Friday, October 1, 2010

Redundancy in Science...

I recently read of the ethical conundrum scientists are facing over the possibility of cloning a Neanderthal.

Via BoingBoing

Should we clone a neanderthal? No, really, should we? Recently, Archaeology magazine considered the scientific, legal, and of course ethical challenges of doing just that. Researchers from Roche's 454 Life Sciences and genetics firm Illumina are collecting bits of Neanderthal DNA to sequence the genome of a 30,000-year-old Neanderthal woman from Croatia. Once the genome is complete, making a clone is no easy task. But as the article explains, it's within the relam of possibility. And what happens if there's success?

My question is: why do need to go through the trouble of cloning Neanderthals? See below.

1 comment:

  1. From what I can tell, neanderthalis was far more intelligent than (gag) Snooki. I say that half- ashamed or at least embarrassed, as I am half East Coast Italian myself-- and NO, no relatives of mine ever acted like that!