Cloning Neanderthals?

November 26, 2008

I don’t know about you, but I was absolutely dumbfounded a while back by a news article reporting that a California woman had spent $50,000 to have a South Korean company, RNL Bio, clone skin cells taken from her dead pit bull, Booger, to produce five genetic replicas of him. OK, they are cute, as this photo  illustrates. But not any more so than Rachel, a young female bull terrier-American Staffordshire terrier mix who is currently available for adoption in Los Angeles from Dogs Without Borders. The same could be said for any of about eight zillion other members of the bully breed who are languishing in animal control lockups across the U.S. as you read this. I can think of potentially beneficial — or least, justifiable — applications of cloning technology, but churning out puppies isn’t one of them. We’ve already got more than enough. (FYI, here’s the Humane Society of the United States’ position on the issue of pet cloning.)

If we’re going to clone something, why not pick something in much rarer supply? How about … a caveman?

I don’t mean a Geico caveman, either, or that stylishly coiffed, guttural gibberish-spouting hunk John Richardson, who chased various impossibly contemporaneous prehistoric beasts away from a fur-bikini-clad Racquel Welch in the classic 1966 exploitation flick One Million Years B.C. No, I’m talking about cloning a bona fide extinct hominid, the sort who roamed Europe and parts of Asia roughly between 200,000 and 30,000 years ago, before being assimilated — or driven out of existence — by modern humans. I’m talking about cloning a Neanderthal.

You’re probably thinking that this idea sounds even more ridiculous than cloning old Booger, not to mention utterly impossible from a practical standpoint. But hey, hear me out. Since 2006, paleogeneticist Svante Paabo at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, with help from a revolutionary new sequencing technology developed by Connecticut-based 454 Life Sciences, has been laboring to reconstruct the Neanderthal genome from DNA fragments extracted from a few grams of Neanderthal bone found in Eastern Europe. At the same time, a parallel project is under way at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is developing a library of Neanderthal DNA sequences by inserting fragments of Neanderthal DNA into bacteria. When the work is eventually completed, scientists will have assembled a genetic blueprint for the Neanderthal, similar to the one already compiled for modern humans.

Once we’ve got the complete genome of an extinct hominid, it would be at least theoretically possible to insert it into a human egg and then implant the resulting embryo into a surrogate human mother. And it may not be too much of a reach. After all, trailblazing evolutionary biologist Hendrik Poinar told a Stanford University conference last year that extinct species such as the wooly mammoth and saber-toothed tiger eventually will be cloned. As the Stanford Daily reported:

“The reality is it will happen,” Poinar said concerning the cloning of extinct species. “Twenty to 30 years is the span people are talking about.”

But while we’re at it, why not clone a Neanderthal? A 2006 New York Times article on the Neanderthal genome research effort went so far as to ponder the ethics of such an experiment: 

The most serious technical problem would be creating functional chromosomes from Neanderthal DNA. But ethical questions may be less surmountable. “My first consideration would be for a child born alone in the world with no relatives,” said Ronald M. Green, an ethicist at Dartmouth College. The risk would be greater if, following the plot line of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” a mate were created as a companion for the lonely Neanderthal. “This was a species we competed with,” Dr. Green said. “We would not want to recreate a situation of two competing advanced hominid species.”

But Dr. Green said there could be arguments in the future for resurrecting the Neanderthals. “If we learn this is a species that was wrongly pushed off the stage of history, there is something of a moral argument for bringing it back,” he said. “But the status quo is not without merit. Curiosity alone could not justify what could be a disaster for both species.”

Dr. Green sounds appropriately conflicted, for a bioethicist. But I think it could be worth the risk. After all, some anthropologists have portrayed Neanderthals as peaceful, altruistic, spiritual creatures — British archaeologist Steven Mithen, for example, believes that they communicated in part by singing to one other. In essence, they were pretty much the opposite of our murderous, intolerant, often self-destructive branch of the human species. Maybe they could somehow help us extricate ourselves from the global mess that we’re currently in.

So what do you think? Should scientists try to clone Neanderthals, or should we avoid messing with human evolution? Express your opinion below.

Photo: iStock

Comments

[Nic]

I think that it would be an interesting study.Though its not like cloning an animal.You would be responsible for this human(s).And think about their health.There is a deffinate possiblity that they would be more amune to disease.
I am not saying that it would be a bad idea, just that you would have to take certain percausions.

[leo]

NO NO NO NO NO! They died out for a reason. And anyways, who would know how they would react or behave. Not AS bad as cloning dinos, though.

P.S. Who knows? The Neanderthal that would be cloned might have died from some extremely dangerous, contagious, currently extinct ancient disease (I.E. a superbug).

[The genius]

yes we should continue this research of cloning neaderthals its pose great knowledge to us.

[Mike Butler]

Who would raise the Neaderthal child and how would he or she be educated?

[danny klaisner]

This in fact would be an intresting thing to do. They were pretty intelligent. it would be amazing to see intelligence in between us and the apes. also if this were to happen we need to think about its rights. Its not exactly human but what happens if this neanderthal has a high level of conciosness and shares human emotion. Lots of problems can arise and lots of good things can as well. And watch out for the religious im sure this is the last thing they want.

[danny klaisner]

This in fact would be an intresting thing to do. They were pretty intelligent. it would be amazing to see intelligence in between us and the apes. also if this were to happen we need to think about its rights. Its not exactly human but what happens if this neanderthal has a high level of conciosness and shares human emotion. Lots of problems can arise and lots of good things can as well. And watch out for the religious im sure this is the last thing they want.

[Caffeine Driven Stress Magnet]

I wonder what a Neanderthal would think about modern-day humans?

[Mothra]

I don't know what to think about it. It might be like the cavemen who came alive in "Night at the Museum."

[Fred]

Neanderthals may have been more intelligent than we are; they had bigger brains. Perhaps they went extinct because we were so murderous to "people" not like us.

However, to clone a Neanderthal, a human woman would have to carry the baby. I don't see how you could ethically do this.

[Debbie]

No, I definitedly think it would be a bad idea to use the DNA from this species..they died out for a reason and God only knows what it was...besides why are we trying to play "God"...where has our ethics gone people..think of the consequences and the ramifications of this act...we need to start using our skills and knowledge on the diseases and illnesses that we've got going now...and NOT WASTE MONEY on useless things...Get a Grip!!!!

[noah]

Do it

[Noah]

How do you know god is real. Religion should not have anything to do with this.

[CheesePuFF]

Well, think about it for a moment. Remember what happened after North America was discovered? How the natives were brought back and treated as an attraction, and less than human? I can't see this (cloning a neanderthal) positively helping the world we live in. It would be blown out of proportion, and end up being simply paraded about. Scientists would be fighting off one another in order to get their hands on this clone, for what? To do tests on it and raise it in our environment to "See what might happen"?
Instead of worrying about cloning ancient history, why not do something useful? Like, figure out how to cure cancer already??? Figure out your priorities already...

[Jerry]

Why clone Neanderthals when we already have them? Weak on innovation and strong on dogma, we call them Neo-Cons.

[James]

Would we want another race to bring humans back if we wiped ourselves out because of stupidity?

[Hvc801]

No, we should not do studies on this, its a waste of our time and money. What would actually be one GREAT benefactor in doing this? I've thought about it and its hard to come by. We cannot see the future if we re create taht past.. thats it, whats done is done and we dont know how it completly happened. Let the future be inevitable, dont waste time on this please, there are so many more better things to invest time and money into besides this blasphemy

[Stephen]

I think this is really a sick idea. We have no right to create a primitive human and put him into our screwed-up modern world. He would just be an object of curiosity and it would be impossible for him to live anything resembling a normal life for his species. I would rather see this cloning technology used to prevent endangered non-human species from becoming extinct.

[Vlorian Dervishi]

Well cloning might seem wrong, but in order for our modern civilization technology to evolve we have to consider that as a first priority. On the other hand, this experiment could result
a huge failure, what if you somehow created a monster, or accidentally created a new virus which is ten times worser as the hiv. My side of this argument is more like neutral either way I don't care, because my opinion its not going to matter anyway. Oh and before attempting to invest money on cloning how bout you try it on solar power. Because I think we have like another hundred years before we are wiped out from global warming, like maybe fix our Ozone layer before we get fried like turkye's.

[Patrick Kiger]

Well, I certainly agree with you that we should be investing in solar power--and wind, and geothermal, and wave-generated power as well. But the scale of those initiatives will have to be vastly larger than single cloning project--we're talking about hundreds of billions for alternative energy sources, while a cloning project might cost as much as, say, the amount that Stephon Marbury is being paid this year to stay home and watch Knicks games on TV. We could do both. The question is: Should we?

[Jeepster]

Instead of cloning a caveman, why not clone Racquel Welch? She was one prehistoric hottie!

[Maxine]

I don't think the picture you used in the blog does justice to the Neanderthals. I'd picture them as looking more like this
http://bhowc.files.wordpress.com/2006/03/444px-Neanderthal_2D.jpg

[Clewiston]

Racquel Welch didn't much resemble a real Neanderthal, did she?

[John]

Did we learn nothing from Jurassic Park? More to the point, what would be the purpose, other than satisfying some morbid intellectual curiosity? It isn't like we would be able to understand them better anthropologically--the society and environment in which they lived is long gone. There are better ways to spend the limited resources modern scientific research has at its disposal.

[John]

Did we learn nothing from Jurassic Park? More to the point, what would be the purpose, other than satisfying some morbid intellectual curiosity? It isn't like we would be able to understand them better anthropologically--the society and environment in which they lived is long gone. There are better ways to spend the limited resources modern scientific research has at its disposal.

[Walter Graham]

I believe it's Important to study ALL reasonings of life forms to advance as much as possible for the survival of everything. Without change, survival becomes modified into unsurvival of the knowledge we have evolved to at this point in our time of experience at our level of intelligence. Life as we now know it will not dissolve from that idea but reform, possibly mutate, into another understanding of multiple realities. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but so far, not the human mind's progression of developement! The cat is only dead from our perception of observation. Modern science is more important than your opinion on the subject. The big picture is bigger than you think. AND it will get even bigger when touched by the seperation that created our perceptions of existance to bring us more understandings for the survival of the Humans Beings, which is US. The main focus should be on the cat problem that our brilliance to date has only theories for the determination of what is responsible for what we have still yet to learn...