A Harvard professor who once helped map the human genome is now
gaining fame in a new way. He is seeking an "adventurous woman"
to give birth to the first Neanderthal baby born in thousands of
years. No, it's notJurassic Park or science that is technically
possible, if not totally impractical. This could really happen
at some point. Maybe. There is just one problem. Professor
George Church needs a woman who would be willing to carry and
birth the product of an experiment where artificial Neanderthal
DNA from bone samples would be placed into stem cells, injected
into an embryo, and then implanted. Wow. Sounds fun. Sign me up!
In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine, professor George
Church says that it's technically possible and that, while his
job isn't to say whether it's a good idea, it's an absolutely
feasible one. Crazy, right? But is it? According to Church, the
ancient human ancestor known as the Neanderthal could actually
be the key to increasing human longevity. He told the magazine
that it wasn't