Professor Wants Woman To be Surrogate For a Neanderthal Clone

By NY Daily News

Professor Wants Woman To be Surrogate For a Neanderthal Clone

January 22, 2013 Updated Jan 22, 2013 at 11:13 AM PDT

(NY Daily News) By Rheana Murray

A Harvard genetics professor says he’s found a way to bring Neanderthals back from extinction.

He just needs an “extremely adventurous female human” to carry the clone baby, George Church writes in his new book, “Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves.”

“You have got a shot at anything where you have the DNA,” Church explained to German magazine Der Spiegel. “The limit for finding DNA fragments is probably around a million years.”

It’s only been about 30,000 years since Neanderthals are thought to have died off, and scientists have discovered DNA fragments from the long-lost species in fossils in Europe.

In theory, the DNA could be assembled into an embryo, which could be planted inside a human — a very daring woman, Church said.

“However, the prerequisite would, of course, be that human cloning is acceptable to society,” he told Der Spiegel.

A "cohort" would have to be created to give the Neanderthal "some sense of identity," Church said.

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