In a move everyone knew was coming—at least, everyone who saw “Jurassic Park”—Professor George Church, a Harvard geneticist, is requesting a female volunteer to bear a child using Neanderthal DNA. Where, oh where, I wonder, will he find such an adventurous lassie? Possibly from among the scores of unemployed coeds who can’t even get a job at Starbuck’s these days and for whose lives a degree in Gender Studies has prepared them very little.
Mind you, I have nothing personal against Neanderthals; a dear friend is married to one. I’m sure they’re all good people. I’m just wondering though, what the unintended consequences of this mad act of hubris will be. For instance, who will have custody of this child? Presumably the mother; but what if, after having him tear up her couch a couple of times, she no longer wants him? Who will raise him—the Harvard Genetics lab? This is not to mention—though I will—the various physical, emotional and psychological burdens such a person, so conceived, might have to bear for several decades.
Seriously. What is going to happen to this chimera if he is ever born? He will not “technically” be a human being, and, so, he will not be treated as a human being; he will live the life of a freak, a specimen. We must pray that Professor Church has a change of mind. Maybe he can be convinced to pursue a genetic project I suspect would be of more value to society; say, replicating a couple of Tyrannosaurus Rex and turning them loose for a weekend in Washington D.C., thus generating valuable behavioral data on ancient saurians and cleaning the political swamp in one fell swoop.
Be of good cheer, fellow Christians; we are rapidly approaching the end of the tube. I think I see light ahead. A renascence of sanity cannot be far behind.
[...] HT: G.McLoughlin [...]
What would we do if the baby arrived and looked exactly like (fill in the blank).
What would we do if the baby arrived and proved capable of doing all the things that Neanderthals are known to have been able to do: that is, if he possessed an undoubtedly human intellect? I’m not suggesting it should be permitted: clearly, if a Neanderthal human were alive today, he would possess rights the equal of any we have. The relevant right here is the right to be conceived naturally and not as the product of a laboratory procedure.
While I enjoy the jaunty tenor of the article, the author seems to be under the impression that there were pre-human hominids before Adam and Eve — stock evolutionary teaching grafted onto a Christianity that accepts the time frame of secular science. Neanderthals were fully human, their brain capacity was greater than so-called homo sapiens and if you passed one on the street who was clean-shaven and dressed in a 3-piece Brooks Brothers suit you wouldn’t think twice.
To regard one born of a woman “He will not “technically” be a human being, and, so, he will not be treated as a human being”
just because he had some Neanderthal DNA is to fall into a worst kind of biological reductionism that reduces man to his DNA.
[...] great article from G.McLoughlin at Mere Comments January 23, [...]
Other than suggesting that writing humor is a hard task, indeed, I admit that perhaps I should have chosen my language a bit more carefully. I am one person who absolutely does not reduce man to his DNA. I stand advised. Thank you.
Aw nuts. I guess I’m going to have to send an apology to the good professor:
http://phys.org/news/2013-01-scientist-im-mom-neanderthal.html