Scientist seeks surrogate mother for Neanderthal baby

Also...why does he want to bring back the neanderthal species?

reply to post by caladonea


Because so he can prove that he can and make $$$.

reply to post by gort51


Well I believe when they clone the strip the egg of the mothers genetic material. It's still a human egg, but it wouldn't be half human.

reply to post by IkNOwSTuff


My mrs says it's a done deal for AUD 2 mil, plus merchandising, advertising and research compensation, plus tummy tuck, boob job and some lypo.

We have 4 kids so it'd be a walk in the park.

Originally posted by LeLeu
I can just picture all of the Hollywood starlets walking about with baby Neanderthals a few years from now.

C'mon seriously... Look around you and watch YouTube or MTV for a few hours. The Neanderthal would be a welcome edition into the gene pool. Might even bring up the median IQ values a bit too...

reply to post by IkNOwSTuff


i dont know why one would need to get a mother for a neanderthal, if you look at all people that you encounter, there is definitely neanderthal genes still within our society,

ive seen them, few and far between, but they are there in my years on this earth ive seen maybe five that fit the description of caveman, although they speak and like like modern man, there face and body structure indicate neanderthal genetics

Originally posted by IkNOwSTuff

So any takers?
Before saying yes please look at the differences between Human and neanderthal birth canals.

I was kinda on the fence as to whether this is Cool or evil but then I read this from the article

"Let's say someone has a healthy, normal Neanderthal baby," he told Bloomberg Businessweek last year. "Well, then, everyone will want to have a Neanderthal kid.

Wrong, just plain wrong


news.ninemsn.com.au
(visit the link for the full news article)

edit on 20/1/2013 by IkNOwSTuff because: (no reason given)

I'm going to go with; the PTB will never let this even come close to happening! For starters, the realization that homo-sapiens and neanderthal have as genetically close ties as a jellyfish and an elephant, the whole illusion of man evolving from apes will be blown out of the water!

He/She would absolutely kick the crap out of any heavyweight boxer or wrestler!


But I do agree, how do you tell the child the rest of their species is extinct and they were made for scientific research.

Next the government will make a special ops team out of them in secret

Cheaper by the dozen. Having a few of them would improve their quality of life I suppose.

Would they use the Neanderthal that lived to 90 and died in his sleep or the ones that died early and got good stuff in their graves?

Since they (the ones who got good stuff in their graves) got alot of love they might have been really nice heroic folks, but on the other hand they might have had health problems.

Some of the people in this thread seem to think the mother would pop out a damn fully grown example of the species...

Unless this child was raised in a 'Truman Show' style set up we'd get absolutely no new info about neanderthals from this at all (and even then it would be based on what we think their lives were like, not what it was like since this kid wouldn't know diddly about its genetic ancestors obviously, although some in this thread seem to think he by some miracle would)... the cultural contamination and being raised in a regular modern life would destroy anything we might learn. From a biological stand point it would be interesting, since they where supposedly more intelligent than us, so who knows a modern neanderthal might make for one heck of an academic :p

As to what he/she'd think of being the resurrected example of a long dead people... well Id think he/she would sit there, shrug their shoulders and say 'I aint bothered' then go right back to Facebook and chewing bubblegum.

Personally id say go for it if this was a good world, but given the doctors comments... sounds like he's simply in it for the cash... and what sort of life would that mean for his 'progeny'.

Id like to see them go for it simply to shake things up a little, then again i talk to animals and insects, so for me I'd have no problem sharing this planet with a number of examples of new(old) humanity. Unfortunately I think most people would treat them quite badly, even though they would be virtually identical to us any way... hasnt stopped us as a species before.

This is just my sci fi mind at work but let me explain my thoughts.

We have all heard stories of how ancient people may have possessed ability’s beyond ours such as telekinesis or telepathy. What if those are not just stories? Could it be possible that some of it was true and they were the key? Geneticists have determined that a good portion of today’s population carry some Neanderthal DNA which means at some point they bread with our ancestors. Maybe Neanderthals weren’t as simple as we assume. We really do not know much about them and this experiment could have some favorable results. Of course the sci-fi bit is just unfounded conjecture but the part about learning more about our ancestry is very real. I think that this experiment is worth it because it will answer many questions. One thing that is very possible that could come about from this may be breakthroughs in the medical field because their immune system could have been far stronger than ours. They may discover some very important cures to things that ail us today.

The answers to our future could lie in the past. The issue most are concerned about is a moral issue. We should not look at this from a religious view of morality. The being that is born should be loved and cared for but saying they should be thought of any less because of looks or intelligence is offensive because that view is very subjective. That entire argument is a double edge sword and can be applied to a great many people of the world that are not Neanderthal.

I find the possibilities of the science to be very interesting.

Originally posted by ajay59

Originally posted by IkNOwSTuff

So any takers?
Before saying yes please look at the differences between Human and neanderthal birth canals.

I was kinda on the fence as to whether this is Cool or evil but then I read this from the article

"Let's say someone has a healthy, normal Neanderthal baby," he told Bloomberg Businessweek last year. "Well, then, everyone will want to have a Neanderthal kid.

Wrong, just plain wrong


news.ninemsn.com.au
(visit the link for the full news article)

edit on 20/1/2013 by IkNOwSTuff because: (no reason given)

I'm going to go with; the PTB will never let this even come close to happening! For starters, the realization that homo-sapiens and neanderthal have as genetically close ties as a jellyfish and an elephant, the whole illusion of man evolving from apes will be blown out of the water!

Who told you that nonsense? Jellyfish and elephant??? I am willing to bet that you probably have markers of their DNA in you. Considering 80% of the world’s population does it is a good bet.

Yup that is right you’re great, great, great, etc. did it with a Neanderthal at one point. Geneticists agree.

Originally posted by caladonea

After reading the OP in this thread...I thought what about the baby...it needs love, nurturing and caring. If this scientist succeeds at this; I feel so sorry for that baby; I am concerned that it may not be loved.

Kids are being popped out everyday that's not getting love, nurturing or care. Goodness me... I live in the UK, and a lot of the people I see being parents should never have been allowed to breed.

I'm game - now where do I sig up? Always wanted to be pregnant, never wanted a kid. Perfect solution for me.

Heh its funny but stuff the neanderthal resurrection, reading the original German interview with George Church he mentions they're working on making a virus immune e.coli bacteria...

I dont know much about it but wouldnt that mean the bacteria was immune to phages (no not THAT Phage, but bacteriophages )... the one sort of things that still kills most nasty bacteria including the antibiotic resistant ones (im assuming).

Thats all we need, Antibiotic resistant AND bacteriophage immune bacteria then suddenly that immunity gets into one of the REALLY nasty bacteria based disease and boom... we are officially screwed (us and our new neanderthal companions).

reply to post by Grimpachi


The idea that there are apes in your family tree (pun intended) I cannot speculate on. I , on the other hand have absolutely no genetic connection with the aforementioned species!

reply to post by ajay59


Really now can you prove it? All human beings have an 80% chance or greater that they share a common ancestry. Are you one of those people that think the world is only 5,000 years old because that would explain why you think the way you do. Honestly your comment about how genetically compatible we are to them is so wrong it is hard to describe the magnitude of such ignorance. I guess science isn’t one of your strong suits. I knew that from your stance on evolution anyway.

reply to post by Grimpachi

To be honest it will only be religious circles that will have a huge problem with this after all the bible never said they even existed.

The bible says a lot about pre-humans. Adam and Eve were ejected into a land of hairy people with giants!

Modern humans are the new type because god 'created us' in his own image, (which I'm led to understand is a gnostic analogy). We evolved. The previous type became a legacy in ways more brutal than now but . Neanderthals eg, lost but judging by the size of them they were clearly more dangerous. Fed on humans, especially kids and virgins. In a short time hominids interbred with humans. To hazard a guess the further away from civilization people are, the less evolved and more wild they are, and on a global level the more wild areas recently had populations of: Neanderthal, pre-human, hominid species and pygmy's too. I can picture many such places and see where the interbreeding is still showing geographically based adaptability.

The human breed is tainted by neanderthals and various other hominids. It is not pure on any level. On what level could humanity be free from nature? When we didn't exist we never had existed anywhere, ever, anywhere before. Be sure of this.

All BS

Originally posted by Klassified
On the one hand, I can see the scientific value in having a living neanderthal to study and observe. On the other hand, how heartless and cruel to bring this creature into the modern world to be treated as a freak, and a lab rat. Any woman who goes for this must be out of her mind.

As in the British monarchy? Well not lab rats but constantly scrutinized by the media, every move watched etc.

Originally posted by Grimpachi
reply to post by ajay59

 

Really now can you prove it? All human beings have an 80% chance or greater that they share a common ancestry. Are you one of those people that think the world is only 5,000 years old because that would explain why you think the way you do. Honestly your comment about how genetically compatible we are to them is so wrong it is hard to describe the magnitude of such ignorance. I guess science isn’t one of your strong suits. I knew that from your stance on evolution anyway.

Can you personally prove your point, I didn't think so. You are regurgitating what you have been brainwashed to. It is quite apparent to me that you are incapable of thinking for yourself. Fortunately, I am not quite so gullible as to take everything I hear as gospel!

A billion souls in heaven all hoping for the chance to be born as the Neanderthal child in a world full of humans, ready to wake up, allocated to the one most likely to # up.

reply to post by gort51


well they would have to do what they planned to do with the wooly mammoth . Use an elephant egg and have the elephant give birth to a half breed then repeat the process. Then try to pair those OR use them as the hosts for pure genetic material extracted from the purer generation until you have a 99.99% genetic purity after a few generations.

They could do the same with the Neanderthals and shorten the time necessary by using only female hybrids until a pure blooded male could be born and impregnate one of the older hybrids.

The population would be a genetically limited until remains across the world could be harvested for their genetic material and the living genetic material could be engineered with it and then artificially introduced into host mothers thus making the population more ample and diverse.

EDIT:
Imagine if they prove to be healthier, have more longevity, are more intelligent and are stronger to boot?

I have theorized that they were not inferior and science has in recent years confirmed that they were not idiots and totally primitive the way we are led to believe.

I would venture to say that they were in fact superior and that our selective breeding ended their reign coupled with climatic change and other factors.

Larger brains tend to house MORE intelligence. They were also more robust than us.......so they are probably stronger and more durable....might live longer....

Neanderthal cranial capacity is thought to have been as large as that of modern humans, perhaps larger, indicating that their brain size may have been comparable, or larger, as well. In 2008, a group of scientists created a study using three-dimensional computer-assisted reconstructions of Neanderthal infants based on fossils found in Russia and Syria.

The study showed Neanderthal and modern human brains were the same size at birth, but by adulthood, the Neanderthal brain was larger than the modern human brain. They were much stronger than modern humans, having particularly strong arms and hands. Males stood 164–168 cm (65–66 in) and females about 152–156 cm (60–61 in) tall.

en.wikipedia.org...