Are We Ready for Life?

Everyone knows about an advanced alien society coming to earth and meeting us. As we begin to expand into the solar system, are we possibly prepared to be the more advanced species? At the end of the movie Red Planet, humans bring back alien specimens to help rid the atmosphere of CO2. In reality, humans might not be nearly as direct about alien specimens. Would people really fuss over microscopic life on other planets, and go insane? Or would they accept it? What moral issues back the intervening/meeting with confronting more primitive life?