Should We Clone Neanderthals?

I think there is a big difference between trying to restart their civilisation and cloning one. Sure morally it would probably be the wrong thing to do, but there would be a lot to learn from doing it.

I guess it's a fine moral line, if they're considered humans then people probably be against it but the past has shown animals are another class altogether with cloning research.

If you cloned a Neanderthal, you would get a relatively normal looking person with average human intelligence who would adopt whatever language and culture they grew up in. Their differences due to being a Neanderthal would be more subtle than the variation among individual human beings. They would likely lead a normal life, provided they could escape the inevitable media frenzy and racism.

The question "should we clone a Neanderthal?" is the same as the question "should we use unreliable technology to radically alter the development of a human being just for research purposes?" in which case the answer is undeniably "No".

>Bringing back a Neanderthal is to kill him twice, after granting him a brief purposeless life for our own edutainment.

They wouldn't all have to play in the NFL would they?

> Without their culture, community, and absolute freedom to roam the planet and carve a corner for themselves, they would be another zoo/museum curiosity, a biological anomaly paraded before us for pennies.

By this argument, we should destroy all zoos and let the species in them die off. It's counter to all biological knowledge.

> Even if a sizable population of them were granted full human rights and a habitat, they would forever owe us their existence, and their debt to humans would hang over anything they achieve for themselves in terms of growth and survival.

So? How is that different from the debt you owe your parents?

> Our future generations will also treat them as an experiment gone awry, should they ever threaten the slightest human interest.

This happens to minority ethnic groups all the time. Look at the new Arizona immigration law.

> It's hard enough watching dying racial and linguistic minority groups; their last remaining few members made into coursework for "our" undergraduates.

So... trying to understand ourselves is morally wrong? It's horrible to preserve our dying ways as best we know how?

> Bringing back a Neanderthal is to kill him twice, after granting him a brief purposeless life for our own edutainment. Let them rest in peace.

This applies equally to the California condor and the panda. We should just let all endangered species rest in peace, I suppose.

Should we get extinct, I don't want to be the first or the millionth to be cloned to life. I want to come to this world 200k years after the experiment, born naturally into a world where my specie is not the lab-rat of another more intelligent. In a world full of our own inventions, cultures, and languages. I also want a family tree with people whose life stories fill my youthful evenings with pride and curiosity.

After that, I wouldn't mind if there was a pony, and/or an Atari 2600.

Yeah don't you know that neanderthals just one day were like "you know what you guys are better go ahead!"

They probably have a natural affinity to clubs and clubbing, at least judging by popular movies.

If we can clone them surely we can keep them alive?

and they may be delicious