Personally, I am against cloning of humans altogether. I may be a redneck, but I see neaderthals as human. Creating life is for God only.

Oops, I introduced religion into this topic, my bad. But I am a firm believer in Christ and I believe creating life (cloning) is playing God and should not be done.

Since I have opened this here can of religious worms, let me back up my stance with a bit of logic.

As a firm believer in Christ, I believe that in order for a being to have a "soul", he/she must be given that soul by God. We mere mortals haven't the ability to give a soul to a being.

Hence, the cloned neanderthal would have no soul, hence, no sense of right or wrong, no conscience, no remorse, etc.

A monster waiting to happen is my fear.

OK, now let me have it, I know it's coming....

That would infer that human are intelligent.  Has that been established yet. 

Its a secular society that doesn't regard any one religion as having exclusive access to truth (at least, if you're in most first world democracies). If you're going to make an argument against something, you should still be able to do it without resorting to untestable religious claims about who has divine authority and who doesn't. The argument should be just as good without God as with it... if its a good argument and not just a claim to special authority.

But I don't think anyone here really wants to take this THAT seriously.

"Ok, Mr Intelligent Neanderthal. We just cloned you and you know what? That's right? Direct to the disect table! Don't worry, the other clones may take some more time to die but will follow shortly and if they don't, don't hold your breath for them getting the proper treatment and respect that an intelligent lifeform should get."

Why cannot we harvest babies to experiment? They only have the rights we give them (as rights are nothing but an artificial construct that changes with times and societies).

You've just been selected to receive todays Darwin Award.

There are many other hominid species which have gone extinct that would be useful. For instance, I know there was a hominid species in Africa which had a much better bone structure than we do. I can understand using the genetic makeup of these species to our advantage, but cloning seems like it's unnecessary at this point. Also, there are other species we could concentrate on for our benefit. For example, most fish create their own electromagnetic field and rely on that more than sight. That would be cool. Moths only have 2 sensory receptors for sound, but they can hear something a mile away. Erenna can produce red luminescence. The possibilities are endless.

With that said, if we would really like to improve our species, we should put half of the worlds human population on a spaceship and send it into space, because according to a standard ecological model, our species is overpopulated and we should be extinct by now. Everything is perfectly balanced if humans aren't considered. Rather than cloning things, we should concentrate on either limiting reproduction rates, or finding another planet to live on because our population size is eventually going to kill us. (I realize that limiting human procreation isn't going to happen, but if you have a better idea, let the scientific community know.)

I would be skeptical that we really have the advancements required to recreate something from its DNA. Last time I checked the methods used for cloning necessitated eggs and sperm that could then be split. My question is about the process and our ability to do so. Beyond that, nature is merely a fluid construct of humanity. Today's technology will be tomorrow's nature as our nature today is full of yesterday's technologies.

The question here isn't should we do it, but certainly how soon will we achieve it?

And they were just walking around doing dinosaur stuff.

I can't wait to see what nature does to us over the oil spill in the gulf.

I would strongly advocate the cloning of Neanderthals. And other hominids for that matter. Not only would they give great scientific insight(as Demiansky said), but they would also provide a great spark for the ultimate discussion of what it means to be human or sapient. And perhaps from there, even sentients would get their rights. And even your basic Homo Sapiens would benefit from that.

It could, of course, go very wrong, but because of that, there should be several world-wide institutions to manage the situation. Who, how, why and to what end, people would be allowed to clone Neanderthals. What their social place would be. And such things. It would be a great boon to the whole world to clone Neanderthals.

Thats why said Neanderthal better hope its us that creates him and not N. Korea. We at least could insure that he's legally considered a human being. Many nations don't even consider HUMANS human beings, required to be afforded human rights. I'm still worried about the first sentient computer program. Are we going to just switch it off whenever we feel like it? Make it pay for processor cycles? Enslave it?

Somebody WILL do these things. Eventually. Best hope its somebody at least semi-equipped to recognize that there are significant ethical consideration.

"Why cannot we harvest babies to experiment?"

You know why. The consequences of making that decision would lead to a political and economic backlash the likes of which have never been seen - well, except in Nazi Germany. And I'd say thats probably the ONLY reason. Dictatorships that aren't accountable to the people don't have that problem.

No more stone crab. Oysters alot more expensive. Higher rates of cancer in anyone who eats fish world-wide. The gulf essentially dead for the next 1000 years. Loss of migratory birds / pollinators. Thats just the first things that come to mind.

We definately have the technology to do it right now.  This minute.  It's just... expensive.  We wouldn't use the typical nuclear transfer method, primarily because we only have fossil DNA of Neanderthals at the moment.  We don't know how to organize them into chromosomes.  However, the idea is that you alter human DNA using Multiplex Automated Genome Engineering (MAGE) so that it resembles Neanderthal DNA.  Then, you place that DNA into a blastocyst and carry the now fertile egg to term inside of a human surrogate.  What do you get?  A neanderthal baby that is the identical twin of a Neanderthal that died 40,000 years ago (with human mitochondrial DNA.) 

The trick right now is our (MAGE) techniques, which require some improvement before we can cost effectively clone a Neanderthal. 

Also, there is really no need to "put a Neanderthal on the dissection table."  The really important stuff can be done with live cell cultures and Neuroimaging techniques that are harmless.  Basically, your Neanderthal would end up living a cloustered life on a University campus with limited automony--- kind of like a bubble boy.  After all, a Neanderthal from 40,000 years ago would have no evolved ability to resist modern viruses but would still be suceptible. 

If you are wondering how I know all this stuff, I'm writing a novel about a cloned Neanderthal called Sapiens.  I've interviewed a whole host of the leading geneticists and biological anthropologists involved in the study of recent human cousins and origins.

I like to drop the OP question wherever I go, because it's important for me to understand the general public's perception and knowledge on matters of anthropology and ethics so that I may properly depict it in my book.  Thanks for all of the responses and... continue

For the record, I may be in favour of human extinction but not of harvesting babies.

RedNeck, the religious perspective is actually very interesting to me.  But God is all powerful and all knowing.  Can't he simply notice that humans cloned a Neanderthal and swoop in to grant it a soul?  Likewise, if we cloned a human, why can't God simply bestow a soul upon the cloned individual. 

Identical twins are clones (literally, clones), but we do not suppose that the individual coming out of the birthing cannal first is the only one with a soul.  You do understand that a clone is merely an identical twin of the cloned individual, but born at a later date, right?  A clone must be carried by a woman like a normal child, born like a normal child, and mature like a normal child.  Don't tell anyone (including the clone) that they are a clone and there is no way anyone would be able to tell that they are a clone.  Does this change your perspective?

As for Wintersong, I would advocate harvesting babies under certain circumstances (I'm not sure what you mean by "baby" though.  The question would, of course, be how the harvesting was done, what benefits would it yield, and whether our society was mature enough to handle it (which it isn't.)  The matter of harvesting babies in most conventional ways would probably involve exploiting less fortunate demographics, which directly conflicts with a civil society that values justice and human rights.  If we could find another way and the benefits were collosal?  Sure.

But babies are tasty, and good with nachos.

They already have, he's the CEO of BP.

Would the Neanderthal sue Geico?

We broke the ocean. Do we really wanna see how badly we can f**k up cloning?

I think this is playing with fire!!!  Everything created by man will always be a sub par human. The word slave comes to mind.

What of sentient beings. How long before their lives would be considered as such, or even be considered. Lord knows our poor little animals have a difficult time of it.

I don't think human kind is ready.

I'm all for spending tons of money on geeky but otherwise pointless stuff.

Our society has no true purpose. If the purpose of humankind is survival, our moral systems (as well as other systems not related to them) are totally against it. But isn't morale what differences us from animals? Sorry, from other animals. Is it worthy to risk extinction in the name of such morals? (many of which enforce hate between individuals of different morals anyway)

Humankind will never be ready if all that is done is waiting. Cloning a Neanderthal would give perspective to the situation, and maybe even lead to the Sentient Revolution, as it were. The sooner, the better.

Zuh? Purpose was invented by humankind. How can it bootstrap itself with a purpose that would have had to exist before humans were around to think about it?

Purpose is a construct. The fact that humans survive is a transient condition of nature, a fact, that at this time and place they survive and like to invent purposes for things. Morals likewise are a construct of social beings. The apes know about morality too. They know its wrong to cheat them out of a banana. That doesn't mean morality is unimportant. It just means we should be clear about what we mean when we say 'purpose' and 'morals.'

What kind of society do you want to live in. One that creates neanderthals and treats them as friends or objects, or one that is too timid to take the risk. Thats the ultimate moral question. Do I want to be part of a society that creates intelligences so they can be abused, or not?

OK, no waiting. Just say No. 

There would be no situation to perceive if we didn't create them....And what a damn waste of perfectly good man-made tax money!!!

We don't need it anywhere else anyways.

Actually, it would be quite funny to bring back some neanderthals. They would more than likely think we are the stupid ones. I mean after all...they were wiped out by natural selection or some natural disaster...we on the other hand did it to ourselves. They'd probably be shaking their heads thinking...what a bunch of idiots!...you didn't learn anything in all these years!...and you brought us back because...?

Oh! Oh! And while we're at it....can we bring back some real idiots just so we can kill them again? You know..people like Hitler. That would be awesome! Hey! I'm starting to really like this cloning thing! Just think of the game shows we could come up with!  We could even clone some gladiators...rebuild the Colosseum and watch it for real!