Interview with George Church: Can Neanderthals Be Brought Back from the Dead?

[xchrom]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/george-church-explains-how-dna-will-be-construction-material-of-the-future-a-877634.html



Harvard professor and geneticist George Church: "We are getting better and better at programming cells."

***SNIP

SPIEGEL: Mr. Church, you predict that it will soon be possible to clone Neanderthals. What do you mean by "soon"? Will you witness the birth of a Neanderthal baby in your lifetime?

Church: That depends on a hell of a lot of things, but I think so. The reason I would consider it a possibility is that a bunch of technologies are developing faster than ever before. In particular, reading and writing DNA is now about a million times faster than seven or eight years ago. Another technology that the de-extinction of a Neanderthal would require is human cloning. We can clone all kinds of mammals, so it's very likely that we could clone a human. Why shouldn't we be able to do so?

SPIEGEL: Perhaps because it is banned?

Church: That may be true in Germany, but it's not banned all over the world. And laws can change, by the way.

[Scuba]

1. The Republican Party is very sick, but not yet dead.

[LeftofObama]

2. Of course we can clone Neanderthals.

I have a nephew who looks just like Glen Beck, and now he's starting to act like him. Coincidence? I think not!

[exboyfil]

3. Goodness

To not consider the ethical implications of doing this?

It is like intentionally producing a disabled child. A different sentient species without kin or a support structure with who knows what cognitive ability to handle the modern world. I frankly think it is unethical.

[zazen]

8. I'm bothered by most higher mammalian genetic engineering

The whole way we classify human vs non-human, and primate vs non-primate, is socially constructed. I'm not saying there aren't objective differences, but the degree to which we emphasize anything as "difference" depends on our myopic self-centeredness as humans.

I agree that cloning the Neanderthal, even if some of their genes have been introjected into us as latest theories claim, poses all sorts of ethical problems, and it begs the question, would cloning, if possible, a homo erectus be cloning an animal or a human? What about Lucy, a homo africanus? How is that we can grow human parts in a pig? How do we know we aren't bringing into being something with human sentience? And why the hell does it even matter if it's human? Would it be okay to clone neanderthals and experiment on them? If not, then how can we do it with chimpanzees and dogs?

I suppose if my child's life depended on an organ transplant that could only be developed through this sort of procedure maybe my ethics would change. I doubt it though.

[mmonk]

4. They are already here in NC.

They've taken over the state government.

[catbyte]

5. Aren't they the current House majority?

[LeftishBrit]

6. Of course - how else does one explain the Tea Party?

[Starry Messenger]

7. There doesn't seem to be any big rush of volunteers for this project.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022217328

[MineralMan]

9. There are so many ethical questions involved with this

that I don't see how they will be resolved. First of those questions is:

What is the status of a cloned Neanderthaler? Is he or she a full-fledged human being, with all the rights associated with that status? Or would we treat such an individual as an experimental subject?

That would be a very crucial question that needs to be answered before any attempt is made to create a Neanderthal clone. And it's not a simple question at all, since the result would not be Homo sapiens.

[cpamomfromtexas]

10. NO-We already have too many Republicans as it is!