Playing God with Neanderthals

In many ways they are. Also because they have shorter lives and are more fecund we may be able to learn things such as whether or not there are effects related to reproduction.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

That's a good point.

Edited by Peter, : No reason given.

It is a question of whether or not we punish those who violate those rights.

I could wave a fan really fast ... that might help Although you 've given me a great idea for an 'equality for refrigerators' movement.Doesn't it all boil down what is most useful to you though?I would think that, in general, your fridge is more important to you than I am There are people who ascribe worth based upon closeness to extinction -- and in England a Guinea Pig is often placed in higher esteem than a starving child.If we HAVE to measure 'worth' in order to decide whether a course of enquiry is acceptable I think we are already on a hiding to nothing.The only measure of 'worth' should be in terms of whether the results will be of benefit ... but then again I'm starting to sound like a certain Dr Mengele ... not a good look.

How we apply the rights is equally an issue -- and the idea that one group has the right to punish another for not behaving their way is a path (all too often trodden) that we should avoid.Egocentric assessments of worth lead to atrocities beyond comprehension.

Yes, that was my point --- my fridge is vastly more useful to me than you are. In which case, in order for me to grant you more rights than a refrigerator (which presumably you will admit is desirable) I need some other way of judging this. Whether by mere instinctive empathy, or by what one might argue are equally sentimental criteria such as your ability to reason or to feel pain, I am in effect using similarities to myself as criteria.

If you are going to argue that rights are inherent and inalienable then how can they be "applied"? What do you mean by this?And how are we going to stop people from violating the rights of others if not through the threat of punishment? Isn't it arrogant of you to decide for everyone what is and is not egocentric?

If a drug is toxic for mice more than likely it is also toxic in humans. If a drug is not toxic in mice there is no guarantee that it is not toxic in humans. Just to give you an idea of how these things are currently handled in biomedical research . . .In bioethics this is a grey area. The Hippocratic Oath states that you should first do no harm. Giving a patient an untested drug of unknown toxicity flies in the face of this oath. Also, the rules for human subjects in scientific research place a lot of stress on recognizing compromised subjects, those subjects who may be unduly pressured by circumstance to participate in scientific experiments. In most cases, giving untested drugs to terminally ill patients crosses this line because the subjects are desparate and may participate in experiments that are too risky. However, an independent review board can ok these types of studies, but they usually require at least some toxicity testing in non-primate mammalian species first (e.g. mice, rats).

Hi, Peter. But, I thought you were comparing the cloning of Neanderthals to the cloning of mammoths. So, the assumption should be something about the differences between the worth of Neanderthals and the worth of mammoths.To me, "there is something wrong in doing so" sounds more like a conclusion based on somebody's views of ethics, rather than an assumption.----- So, go looking, then!You don't do much good by assassinating the king and leaving the nation in turmoil: propose a republic or something!

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Maybe some-one should tell the US government that Point taken though ... I'll seek.

But surely if the patient is terminally ill the concept of risk (re:life) is somewhat mute?Isn't it 'better' to perform the trial on a living being capable of engaging in a conversation on the pros and cons, rather than forcing the test on a living being that is incapable of understanding what is going on, much less give consent.Comes back to the other things I've been questioning concerning 'worth' I suppose.

But is that adequate or approriate?Don't know if you are familiar with Dr Who (UK sci-fi TV series), but they have a race called the Daleks who were created for ethnic cleansing ... then decided that only Dalek's ahd any worth and so set out to destroy all other life in the Universe.Kind of an extreme response to worth=similarity, but extremes often expose issues within a premise.

i especialy like the part where a few unpure daleks trick the doctor to say he is the doctor so the computer onboard their ship would recognise him as a threat because it did not believe the unpure daleks, after that the computer makes 6 pure daleks who then kill the unpure daleks first and the unpure daleks are happy about that.