Tag: cloning

Today’s exercise in bioethics: Neanderthal babies!

What could possibly go wrong?

Professor George Church of Harvard Medical School believes he can reconstruct Neanderthal DNA and resurrect the species which became extinct 33,000 years ago.

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.

He said: ‘Now I need an adventurous female human.

Continue reading Today’s exercise in bioethics: Neanderthal babies!

‘Zombie’ cows seems a bit much.

(Via @eddiebear) ‘Revenant’ cows – what does Firefox mean, “revenant” is a misspelled word!?! NO, IT IS NOT!  It is in the damned dictionary and everything.  Dear sweet God, but I am tired of dealing with spell-checking software written by people with less command of the English language than myself.  There’s no excuse, you know: if “squamous” passes muster, so should “revenant.”

Anyway, they’re apparently cloning cow meat.  Why this should be an issue for anybody is a bit of a mystery: if the stuff isn’t poisonous, isn’t mutagenic – DAMMIT, THAT’S A WORD TOO – isn’t a breeding ground for exciting new diseases, and tastes all right, I’m missing the problem.  Even if the stupid things do revive and start shuffling around for prey: I’m not a cow, which means (pretty much by definition) that I wouldn’t have to worry about the dangers of post-necrotic anthropophagy.

OK, that one I admit that I had to look up the right spelling.