The latest question on The National Geographic website is the question of ethics in possibly resurrecting or recreating Neanderthals using DNA traces.
Clones have been created ever since "Dolly" the sheep in 1996. The first clone of an extinct species was when scientists in Spain cloned a Bucado -a type of wild mountain goat- that had been extinct, back in 2003. The goat only lived a few minutes, but it shows what is possible with science.
Considering that there are no fully intact Neanderthal cells how would this be done? Scientists predict that not so far in the future we will be able to take a cell of a closely related species, tweak and alter the cell to resemble with some scientific engineering to match the genetic code of Neanderthals.
So what if this clone was to survive? It would have to be placed in a surrogate, with which the extremely high failure rate of cloning, would have significant challenges with the well-being of the surrogate. If this Neanderthal baby were to be born successfully and live, what would be the ethical issues surrounding its upbringing? It almost seems cruel to bring a living and thinking being into the world and being the only species in existence. Would human rights apply to a Neanderthal? So many ethical questions related to the cost of bringing back the extinct. It's almost like raising the dead.
At the end of the article the moral questions of raising a full living and breathing Neanderthal is somewhat ruled out. What isn't ruled out is the possible great advancements and knowledge that could be learned from using the cells individually to look at genetic diseases. Advancements such as looking at muscle wasting or osteoporosis are main issues that experiments that could help modern humans considering the robustness of Neanderthals.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/03/130306-neanderthal-genome-extinction-cloning-hominid-science/
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