Scientist seeks woman to give birth to cloned cave baby

Although Neanderthals have been extinct for 33,000 years, George Church, a genetics professor at Harvard Medical School, believes he can bring them back with the help of a surrogate human mother.                        

The Harvard Medical School geneticist is quoted as saying that eventually, an “adventurous female human” will be needed to be the surrogate mother for the first Neanderthal baby.                    

His scheme is reminiscent of Jurassic Park but, while in the film dinosaurs were created in a laboratory, Professor Church’s ambitious plan requires a human volunteer.                 

He said his analysis of Neanderthal genetic code using samples from bones is complete enough to reconstruct their DNA, the Daily Mail reported.                   

According to the article, Professor Church’s plan would begin by artificially creating Neanderthal DNA based on genetic code found in fossil remains. He would put this DNA into stem cells.               


These would be injected into cells from a human embryo in the early stages of life.             

It is thought that the stem cells would steer the development of the hybrid embryo on Neanderthal lines, rather than human ones.        

After growing in the lab for a few days, the ‘neo-Neanderthal’ embryo would be implanted in the womb of a surrogate mother – the volunteer.                           

Professor Church, 58, is a pioneer in synthetic biology who helped initiate the Human Genome Project that mapped our DNA.