Cloning Neanderthals

Heather Pringle has three posts about cloning Neanderthals:

• Why We Should Worry about Neanderthal Clones
• Politics, Science and the Cloning of Neanderthals
• Another Step Closer to Waking the Dead

Heather Pringle writes:

First of all, I should point out that this is not a pie-in-the-sky question. Zorich interviewed an impressive A-list of researchers–including geneticists who are sequencing the Neanderthal genome and leading paleoanthropologists who study ancient hominins–and some clearly believe that a cloned Neanderthal awaits us somewhere down the line.

So it’s not too early to begin thinking and debating about the ethics of cloning one of our hominin kin. While some researchers champion the idea out of pure scientific curiosity and the desire to learn more about an extinct hominin, I think it’s a terrible idea. I simply don’t trust my fellow Homo sapiens sapiens to treat another hominin with kindness and respect. Our track record with other primates, for example, is appalling–using chimpanzees for circus shows and laboratory experimentation, hunting gorillas for meat, and killing orangutan mothers in order to sell their babies as pets.

I can just imagine cloned Neanderthals being used as hosts for replacement organs, or for medical experiments, or other unpleasant scenarios.

What's your opinion?

Be kind to Neanderthals

The New Scientist blog asks, Why is 'Neanderthal' still a byword for dumb brute?

The notion that Neanderthals went extinct because they were too dim-witted to compete with humans - an idea now dismissed by most palaeoanthropologists - is finally beginning to lose its currency among the general public. It's about time.

Scientists working in south-western Spain uncovered perforated mollusc shells, some coloured with pigments, in archaeological sites linked to Neanderthals.

Jewellery and cosmetics, the researchers contend, point to a mind capable of symbolic representation and even complex language, once thought only to reside in Homo sapiens.

So, Neanderthals had make-up and art and language (and we also know that they buried their dead); in other words, they were pretty much like us.