What reader could resist clicking on a headline about a mad scientist trying to find women to carry Neanderthal clones? It sounds like something from the old supermarket tabloid the Weekly World News, but this latest whopper is loosely based on a real statement by a real scientist.
In his book, Regenesis, written with Ed Regis, Harvard researcher George Church really did say that it might be possible to clone Neanderthal babies using the Neanderthal genome sequence reconstructed with synthetic biology. And the kicker: A cloned embryo of our extinct cousin could be gestated by an “adventurous” woman. (On the plus side, the first volunteer would be shoe-in to get her own reality show.)
There wasn’t much reaction at first. The statement was buried pretty deep in the book, which was something of a slog to read.
But then the German magazine Der Spiegel published an in-depth interview with Church. There, the interviewer attempted to get Church to explain why he thought bringing back a Neanderthal would be a good idea.
Here’s a key passage from high in the Q and A style story:
SPIEGEL: Would cloning a Neanderthal be a desirable thing to do?
Church: Well, that's another thing. I tend to decide on what is desirable based on societal consensus. My role is to determine what's technologically feasible. All I can do is reduce the risk and increase the benefits.
SPIEGEL: So let's talk about possible benefits of a Neanderthal in this world.
Church: Well, Neanderthals might think differently than we do. We know that they had a larger cranial size. They could even be more intelligent than us. When the time comes to deal with an epidemic or getting off the planet or whatever, it's conceivable that their way of thinking could be beneficial.
SPIEGEL: How do we have to imagine this: You raise Neanderthals in a lab, ask them to solve problems and thereby study how they think?
Church: No, you would certainly have to create a cohort, so they would have some sense of identity. They could maybe even create a new neo-Neanderthal culture and become a political force.
The part about Neanderthals possibly being were more intelligent than we are seemed particularly plausible following the first wave of press coverage banking off the Der Spiegel interview. The Daily Mail tweaked Church’s statement so that he came across as ready to implant that Neanderthal clone. The headline was an attention-getter: "Wanted: Adventurous Woman to Give Birth to Neanderthal Man. Harvard Professor seeks Mother for Cloned Cave Baby."
Fox News followed in the same spirit, with a quote that I could not find in the English version of the Der Spiegel interview. Something must have been lost in translation:
"I can create a Neanderthal baby, if I can find a willing woman," George Church told German newspaper Spiegel Online
. The DNA of the Neanderthal, a long extinct relative of man, has been more or less rebuilt, a process called genetic sequencing.
. The DNA of the Neanderthal, a long extinct relative of man, has been more or less rebuilt, a process called genetic sequencing.Where did this quote come from? What followed was a typical progression, with more middle-of-the road stories catching people up on the controversy, such as this one in LiveScience, followed by a wave of straight-faced debunking as by AP, the Boston Herald, USA Today and others.
And ABC News realized that you can always count on medical ethicist Art Caplan to weigh in on weird science. Caplan was a great source of sanity in the late 1990s, when the press went bonkers over the cloning of a sheep, speculating that we would soon give up sex as a form of reproduction and then armies of clones would take over the world. Congress even held a hearing featuring members of a UFO cult rumored to have been trying to clone a child.
Who is at fault for the Neanderthal baby hype? It might be tempting to blame the scientist, George Church, for not being appropriately circumspect in his interview, or to blame the Der Spiegel writer for focusing on a sexy tangent. But there really wasn’t a bottom line point to Church’s book – It was a laundry list of technological achievements and possibilities that George Church finds interesting. I admired the Der Spiegel interview for bringing out some of the more salient features of Church’s thinking. Everything in the interview was in the book, but expressed with a more pedantic prose style and a disorganized structure.
The Daily Mail, Fox News and others share some blame for taking Church’s statement about what might be plausible and distorting it into something he wants to do now. But, then, should we expect better of them? Is there harm in this story or should we just laugh it off knowing tabloids will be tabloids?
Comments
What would be the point of bringing an extinct species back? Neanderthals were absorbed into our genome and we carry their DNA so why do we need to resurrect them? This is not an animal we are talking about. This is a close humanoid relative capable of complex thought and the ability to communicate verbally. It would have to live in a bubble it's entire life. We couldn't give it bone marrow transplants to cure its immune problem because that would defeat the purpose.
Ms. Sharyl Directory
The Boston Herald got in touch with Church about the Neanderthal story. “The real story here is how these stories have percolated and changed in different ways,” Church told his local tabloid. “I’m sure we’ll get it sorted out eventually.” As for Neanderthal creation, he said: “I’m certainly not advocating it. I’m saying, if it is technically possible someday, we need to start talking about it today.” I contacted Church about the stories, asking if the Herald’s report was accurate. He wrote: “Yes the Boston Herald did a good job of cutting through many layers of viral web third-hand news.”
I’m surprised that normally sedate people ran with this “news.” The shame, to me, is that this kind of hyperventilating distracts from a lot of the really fascinating work that Church is doing. I’m in fact working on a story now (expect it soon) about genome-editing technology coming from his lab and elsewhere that could make it far easier to edit the genomes of human cells, and could, I think, revolutionize biotechnology. But talk of using these kinds of tools to make Neanderthals, or even mammoths, which present fewer ethical issues, is very, very far off. The Island of Dr. Moreau stuff really isn’t helping anybody. check http://www.weblist24.com
That's a great comment, Tom. In fact, the scientific world should think twice before cloning any living creature - especially a Neanderthal. According to respected writing sources, these prehistoric humans were far from being friendly.
A living cell can provide functional genetic material that can be used to generate a cloned cell. Neandertal skeletal remains have DNA only in very short, nonfunctional bits. Taking genetic information and making it into a working chromosome is a very substantial technical challenge, and basenji ensuring that the genetic information is free of errors and capable of yielding a viable embryo will be massively difficult. Church is an optimist about the rate of progress on these problems, and I have correspondents who think these advances may happen in less than ten years. Personally I think it will be more than thirty.
Great post - I have a dumb question. Did they ever figure out why the original cloned sheep were not especially hale and hearty? And if so, that would certainly be among the many things that should give us pause before making a Neanderthal. Not that anyone's really considering it anytime soon, as your post suggests.