Bringing back extinct species
Hugh Freaking Dillon
Posts: 14,010
I was just reading an article on a supposed misunderstanding of a scientist speaking to a German publication stating that bringing back the Neanderthal species is theoretically possible but would take an "adventurous woman" for the task of carrying such a being to term.
Apparently some thought this meant the scientist was actively looking for such a woman, when in fact he said that is not at all the case, he was just reacting to the very idea that it would take an adventurous woman to do this.
What are the possible issues of this? Not just Neanderthals, but I have often heard of the possibility of bringing back wooly mammoths using elephants as surrogates.
My personal feeling on the matter? there's a reason that these beings became extinct, and there's no good reason to bring them back (except maybe an island like Jurassic Park).
What are the ethical quandaries of this?
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/life/sci_tech/despite-news-reports-scientist-says-he-is-not-seeking-a-woman-to-bear-a-neanderthal-baby-187950001.html
NEW YORK, N.Y. - A prominent genetics expert from Harvard Medical School wants to make one thing perfectly clear: He is NOT looking for a woman to bear a Neanderthal baby. Not even an adventurous one.
"Definitely not," said George Church.
Is he advocating for creating a Neanderthal? No. Does he plan to pursue such a project? "We have no projects, no plans, we have no papers, no grants," to do that, he said in a telephone interview Tuesday.
You wouldn't know that from some press reports that shot around the Internet the past few days, which made Church sound like he was supporting the idea and even looking for an "adventurous" woman to bear the Neanderthal child.
Church says those reports are based on misunderstandings of an interview he gave the German magazine Der Spiegel. The publication had approached him to talk about his recent book, "Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves."
Church said the idea of bringing back Neanderthals gets brief mention as a theoretical possibility, and the book refers to an "adventurous" woman merely to point out that the process would require a woman who no doubt would be adventurous.
"It said you're going to need someone like that if you're going to do it," he said. "It's certainly very different from taking out a want ad."
Neanderthals were stocky, muscular hunters who lived in Europe and western Asia. They died out sometime after modern humans arrived in Europe, which occurred some 40,000 to 45,000 years ago.
Scientists have recovered DNA from Neanderthal fossils. Making a Neanderthal would start with putting such DNA into human cells. They would be used to make an embryo, which would be carried to term by a surrogate mother, Church said.
Such a process would face ethical questions involving respect for the mother and child, as well as safety issues, and it would also require societal approval, Church said.
Scientists have long talked about bringing back long-extinct animals, such as by recovering genes from the remains of mammoths and using elephants as surrogate mothers. That has its own ethical issues, although not as troubling as a Neanderthal project, Church said.
Although he's not saying that a Neanderthal project is necessarily a good idea, "I think it is up for discussion, and hopefully for several years we can have a calm discussion about it," Church said. "It's way better to think of these things in advance."
Apparently some thought this meant the scientist was actively looking for such a woman, when in fact he said that is not at all the case, he was just reacting to the very idea that it would take an adventurous woman to do this.
What are the possible issues of this? Not just Neanderthals, but I have often heard of the possibility of bringing back wooly mammoths using elephants as surrogates.
My personal feeling on the matter? there's a reason that these beings became extinct, and there's no good reason to bring them back (except maybe an island like Jurassic Park).
What are the ethical quandaries of this?
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/life/sci_tech/despite-news-reports-scientist-says-he-is-not-seeking-a-woman-to-bear-a-neanderthal-baby-187950001.html
NEW YORK, N.Y. - A prominent genetics expert from Harvard Medical School wants to make one thing perfectly clear: He is NOT looking for a woman to bear a Neanderthal baby. Not even an adventurous one.
"Definitely not," said George Church.
Is he advocating for creating a Neanderthal? No. Does he plan to pursue such a project? "We have no projects, no plans, we have no papers, no grants," to do that, he said in a telephone interview Tuesday.
You wouldn't know that from some press reports that shot around the Internet the past few days, which made Church sound like he was supporting the idea and even looking for an "adventurous" woman to bear the Neanderthal child.
Church says those reports are based on misunderstandings of an interview he gave the German magazine Der Spiegel. The publication had approached him to talk about his recent book, "Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves."
Church said the idea of bringing back Neanderthals gets brief mention as a theoretical possibility, and the book refers to an "adventurous" woman merely to point out that the process would require a woman who no doubt would be adventurous.
"It said you're going to need someone like that if you're going to do it," he said. "It's certainly very different from taking out a want ad."
Neanderthals were stocky, muscular hunters who lived in Europe and western Asia. They died out sometime after modern humans arrived in Europe, which occurred some 40,000 to 45,000 years ago.
Scientists have recovered DNA from Neanderthal fossils. Making a Neanderthal would start with putting such DNA into human cells. They would be used to make an embryo, which would be carried to term by a surrogate mother, Church said.
Such a process would face ethical questions involving respect for the mother and child, as well as safety issues, and it would also require societal approval, Church said.
Scientists have long talked about bringing back long-extinct animals, such as by recovering genes from the remains of mammoths and using elephants as surrogate mothers. That has its own ethical issues, although not as troubling as a Neanderthal project, Church said.
Although he's not saying that a Neanderthal project is necessarily a good idea, "I think it is up for discussion, and hopefully for several years we can have a calm discussion about it," Church said. "It's way better to think of these things in advance."
Gimli 1993
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To me, the whole thing sounds like a bad idea- something to be carried out by bored left brained people with nothing constructive to do.
But I would be interested in hearing a rebuttal. Is there a good reason to do such a thing?
Can you expand on that comment, masked man?
(PS, it's ok to say "fucking"
I'll take it a step farther, though. We sometimes go to great lengths to keep species from extinction and I've often wondered about the ramifications of that. Are we preventing some new and stronger species from gradually evolving to fill the niche of the weak one clinging to existence?
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
As to the OP, I echo some of the replies here. Remember that old commercial that ended with "you don't mess with Mother Nature"? (I'm sure brian does
...which brings me to know1's excellent point. Perhaps when we have a hand in the extinction process, whether by taking over land, or poaching, etc...then we have an obligation to try and reverse the damage we've caused.
(or maybe that's evolution too?)
"...I changed by not changing at all..."
I have often thought that if a species is at risk of becoming extinct via natural causes (not human caused) then we shouldn't intervene.
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Man, it's been at least five or six days since the media has done something like ...
:fp:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/no-harvard-geneticist-not-trying-clone-neanderthal-baby-213859546.html
And on the survival of the fittest angle -- it always makes me wonder about things that doctors can do these days too. Such as, fertility doctors. Many, many people out there might not have had the ability to reproduce just a few decades ago. Now with the help of science, many people have that option through surgery, in vitro, etc..
The media really is the world's biggest cocktail party.
"...I changed by not changing at all..."
When we make seeds that can kill themselves off after one harvest I don't really think that mankind should be playing around with other things.
The poison from the poison stream caught up to you ELEVEN years ago and you floated out of here. Sept. 14, 08
yeah, my original post states that pretty clearly that it was a misunderstanding, probably lost in translation.
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I'm thinking the same thing. The article fails to mention WHY they would want to do this, a point they want to make, a reason for exploration and like the article mentions, there's all kinds of ethical issues...
I agree, we shouldn't mess with nature. But at the same time, it would be interesting to find out all the mysteries of the neanderthal and how we came to be.
The problem is that due to human impact on the environment we are causing more species to go extinct than can evolve. That is a scenario in which stronger species cannot evolve. The major extinction event we are seeing unfold is unique in that it is being caused by an animal (humans) rather than cataclysmic weather or geological or meteor strike events. Our efforts to save species is a logical intervention.
I wouldn't want to see the GOP base grow.
I never heard anyone say that extinct species deserved it
I have always found it fascinating how often they discover an animal that nobody knew existed plus it apparently happens all the time. That kind of shit makes me question the theory of evolution.
thanks Georgey boy
before I read the last sentence, I was going to say sounds like "the pigmen and women who love them" discussion.
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:corn:
That would be interesting to know, whg. I don't believe we now much about how they thought. Mostly how they lived.
Did you know that Edward Abbey believed he could sense in himself ancient Neanderthal DNA? Something like- I think he phrased it more philosophically but, something like that.
http://news.yahoo.com/neanderthal-cloni ... 25z;_ylv=3
Neanderthal cloning chatter highlights scientific illiteracy
BOSTON (Reuters) - After spending the weekend reading blog posts claiming that he was seeking an "extremely adventurous female human" to bear a cloned Neanderthal baby - which was news to him - Harvard geneticist George Church said it may be time for society to give some thought to scientific literacy.
Church became the subject of dozens of posts and tabloid newspaper articles calling him a "mad scientist" after giving an interview to the German magazine Der Spiegel.
In the interview, Church discussed the technical challenges scientists would face if they tried to clone a Neanderthal, though neither he nor the Der Spiegel article, which was presented as a question and answer exchange, said he intended to do so.
"Harvard professor seeks mother for cloned cave baby," read one headline, on the website of London's Daily Mail.
But Church explained on Wednesday that he was simply theorizing.
Still, the readiness of bloggers, journalists and readers to believe he was preparing an attempt to clone a Neanderthal, a species closely related to modern humans that went extinct some 30,000 years ago, led Church to ponder scientific literacy.
"The public should be able to detect cases where things seem implausible," Church said in an interview at his office at Harvard Medical School in Boston. "Everybody's fib detector should have been going off. They should have said, ‘What? Who would believe this?' ... This really indicates that we should have scientific literacy."
Despite the spate of articles comparing him to the character in the book and movie "Jurassic Park" who attempts to open a theme park filled with living dinosaurs, Church said he plans to continue speaking publicly about his research, which focuses on using genes to treat and prevent disease.
Given the number of policy debates driven by science - from how to address climate change, to space exploration, to public health concerns - scientists should not back away from talking to the media, Church said.
"We really should get the public of the entire world to be able to detect the difference between a fact and a complete fantasy that has been created by the Internet," he said.
In the Der Spiegel article, which Church said reported his words accurately, and his recent book "Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves," Church theorized that studying cloned Neanderthals could help scientists better understand how the human mind works. Scientists have already extracted DNA from Neanderthal bones.
But such experiments would pose a host of ethical concerns - including how many Neanderthals would be created and whether they would be treated as mere study subjects or as beings with their own rights, Church said.
"I do want to connect the public to science because there are so many decisions to be made if the way they learn it, if they learn it faster by talking about Neanderthals than they did by getting rote learning in high school, that's great," he said.
Jason P is on a roll.
Brian's best point for NAY, is the freak show awaiting Mom & kid. Otter & Hedonist aptly questions whether to leave well enough alone versus undoing some of our doing and someone else made a comment about too much time & money on their hands with nothing else to do but create another potentially overwhelming, at least in the ethical sense, problem like we don't have enough already?
I want t o know why all these brianiacs aren't pondering how to create an end, (or new beginning I guess) to really important stuff like how to keep at bay, the neanderthal look of our hairs sprouting out our ears, nose & brows rather than on top? How 'bout ending the neanderthal slouched look of osteoporosis! How 'bout these brianiacs get onto cloning a bit of their brain memory gene so the rest of us can remember a fraction of what they know! Yikes! I'll stop now. :roll: