Chris
2018-07-01, 09:40 AM
From Mysterious Universe:
http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/06/ne...g-cavemen/
Obviously the title of this article is a bit of an exaggeration, because the "brains" are only pea-sized pieces of brain tissue.
But what's disturbing about this is that - I suppose - they are working on "Neanderthal" tissue because they can argue it is technically non-human and therefore not covered by legal prohibitions against experimenting on human tissue. If it were technologically possible to produce a living Neanderthal, would it have human rights? I wonder whether this has been tested in the courts yet. According to Wikipedia, expert opinion is divided about whether Neanderthals belonged to the same species as Homo Sapiens. But even if not, who's to say whether the legal meaning of "human" applies to only the species or the whole genus (Homo), which certainly does include Neanderthals? The question would have been purely academic until now, because the other species within the genus were all extinct.
http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/06/ne...g-cavemen/
Obviously the title of this article is a bit of an exaggeration, because the "brains" are only pea-sized pieces of brain tissue.
But what's disturbing about this is that - I suppose - they are working on "Neanderthal" tissue because they can argue it is technically non-human and therefore not covered by legal prohibitions against experimenting on human tissue. If it were technologically possible to produce a living Neanderthal, would it have human rights? I wonder whether this has been tested in the courts yet. According to Wikipedia, expert opinion is divided about whether Neanderthals belonged to the same species as Homo Sapiens. But even if not, who's to say whether the legal meaning of "human" applies to only the species or the whole genus (Homo), which certainly does include Neanderthals? The question would have been purely academic until now, because the other species within the genus were all extinct.