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?