For those of you have read the Ender Wiggin series (I’m currently reading Speaker for the Dead), you will be familiar with the term, Xenobiologist. Xenobiologists (for those who aren’t familiar with the term), are scientists who study and learn about an entire race of beings. In Speaker for the Dead, the Piggies are being studied by the Portuguese colonists on Lusitania. My question to you all is what if we find life on another planet? Will we treat them like specimens? Should we?
Well, strictly speaking, xenobiology is the study of non-terrestrial lifeforms of all sorts, not just a particular species.
Well, assuming you’re talking about human exploration, presumably of other stellar systems, then yes, we will and yes we should. But I’m probably not understanding you correctly. What do you mean by “specimen?”
Depends on the type of life we find (bacteria? plant? animal? intelligent?)
I assume you mean intelligent life, in which case, I would say “do unto others…”
If intelligent life is difficult to evolve, then any intelligent life we find may be well ahead of us, technologically speaking (considering that H. sapiens is a rather young species and odds are that a long-lived civilization would be easier to find than a newer one). So, we may need to watch our step.
On the other hand, any intelligent life is likely to be far away (many light years), so it is more likely that we would see/hear them before we would meet them face-to-face. If so, your ethical dilemma does not come up.
Anyway, scientific studies need not solely consist of harsh dissection/etc. Heck, they could email us their version of Gray’s Anatomy. 
Karallen (of the Overlords in Childhood’s End?) wrote:
Hell, we treat every other species on this planet like “specimens”, so why not?
Well they did it to me! I mean, ummm, sure why not.
Ender Wiggin? Who’s he?
OK, three things need to happen before we contemplate this situation:
- We need to discover life on another planet.
- We need to travel to that planet
- The life, once we get there, needs to be less advanced than we are (or it may be humans that play the role of specimen).
Given all that, I have absolutely no idea how we would react. Certainly the scientific mind would want to study them as much as possible. Maybe this does mean abductions and dissections. The…xenologists? (sociologists for aliens), would want to see them in their natural environment. Sort of like the Federation does before first contact.
Fear mongers would want the planet destroyed. The military would want all information confidential.
And then there are the diplomats who would want to establish relations and trade, if that’s at all possible.
What is the best course of action? Beats me.
Blast em. Study the pieces. Enslave the survivors. Sell their real estate to each other.
That’s just if we maintain the historically standard human reaction to meeting new people . . .
DaLovin’ Dj
Let’s say you’re an entomologist and a very strange looking bug flies in your window…what would you do with it?
Let’s hope that whoever we discover are kind and gentle entomologists, and that they understand that if they remove our pressure suit exoskeletons, we die.