Neanderthal cloning

[gfish]

Just saw a neat link talking about Neanderthal cloning. And I know this is my neophile, technocratic side talking, but my only response to the idea is an immediate "do it do it do it!"

Caveats: Assuming we have figured out the cloning of large mammals and have worked our way up through chimps with a high confidence of success. Obviously making deformed babies that die within hours of birth is bad. But that's just a technical problem which will be fixed eventually. At that point... why not? I really don't find the other arguments persuasive. The kids won't fit in? That was the argument a justice of the peace in Louisiana used last month to deny a marriage permit to an interracial couple! The fact that we won't learn about native Neanderthal culture is both stunningly obvious and irrelevant. There is still so much we could learn about their capabilities. Really, the suggestion that we clone a bunch and put them in a little paleolithic enclave is the most revolting "solution" in the article. What an ugly idea, forcing sentients to live a squalid life under the excuse of keeping them "natural".

Comments

[maribou]

I think it would be so incredibly important to know that the children were going to be raised in a safe and loving family where they could, if need be, be home-schooled, free-schooled or whatever. That if we brought sentients into a world where they were the only people like them, they would be assured of being loved, well-parented, and well-educated.

And I don't trust any corp/gov currently in charge of such things to do that.

In the theoretical case where that would be guaranteed, I have no problem with it.

(Yes, people get born into suboptimal conditions all the time - but there's something about being *that different* that seems to require, to me, that they get a more than fair shake at everything we *can* make good. I think of some of the home-raised chimps who knew enough to know they weren't all the way equal with their family and were heartbroken - and I shudder to imagine a more sentient being - someone essentially all the way human - raised into a less-than-equal position, or suffering other kinds of psychological trauma.)