Um… what? “Society” has no such “right.”

Society has every right to prevent you from abusing your reproductive rights in obviously psychotic ways like having 14 kids by in vitro fertilization when you are on welfare. If you are going to start claiming natural law rights here, then you have no standing because natural law tradition recognizes a great deal of limitations on parental freedom for the sake of protecting children. If you are going to claim some sort of positivist view of rights, then I can just assert that you have no rights either because you can no more prove your rights than I can prove society has any collective authority under that model.

What does “playing God” even mean?

If you don’t understand what this means, then you should recuse yourself from any discussion about biology, especially bioethics.

If “society” has the “right” to forcibly prevent people from reproducing, are you seriously advocating, say, society’s right to forcibly sterilize people? To lock them up so they can’t reproduce?

I’m saying that society has the right to set reasonable limits like prohibiting a woman from continuously getting herself pregnant while on welfare, going so far as to give her an ultimatum: stop having children or all of yours will be put up for adoption.

“Society” can stay the hell out of my bedroom, thanks!

Ah, the typical borderline sociopathic libertarian response: my rights, only my rights, the only thing that matters are my unfettered rights to do whatever I want, whenever I want, without giving a flying fuck how I hurt anyone else.

“What if the typical Neanderthal ends up being a very strong, very temperamental person with the reasoning of a 4-year old?”

Hmmmmm… Politics, maybe?

Some might say “lack of rights.”

:)

Holy shit man, you just described my life!

Mommy ….

The treatment of Neanderthals would raise many problems. “Are you going to put them in Harvard or in a zoo?” asked Dr. Klein of Stanford.

Heh. At first, I read that and thought, “Yeah, ethical questions, blah, blah.” Then, I noticed that it was written in sort of a funny way, such that Dr. Klein of Stanford might be implying there wasn’t much difference between Harvard and a zoo. :)

On the ethics of this, I have issues with very deliberately bringing a thinking being into the world, knowing beforehand that it will be isolated, it may be ill-equipped to deal with life among us and won’t have a social infrastructure designed to help it, it may be subject to scientific prodding and social scorn, and may very likely die of diseases of its own that we have no means to treat or of our diseases for which it may have no natural immunity. This isn’t an accidentally (or even deliberately) conceived human child that may start out disadvantaged, but which would then have his given chance for self-determination and a happy life. This would be someone brought into the world with little reasonable expectation of normalcy, and done to satisfy our curiosity.

That all being said, I agree with others that, once s/he were here, I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch for our system of rights to accommodate. Sentient creatures should have full rights unless demonstrable diminished capacity makes them unable to respect the rights of others, just the same as for Homo sapiens sapiens.

I just hope s/he doesn’t run for Congress. We don’t need someone in office who can vote for trillion dollar programs without even being able to understand (or even write) a number that large. Oops. Too late!

I wonder if they can be toilet trained? Hummm?

Um… what? “Society” has no such “right.” What does “playing God” even mean? If “society” has the “right” to forcibly prevent people from reproducing, are you seriously advocating, say, society’s right to forcibly sterilize people? To lock them up so they can’t reproduce? “Society” can stay the hell out of my bedroom, thanks!