Would it be ethical to allow an alien race to model their DNA with that of the Human body?

You are making the assumption that this alien race would use DNA as its genetic material. In fact, other molecules (such as RNA) could serve a similar purpose (some viruses are RNA viruses, for example), so it might not really work.

@shilolo You totally stole my answer, Answer Thief!!!

I’m inclined to think that if another species has solved the considerable problem of space travel, they are probably ahead of us in the evolutionary scheme of things. Sharing our DNA with them has no immediate cost, after all you can clone it up in batches. Its just that the more DNA they share with us, the more easily they can survive on this planet.

The question is, do we want to share our planet with aliens? I don’t know, I suppose I would want to meet them first.

I am sure there’d be folks who would be happy to let them do it—and collect royalties. They probably would not let ethical matters trouble them too much as long as they had a customer.

Interesting question.

I could see the fear in them starting to look exactly like us and then infiltrating our society without our knowledge. Could make a great sci-fi tv show…

It’s a cookbook!

Even if what shilolo is saying is correct the big question is What are they really doing with our DNA? For example they could be pretending to use it to upgrade themselves but they could really be using it to develop a sort of bio-weapon. They could be even more paranoid than us and be planning to wipe us out. Because really? why would they ask if they could model themselves after our DNA? Not only that but it would be pretty odd if they asked to look at our DNA so they can improve themselves. If they feel the need to improve themselves then it probably because they feel inferior to us.Thats my paranoid view anyways.

No it would be completely unethical and out of the question, but would our government do it. Absolutely.

@Bugabear You assume that our DNA would be superior to their genetic material. But, many scientists believe that RNA > DNA, for example, so it might not be so beneficial to our alien visitors after all.

This is James Cameron’s Avatar in reverse.

@AC

And would the title of that cookbook be “To Serve Mankind” perchance?

do do dooo do-do do doo do

It already was an episode on STNG and Captain Picard refused the request citing the Prime Directive. But they tried to sneak some from Riker and the rest of his team (while they slept, I think.)

Anyhow if the Prime Directive was good enough for Picard, it’s good enough for me. And that’s that.

The question as put makes me smile in that the scenario depicts our DNA as being superior.

Maybe these aliens might want to downgrade and simplify their lives. A sort of ‘build a new life in the country’

It could be their equivalent of going back to the horse and cart and ‘grow your own’.

:-)

Evolution being dependent upon particular enviroment, I’d have to ask why OUR DNA? which is adapted for Earth and not their habitate…
Unless ofcourse they only want a part of it, then I’d have to ask which part.

I suggested it to them. They couldn’t stop laughing.

haha

This is kind of like asking whether it is ethical to copy someone else’s technology. As we know, there are some weird things going on in the area of patenting of biological technologies. Who owns our DNA? How can a company take a part of our DNA and patent it?

In any case, if the aliens paid for the privilege, then it seems to me it would be ethical. However, if genetic material is just lying around for the taking, it seems to me that it would not be that unethical to take a sample and reverse engineer it. Humans are reverse engineering things all the time. That’s how much of the rest of the world makes advances with technology.

In any case, to answer the question, I think that if they just took the DNA, it would be of dubious ethicality. However, if they paid licensing fees, there would be no problem. Who they would pay licensing fess to is another question. It does seem to me that if they are capable of traversing interstellar space, they would probably have a lot to trade for the DNA.

I’m not sure we’d want them to have the DNA. They might design viruses that could kill us all off, so they could take over the planet. Unfortunately, I don’t see how we could prevent them from getting our DNA. Even if we keep them from landing on the planet, surely some of our DNA is floating around in space—perhaps attached to pieces of space junk that we’ve lost track of.

Anyway, we don’t really need to think about aliens with respect to this question. It’s a live issue amongst humans. Who owns our DNA?

I say we share the genetic material of the creatures that live at the bottom of the ocean floor, near the volcanic vents. Those creatures are much hardier than us humans, as we are extremely vulnerable to natural forces, except where we have developed tools and technology to level the playing field.

If those creatures at the bottom of the ocean ever develop intelligence to rival our own, we are history.

@shilolo Don’t want to get too into this conversation, but I just wanted to say, what do you mean by ‘superior’? RNA is considerably less stable then DNA, and and so for organisms above the virus level, which require stable genetic material, RNA is not at all a good idea. And I worked in a biophysics lab for two years, where we studied RNA. DNA is the standard genetic material of earth for a good reason.

@BhacSsylan I’ve worked in science for >20 years, so perhaps my viewpoint reflects a greater breadth. In contrast to the relatively “stable” DNA, RNA has a multitude of functions that extend far beyond serving as genetic material for viruses. For instance, RNA serves as the blueprint for protein synthesis, the machine that actually produces proteins, the template for telomere elongation, has important enzymatic activity, can serve vital regulatory and immune functions, and in fact can mediate hereditable epigenetic changes in plants and mice. Thus, RNA in principle is far more important a molecule than DNA. Its properties are still being discovered.

@shilolo okay, but then we’re arguing on what we mean by better. I do know all those functions, and am pretty well versed on Nucleic acid functionality. I’ve read papers and written reports on half of those links up there, and my lab worked extensively on the others. All we did was RNA, in fact. But RNA does not make better genetic material. It’s amazing for short term use, I agree, but it is not good for extended storage of genetic information. It’s too easily degraded, and too prone to accidental mutations. I was simply responding in light of the original question on genetic material, and wasn’t commenting on RNA’s other abilities.

@shilolo Yeah because why else would they need to model themselves after our DNA?

@BhacSsylan My point, on this hypothetical Q, is that a hypothetical alien might use a different genetic code that is more pliable and versatile, like RNA. This hypothetical alien might have solved the stability issue (though not all RNA is unstable) and therefore not really care about our DNA…