Some interesting thoughts and ethical dilemmas from Ursula Goodenough at NPR Blogs. She links two interesting developments in genetics, to whit the claims by Craig Venter's company to have artificially synthesized a functional bacterial chromosome and by Svante Pääbo’s laboratory to have produced a first draft of the Neanderthal genome. Goodenough points out that:
"Hence it is now formally feasible, albeit not yet remotely practicable, to synthesize artificial Neanderthal chromosomes, insert copies into enucleated human eggs, and recruit volunteers to give birth to a Homo species that has been extinct for 30,000 years."There are enough ethical dilemmas here to keep a troop of philosophers busy for years. Imagine a human mother giving birth to a Neanderthal infant and that Neanderthal having to grow up in human society.
Pääbo also estimates that most human genomes contain one to four percent of Neanderthal-derived DNA sequences, meaning there was interbreeding. The next time someone calls you a Neanderthal, they may be closer than you think!
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