Neanderthal Clone: Harvard Professor Says It's Possible, But What's The Truth?

A professor at Harvard University says it's possible to clone a Neanderthal baby. Like a scene from "Encino Man" or "Jurassic Park" professor of genetics, George Church, 58, said in an interview with Der Spiegel that we may soon be able to clone a Neanderthal using developing technology. The only catch, is that he needs a willing woman to carry the Neanderthal child.

Church said to Der Spiegel about the complicated process that "the first thing you have to do is to sequence the Neanderthal genome, and that has actually been done. The next step would be to chop this genome up into, say, 10,000 chunks and then synthesize these.

Finally, you would introduce these chunks into a human stem cell. If we do that often enough, then we would generate a stem cell line that would get closer and closer to the corresponding sequence of the Neanderthal."

CBS reported that cloning is however illegal in many countries and it would be a daunting task looking for a woman who would be willing to be the surrogate for the offspring. He added to Der Spiegel that the process couldn't be completed until human cloning was acceptable to society. In the article he said the mother would have to be an "extremely adventurous female human."

Neanderthals bave been extinct for at least 33,000 years. ABC News reports that Church's claims are probably not possible, according to other scientists.

"I understand what George is saying. It's interesting. But I don't think it will ever happen," Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at the NYU Center for Bioethics said to ABC News. "It lurches too close to exploitation. It rubs up too closely as starting to turn into bringing somebody into existence just as an object of other people's interest."

Caplan also brought up the exploitative nature of cloning a human-like being for lab study.

"The theoretical Neanderthal family (because Church told Der Spiegel he doesn't think a lone Neanderthal would have a good sense of identity without a cohort) would live under extreme scrutiny even if they didn't have to live within the confines of a lab," ABC noted that Caplan said.

Caplan said to ABC news that the cloning of a Neanderthal was comparable to Frankenstein and how Frankenstein "struggled with his own identity and dignity much like a modern-day Neanderthal family would."

Another issue is the knowledge of whether or not the Neanderthal would be too aggressive or if they would die of an unforeseen allergy, as there is too little knowledge about them.

The United Nations banned cloning in 2005 and some states have banned it but California for example allows it for research.

"The reasoning behind that is because human cloning, to many, seems to violate the way in which people are created," Caplan said to ABC News. "It makes people nervous to make someone from an existing person. There's a repugnance factor about that."