Science & Technology

Neanderthal to be born to surrogate mother?

By T.K. Randall
January 19, 2013 ·  93 comments

Image Credit: sxc.hu While the idea of using DNA from frozen mammoth remains to clone a live specimen is nothing new, the concept that we could do something similar to bring back extinct species of human such as Neanderthals may prove quite a shock to most people. Despite the technical and ethical difficulties inherent in such an endeavor, there are signs that some scientists may be considering research leading up to such an achievement and that they may need a surrogate human mother to deliver the child.

Recently Harvard Medical School geneticist George Church was quoted as saying that eventually, an "adventurous female human" would be required to act as a surrogate mother in the birth of the first Neanderthal in 30,000 years. It's a topic that Church has talked about before, in 2009 he hinted at the possibility of cloning a "near-Neanderthal" when the Neanderthal genome was first reported.[!gad]While the idea of using DNA from frozen mammoth remains to clone a live specimen is nothing new, the concept that we could do something similar to bring back extinct species of human such as Neanderthals may prove quite a shock to most people. Despite the technical and ethical difficulties inherent in such an endeavor, there are signs that some scientists may be considering research leading up to such an achievement and that they may need a surrogate human mother to deliver the child.

Recently Harvard Medical School geneticist George Church was quoted as saying that eventually, an "adventurous female human" would be required to act as a surrogate mother in the birth of the first Neanderthal in 30,000 years. It's a topic that Church has talked about before, in 2009 he hinted at the possibility of cloning a "near-Neanderthal" when the Neanderthal genome was first reported.

Source: Technology Review | Comments (93)

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