code manipulation that we are going to wind up doing something like Brave New World. It almost seems inevitable.
Faust,
You’re even more of a cynic than I am. I don’t see us going toward the Brave New World prototype(?) but gradually through use of bionic parts becoming cyborg-like and eventually androidal.
Heh, well that’s one version, though one can certainly imagine an androidal version of BNW. I’t will depend on those who don’t think AI is possible are right or not. In a sense it’s a race…what will generate the next evolution? Will it be like Blackmore has suggested a move from memes to temes? Will it be via genetic manipulation as in BNW? Will it be a hybrid? How will we track “morality” and “ethics” in posthuman environments? We are only at the beginning of the next jump. People who say they know how this jump will happen are fooling themselves. But so are people who think it will never happen. The evolutionary imperative makes it inevitable. Anyway this is getting off topic I suppose. But after commenting I wound up wandering over to my bookshelf and reading the first chapter of BNW and, as ever, found it relevant to our endless interest in playing god.
Here we go again.Humans alway have to feel special and seperate from all else.A certain sense of entitlement to the thrown in the kingdom of the universe.We base far to much of our self worth on some unfounded Reasoning that we are better than everything else.Our history shows it and our failures show the reality of its baselessness.Do we really have to be so superior to feel of structure.Is dominance and control a real sign of superior intellegence or one of inferiority insecurites.
The following article on passage of a state bill is quite relevant to the discussion. Here the human genome, in conjunction with an “organism” is said to be a “human.”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jCYLBnGybRvUb4qdAa71wFCbEg0wD96DUE3G0
hmm.. i’d have a huge problem with bringing back just one neanderthal, be he monkey or man… mainly because it would be totally unfair to make a one-man species. We’re hardly going to make a batch of them in the same conditions.. the world is overpopulated as it is… it would be impossible to tell what kind of creature you would make in imperfect conditions (not using 100% neanderthal material and having it grown in a monkey or human) and having an unbringing different to that of a neanderthal and then being left alone as the only one of its kind, not a monkey or a human…
to be studied all its life…
terribly lonely.
And the way we treat human native americans and aborigines and any indiginous humans who have conserved an older way of life… I can see the neanderthal-human being sent to harvard if he is smart, but I can’t see him being allocated a bit of land, given a lady neanderthal to keep him company and allowed to restart his species.
If he turned out like a peaceful version of us, what would be the point? If we’re the ones who killed off his species, what has changed about us? We could keep him safe from all the ugliness in the world…Take a sample of his tissue (a rib would do nicely..) make him a mate, stick him in his own nature reserve and tell him not to eat the fruit on the tree… ?
In a television presentation on Discovery about neanderthals (N) and homo sapiens (HS), it was posited that N were a highly spiritual people. HS tended to be much less so and didn’t want to mix with N even when they were in close proximity. They could not interbreed as they were too genetically different. It was suggested that the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis was a commentary on what may have happened between N and HS. So, if one were to “resurrect” N in great numbers, would that resurrect a species of highly religious humanoids? If so, that would be an irony of immense proportions in light of the religious arguments against attempting to tinker with cells and DNA creating new beings. Deep regret would certainly follow.
I believe that the Neanderthals are one of the Antediluvian people that most were destroyed by great flood. If that is true, then this species is highly intelligent, hard working, muscle men who spent many hours day and night tilling the earth, planting vegetation, and built giant monolithic temples to God, desperately seeking to know him. They would outlive our grandparents and great grandparents, and our great-great grandparents, living and average lifespan of 912 years. They would be temples of wisdom in themselves!! Good luck!! Peace..
I think that if this experiment is done at all, it should be done with a human cell. Not because it makes any difference, but because some people think that it makes a difference. Neanderthals should be treated not based on their species but based on their character: can they suffer? Can they fully understand their own situation? If yes and yes, then they are hardly different from humans.
How would we treat a Homo Sapiens Sapiens that we created from modifying a Chimp cell?
Every time we look at this creature,I remember Gods saying in the “holy Qur’an”, “be chimps or pigs”, this was a punishment for a large group of humens who saw the truth of “existance of ONE CREATER (ALLAH)” and still denied to obey his rule of worship and admittion of his rights,for they betrayed him in many ways…
That was in the ancient time of times… maybe Neanderthals are actualy those people and they under the rapid biological changes that happened to them just coulden’t breed to stay till today.
Bashaier, I must tell you, for your own good, that God does not exist.
Existence is not a derivative nor “manifestation” nor “appearance” of some supernatural entity.
It is reality.
As such, it is uncreated and eternal, and its laws, immutable.
If you claim to know something beyond existence, you must do so by openly denying reason, dispensing with definitions, proofs, arguments, and logical inferences and saying flatly, that your views are without any proof or logical foundation.
As soon as you commit that fraud against your own mind you depart from the light of reason and condemn yourself to a lifetime spent in the shadows and terrors of faith.
@ Bashaier (February 11, 2010, 1:52 pm): One could look at the Qu’ran in the same way one can look at other religious writings as an attempt to explain or comment upon things as they are. Without segments of scientific knowledge we know today, use of poetic expression and/or cultural terminology of the age is the only way one knows how to “put it.”
@ John (February 11, 2010, 3:11 pm): One cannot use logic to determine the existence of absolutely everything. There are some things that are outside the realm of reason. This discredits “gut feeling” and intuition. Besides what does it mean when a person says “God exists?” I suggest it is individual and experiential. The idea of what God is certainly wide and varied and using logic as a lens is like trying to nail a jelly dessert to the wall. Not everything *needs* to be demystified.
It’s very simple, species will always feel an affinity towards its own members, this is no less and maybe even more so in man. What we call ethics and morals, and what I think may be woven into us as a species, is what allows a species to continue on so yes, I believe that many people would be appalled at the thought of what came from human cells to make a Neanderthal being poked prodded and experimented on.
I would like to apologize for those individuals that turn this into a theological, philosophical sidetrack into oblivion. Non-human DNA should not be used and is illogical if it must be done at all. Being degreed in that field has nothing to do with that decision. The answer is that human DNA be used and the resulting human be treated with the decency and respect that would only be humane. There is no excuse available for doing otherwise. It does seem popular this day and time to create an excuse or cover like a wolf in sheep’s clothing or Trojan horse. Lies and trickery. It would be childlike rebellion stemming from curiosity. At this point in our evolution enough tampering has been done in the wrong direction. We must assume that somehow recessive DNA could “accidentally” be released into our gene pool. Monkeys are not human and humans are not monkeys. It seems developmentally malformed to act out a script rather than consider an idea and temper it with common sense. Superstition has no place here but history does and the correct interpretation of history from historical texts is impossible if the syllabus is misinterpreted by superstitious belief that is based on fact but altered and misinterpreted but accepted without question. It seems science and religions are about to discover that there cannot be one without the other and they are both equally valid and define each other in a way that is ironic and surprising.
People view human life as far too sacred. People’s lives are disrupted by one death; And most people would be traumatized if they had to watch someone die. That’s a mental abnormality (should I say illness or weakness?). That’s really all I have to say about the whole human-experiment-ethics subject at this moment in time.
I’d use human cell, cos of the simple reason neandertals are more similar to humans than to chimps (I mean, genetically). Regarding whether we should or should not create humans for experimental purposes, I think it’s not worse than creating humans just for sex, or still worse, so that they work for us in the future, as it was used in many societies. Regarding where should we put our creation: in a place where he feels good, safe and free.
Human ofc. We’ve done enough harm to the imago of Neanderthals. Don’t give him a chimp as mom.
great submit, very informative. I wonder why the other specialists of this sector do not understand this.
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