Should we clone a Neanderthal. Or maybe two?

Personally, I think we should start with a dodo, and then work our way up the ethical ladder from there.

... We know roughly how the sequence of life ran forward in time. What about running it backward? ...

Last week in Nature, scientists reported major progress in sequencing the genome of woolly mammoths. [see this] ... Now, according to Nicholas Wade of the New York Times, biologists are discussing "how to modify the DNA in an elephant's egg so that after each round of changes it would progressively resemble the DNA in a mammoth egg. The final-stage egg could then be brought to term in an elephant mother."

Cool, huh? But that's not the half of it. Wade notes:

The full genome of the Neanderthal, an ancient human species probably driven to extinction by the first modern humans that entered Europe some 45,000 years ago, is expected to be recovered shortly. If the mammoth can be resurrected, the same would be technically possible for Neanderthals.

from Slate

More like this

Regenerating a Mammoth for $10 Million: If the genome of an extinct species can be reconstructed, biologists can work out the exact DNA differences with the genome of its nearest living relative. There are talks on how to modify the DNA in an elephant's egg so that after each round of changes it…
About 18,545 years ago, give or take a few decades, a woolly mammoth died. Succumbing to causes unknown, the creature was buried in Siberian snow. Many other mammoths must have met similar fates but this one, which we now know as M4, is special. Almost 20 millennia later, its beautifully preserved…
Most of you probably know this, but the race is on to sequence the Neandertal genome. Nick Wade has a decent story on it. Important point: The chimp and human genomes differ at just 1 percent of the sites on their DNA. At this 1 percent, Neanderthals resemble humans at 96 percent of the sites […
The genome of the extinct woolley mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) has been sequenced, and reported in Nature. This confirms that elephant genomes are large, like the elephants themselves. It confirms previously proposed relationships amongst the elephants (see phylogeny below) and refines the…

My starting assumption would be that neanderthals are close enough to us that we should apply the same rules about cloning modern humans to cloning neanderthals.

Presumably a Neanderthal Person would be intelligent enough to grasp the fact that he or she is an experimentally produced relic of an extinct group with no future. I can't be sure about our hypothetical Paleozoic humanoid, but this would depress the hell out of me. I would be very curious to see it done (and I do support efforts to clone Woolly Mammoths) but this seems overly cruel to me.

Olivia Judson chimed in on this topic this morning.

Through cloning, we are learning how to reverse those commitments, something that may, one day, lead to revolutionary medical treatments. Likewise, learning to build a genome, whether of a mammoth or anything else, will certainly be interesting, and will probably be important in ways that we cant foresee.

And yet. No matter how much I enjoy thinking about the science of resurrection and I do I have to admit that the absence of mammoths isnt exactly a pressing problem. What is pressing is the number of species we are currently in danger of losing. It would be a shame if, in 200 years, our descendants were wondering whether to try and resurrect the elephant or the polar bear, the albatross or the mourning dove.

Lets get our act together. Lets prevent that first.

One difference between mammoths and Neanderthals is that there are huge ecosystems that evolved in concert with mammoths in North America and Northern Eurasia. So, we have ecological spaces that are in trouble due to invasive species and unnatural situations for native species in the Great Plains and Siberia, because there are plants and small animals that depend on mammoths for their reproductive strategies, and in the absence of mammoths, they are struggling against invasives.

Whereas the same cannot be said for Neanderthals. Reintroducing elephantine herbivores into the ecologies of North America and northern Eurasia would have demonstrable benefit for native plant species, but these areas already enjoy the presence of hominids, for better or worse. Cloned Neanderthals would have nothing to offer southern Canada or Siberia that they don't already enjoy courtesy of Homo sapiens.

I'm not sure anyone should worry too much about the well-being of a cloned Neanderthal. Do you realize how much money Geico would pay him/her to be in their commercials?

ethically is it right to clone an animal that lived a long time ago. if they clone it will it be able to survive in nowadays environment? what is the purpose of digressing to a less evolved state of homo sapiens?

By Tiara padayachee (not verified) on 15 Apr 2015 #permalink

If we are thinking about cloning a neanderthal we need to ask ourselves what are we gaining? , don't we have enough knowledge to move forward and why are we trying to mess with the cycle of life? (15090478)

By natalia moodley (not verified) on 15 Apr 2015 #permalink

Cloning a neanderthal is ethically incorrect and I believe that we should not try to recreate what we had in the past . Neanderthals did exist but they are now extinct because they were out competed by homo sapiens . Do you think by cloning the Neanderthal and giving them a second chance they would be able to out compete our species hence homo sapiens becoming extinct?

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By Shayuri R Deepak (not verified) on 15 Apr 2015 #permalink

Shayuri , you certainly have a point there. I also believe that this should not be brought back into the present day. Yes it would be fascinating but it is unethical and not morally correct.

By Trishika Parhalad (not verified) on 15 Apr 2015 #permalink

I find this very interesting, it would be nice to see what this species used to be like and how this cloning would go about creating a good resemblance. I find this very interesting.

By Bailey nathan (not verified) on 15 Apr 2015 #permalink