Should we bring back the Homo Neanderthal?

[kelly-087]

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/...erthal-man.html (http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/06/neanderthal-man.html)

Should we bring back an extinct human like species? What problems would the individual have during life and how will other people react to him or her socially?

Homo Neanderthals have been recently discovered to have the ability of speech and may have had the ability to have conscious thought and may have been as smart as us. But what bothers me about this is how others will treat him or her, some people in our society already hate others over trival matters.

[Jazzratt]

Why would we want/need to bring them back?

[The Author]

Yeah, I don't see the need to bring back the Neanderthal man, or any other early Hominid for that matter.

I could see a reason behind bringing back animals that have been brought into extinction by humans over the past few centuries though, like the Quagga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quagga), the Dodo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo), the Moa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moa), the Tasmanian Tiger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_Tiger), and maybe even the Mammoth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth).

[Janus]

Except for spectacle purposes, there's really no reason to actually "resurrect" them particularly since it seems much more impractical than simply studying the actual DNA.

[TC]

If someone cloned a neanderthal it would be self evident that they're persons that should be treated as such. The socially relevant difference would be essentially cosmetic, like that of races, they'd simply be more genetically distant than other human populations are to each other.

[kelly-087]

Originally posted by [email protected] 11, 2007 12:29 am
If someone cloned a neanderthal it would be self evident that they're persons that should be treated as such. The socially relevant difference would be essentially cosmetic, like that of races, they'd simply be more genetically distant than other human populations are to each other.
But they do have physical differences aswell such as they were shorter, slower (not intellectually I meant that humans could run faster then them), they had shorter limbs, they might have been stronger etc. I would treat a neanderthal just like I would treat any human with respect. But its the religious and racists that I worry about.

[midnight marauder]

Assuming "resurrecting" a neanderthal could be achieved successfully, I really wouldn't ever see this happening. The social impact would be huge. Considering the already tremendous religious backlash against any and all things cloning, going so far as stem cell research, it would be extremely risky for any scientist to go about doing so...

Not to mention that the individual's entire life would be that of a lab rat, being constantly subject to studying and monitoring.

And you could probably assure that there would be all sorts of negative public reactions agains that aside from the religious and conservative aspects of the subject. Geico, anyone?

[kelly-087]

Originally posted by [email protected] 11, 2007 07:09 am
Assuming "resurrecting" a neanderthal could be achieved successfully, I really wouldn't ever see this happening. The social impact would be huge. Considering the already tremendous religious backlash against any and all things cloning, going so far as stem cell research, it would be extremely risky for any scientist to go about doing so...

Not to mention that the individual's entire life would be that of a lab rat, being constantly subject to studying and monitoring.

And you could probably assure that there would be all sorts of negative public reactions agains that aside from the religious and conservative aspects of the subject. Geico, anyone?
Thats another problem the caveman stereotype.

[piet11111]

i dont think it would be right to bring neanderthalers back as they would be considered a scientific gimmick instead of a "normal" person.

with an animal i would not have had the same objection but we are talking about the closest thing to human as we could get.

[Severian]

Academic question anyway. How are you going to restore a complete genome from fossilized fragments?

In "Jurassic Park" they just splice frog DNA into the gaps...this would so not work in real life. DNA is a complicated whole, with regulatory sequences sometimes far from the genes they regulate....

Strikes me as a bad idea if it was possible; we're lucky that evolution resulted in one, equal human species - no reason to change that.

[kelly-087]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12, 2007 05:54 am
Academic question anyway. How are you going to restore a complete genome from fossilized fragments?

In "Jurassic Park" they just splice frog DNA into the gaps...this would so not work in real life. DNA is a complicated whole, with regulatory sequences sometimes far from the genes they regulate....

Strikes me as a bad idea if it was possible; we're lucky that evolution resulted in one, equal human species - no reason to change that.
Some Neanderthals were frozen during the ice age preserving their bodies and then theres their hair which could contain DNA.

[kelly-087]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10, 2007 03:58 am
Yeah, I don't see the need to bring back the Neanderthal man, or any other early Hominid for that matter.

I could see a reason behind bringing back animals that have been brought into extinction by humans over the past few centuries though, like the Quagga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quagga), the Dodo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo), the Moa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moa), the Tasmanian Tiger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_Tiger), and maybe even the Mammoth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth).
I know they are trying to bring back the Quagga, Tasmanian Tiger and Mammoth but is it still possible to bring back the Moa, giant eagle and elephant bird etc? I would think their DNA is badly degraded.