Personally, I think we should start with a dodo, and then work our way up the ethical ladder from there.
... We know roughly how the sequence of life ran forward in time. What about running it backward? ...
Last week in Nature, scientists reported major progress in sequencing the genome of woolly mammoths. [see this] ... Now, according to Nicholas Wade of the New York Times, biologists are discussing "how to modify the DNA in an elephant's egg so that after each round of changes it would progressively resemble the DNA in a mammoth egg. The final-stage egg could then be brought to term in an elephant mother."
Cool, huh? But that's not the half of it. Wade notes:
The full genome of the Neanderthal, an ancient human species probably driven to extinction by the first modern humans that entered Europe some 45,000 years ago, is expected to be recovered shortly. If the mammoth can be resurrected, the same would be technically possible for Neanderthals.
from Slate
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My starting assumption would be that neanderthals are close enough to us that we should apply the same rules about cloning modern humans to cloning neanderthals.
Sure, we could clone one, but does anyone know how to raise one?
Presumably a Neanderthal Person would be intelligent enough to grasp the fact that he or she is an experimentally produced relic of an extinct group with no future. I can't be sure about our hypothetical Paleozoic humanoid, but this would depress the hell out of me. I would be very curious to see it done (and I do support efforts to clone Woolly Mammoths) but this seems overly cruel to me.
Olivia Judson chimed in on this topic this morning.
"What is pressing is the number of species we are currently in danger of losing."
The British Natural History Museum is actually working on preserving DNA from endangered species in case the conservation efforts fail. Cloning extinct species may become routine.
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=37540
Uh-oh, science copying science fiction again! Jasper Fforde, of the "Thursday Next" books, should ask for co-authorship...
One difference between mammoths and Neanderthals is that there are huge ecosystems that evolved in concert with mammoths in North America and Northern Eurasia. So, we have ecological spaces that are in trouble due to invasive species and unnatural situations for native species in the Great Plains and Siberia, because there are plants and small animals that depend on mammoths for their reproductive strategies, and in the absence of mammoths, they are struggling against invasives.
Whereas the same cannot be said for Neanderthals. Reintroducing elephantine herbivores into the ecologies of North America and northern Eurasia would have demonstrable benefit for native plant species, but these areas already enjoy the presence of hominids, for better or worse. Cloned Neanderthals would have nothing to offer southern Canada or Siberia that they don't already enjoy courtesy of Homo sapiens.
I'm not sure anyone should worry too much about the well-being of a cloned Neanderthal. Do you realize how much money Geico would pay him/her to be in their commercials?
ethically is it right to clone an animal that lived a long time ago. if they clone it will it be able to survive in nowadays environment? what is the purpose of digressing to a less evolved state of homo sapiens?
If we are thinking about cloning a neanderthal we need to ask ourselves what are we gaining? , don't we have enough knowledge to move forward and why are we trying to mess with the cycle of life? (15090478)
Cloning a neanderthal is ethically incorrect and I believe that we should not try to recreate what we had in the past . Neanderthals did exist but they are now extinct because they were out competed by homo sapiens . Do you think by cloning the Neanderthal and giving them a second chance they would be able to out compete our species hence homo sapiens becoming extinct?
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Shayuri , you certainly have a point there. I also believe that this should not be brought back into the present day. Yes it would be fascinating but it is unethical and not morally correct.
I find this very interesting, it would be nice to see what this species used to be like and how this cloning would go about creating a good resemblance. I find this very interesting.