On Neanderthals and Cloning. It’s not just for Asimov, anymore. Or Brendan Fraser.
Loads of wicked quotes in this one:
Six years ago if you wanted to sequence E. coli [a species of bacteria], which is about 4 million base-pairs in length, it would have taken one or maybe two million dollars, and it would have taken a year and 150 people,” says Jarvie. “Nowadays, one person can do it in two days and it would cost a few hundred dollars.”
and…
“Neanderthals are not just sort of funny Eskimos who lived 60,000 years ago,” says Jean-Jacques Hublin, a paleoanthropologist at Max Planck. “They have a different way to give birth to babies, differences in life history, shape of inner ear, genetics, the speed of development of individuals, weaning, age of puberty.”
And the obligatory:
“I think there would be no question that if you cloned a Neanderthal, that individual would be recognized as having human rights under the Constitution and international treaties,”
h/t Tyler Cowen
