We do, however, deliberately generate people who might end up unable to care for themselves. We do it all the time, in fact. If, after the first few cloned Neanderthals, it turned out that they consistently aren’t able to thrive in modern society, it would be unethical to continue the experiments. But we don’t know that yet.
No, we cannot be certain of some attributes of a subspecies that vanished 25,000 years ago.
Is that uncertainty enough to preclude a cloning attempt? No. But uncertainty of outcome exists in human reproduction as well, and we do it anyway, Down’s or Fragile X be damned.
If you reproduce with a partner, and it turns out the baby can’t speak or read and is unsettling to look at, have you done an evil thing? No! Both undertakings were in good faith.
Since cloning will give us a bunch of baby Neanderthals (I do think cloning just one would be ethical - being the only one of your species alive can’t be a good feeling. Incidentally, there must have been a point in time where there was only one Neanderthal alive before going extinct. Imagine that.) the question of society is pretty irrelevant - their culture, any languages, traditions - gone forever. Since we’d have to raise them from infancy it would be our society they would be exposed to regardless.
Absolutely they are ours to nursemaid, in that we should have they responsibility of a parent over a child. Denying the responsibility that comes with the action of creating a new intelligent life would make us the species equivalent of a dead-beat dad.
I’d prefer if they knew for sure before undertaking that. A disabled human is still human. To be another creature entirely and utterly alone while unable to function seems much worse.
I’d be okay if they cloned one and rendered it braindead and then dissected it to find out its capabilities.
Well, once we know, we can react accordingly.
I’m just going with what you wrote, which included coming back after 100 years to see what they’d been up to.
All nature is a brutal struggle, compared with civilization.
THAT’s ethical to you, but cloning a subspecies that existed in the recent past without knowing its exact nature isn’t?
Yeah. I know.
The chances of profound disability is quite small. Also, we need to do it to continue our species. We have no need to create neanderthals aside from curiosity. And curiosity is something we should indulge when it doesn’t hurt others.
If it were unknown if speaking were even possible, the child would be utterly unlike anyone else, and were created specifically to satisfy scientific curiosity, that would be different.
My making babies isn’t the same at all.
If we create them we of course need to raise them. What I’m saying is making a group of people who can’t hold jobs or engage socially, or function isn’t a good thing.
If we can allow a breeding group to create their own society, that’s different.
Now if it turns out that they are totally a perfect fit with our world, then great. But you’d better have a good idea before starting up the cloning vats.
I’m against needless suffering.
Who is needlessly suffering if you dissect a brain dead corpse?
Who is needlessly suffering if you create a creature that’s ugly by modern standards, and unable to function at even the most basic level in our society?
The claim was made that we clone as a reproductive techology. We do not.
We know the risks to reproduction: fairly small and quantifiable. As individuals reproduce in ways that increase those risks it becomes a bigger ethical issue - hence serious discussions about reproducing with eggs from a 60 year old. In this case we are discussing both much larger known predictable risks and some risks that are not even quantifiable, the unknown unknowns. Very different than having twins.
What possible mechanism of disease introduction do you fear?
I think we’re speaking at cross-purposes, as I agree that cloning Neanderthals with the initial assumption or expectation that they could go down the local job centre after standard schooling would be monumentally stupid at best and dangerously negligent at worst.
But that’s not the point, they would be created with that assumption to learn from them from a biological perspective - from physiology to psychology. Our current understanding from archaeology leaves massive gaps in understanding about our closest cousins (and, by extension, us). We do know that their cranial capacity is bigger than ours and that they possibly matured faster than us - they could be quite capable of adding to the body of human - or rather hominid - knowledge in their own right.
This is why I think the most ethical and safe thing to do if it were even possible is a very carefully controlled environment for both assessment of capability and well-being (one would naturally lead to the other - the better you understand something, the better you can provide for it). We would need to know far, far more from the first generation before we could take any concrete decisions regarding wider societal integration. For instance, their temperament - would they be naturally inclined to brutal violence when it came to disagreements or do they possess a calmer disposition? Could they communicate effectively with modern languages? What medical and dietary needs do they have specific to their species (archaeology tells us that they were prone to arthritis, for example - how well would they fare against modern diseases and pathogens)?
These are a handful of reasons why it would be neglectful for us to simply raise them to maturity and then dump them on and island and wish them the best. Neither would a good old-fashioned autopsy tell us what we needed to know in order to make these sort of decisions, we’d need proper observation and study of live subjects (not to sound too cold - but they’d be among the most valuable scientific assets we posses).
Not at all. I give them credit for being different and likely having a different set of intelligences than we do. It is unethical to assume they have the same sort of intelligence as we do. We have no idea if the sort of intelligence a Neandertal would have could fit this world’s demands or not. These are things that are impossible to know other than by cloning one. Having those become known is what drives the desire of some to do it, while also making satisfication of that desire an unethical act.
I agree I think. We’ve been utterly alone as a species for tens of thousands of years. Another race of men alive at the same time as us would be a good thing. If only for how much it would upset evangelical people. 
The island thing was a thought to allow them to form their own culture and society, something that would work for them. I agree that it would require a lot of guidance and human interaction. So yes, dumping them alone for a century would be bad. But allowing them autonomy and room to grow would be more acceptable to me.
If we just create a one-off, the person we clone would be sentient. As sentient as we are, and the thought of him or her being in emotional pain their entire lives isn’t something I’d weigh as equal against the scientific desire.
If it were found that it was very likely they could function and more than one were created, I’d be all for it.
Agreed, and this hypothetical project needn’t hurt anyone.
Why unlike anyone else? Weren’t we both assuming a modest first-generation group? Wiki tells me that Neanderthals lived in smaller groups than Cro-Magnons, 5-10 versus 20-30, so perhaps 10 individuals.
That would be the individual whom you rendered brain-dead in order to study. You’ve killed them, depriving them of the life they would have had. This is monstrously wrong.
Right, I don’t think anyone’s proposing this.
Well, your analogy was a “severely autistic or otherwise severely handicapped baby”.
Whether or not their cognitive abilities are similar to ours, cloning a group of Neanderthals is ethical, so long as they were afforded reasonable care, like any other newborn, tailored to their circumstances.
Unless the person created has the inability to understand our culture and systems and has to live assisted his whole life.
Only if they are allowed to live as they are best able. Ten neanderthals that live in an assisted care facility is better than one, utterly alone, but they might still be in horrifying misery.
I don’t think abortion is murder. If you do, that’s your problem. A person is their conscious mind. If you clone someone who is utterly mindless, it’s not a person, it’s a potted plant.
This may be just a failure of imagination. I’m certain that the Neanderthals could be provided for, with a total absence of horrifying misery.
What you’re describing is infanticide, not abortion.
I can’t get over the fact that creating mindless meat-puppets is acceptable to you, but cloning Neanderthals is not. Our ethics are wildly different.
I don’t know why we’d have any reason to believe that neanderthals, raised with compassion, would be any less happy then modern humans. I doubt their caregivers would make a big deal at all about their genetic background- so as far as they would know, they are just different-looking, very robustly built people.
If quality of life for the Neanderthal group was a priority from the beginning, I’m quite certain it could be provided for.
I’m glad you’re certain. I trust you’ll be volunteering to muck out their living area because they have an inability to understand and utilize toilets?
When one of them wants to learn to speak and spends day after day in crying frustration because he can’t form his mouth around our words you’ll be there to hug him.
Disrupting the brain during gestation doesn’t seem impossible.
Mine are based on limiting suffering.
Yeah, but they wouldn’t be children. They’d be men and women with desires. They might have dreams and ambitions. And instead they must live in a cage. A zoo animal existence.