“Wanted: ‘Adventurous woman’ to give birth to Neanderthal man — Harvard professor seeks mother for cloned cave baby.”
And Harvard University geneticist George M. Church, the scientist at the center of the viral vortex, says it was: Way too outlandish, and entirely untrue.
“The real story here is how these stories have percolated and changed in different ways,” George M. Church, a Harvard geneticist who helped kick off the Human Genome Project, told the Herald last night. “I’m sure we’ll get it sorted out eventually.”
He blames a mistake in an article he says was written off an interview in the German magazine Der Spiegel, badly misinterpreting what he said — that such a cloning might theoretically be possible someday — and arriving at the conclusion that he was actively looking for a woman to bear a cave baby with DNA scavenged from ancient Neanderthal bones. He suggested poor translation skills may be part of the problem.
Church said he has done perhaps 500 interviews about his research during more than two decades and this is the first one to spiral out of control quite like this.
But he said, “I’m not going to run away. … I want to use it as an educational moment to talk about journalism and technology.”
Harvard professor blasts Neanderthal clone baby rumor on Web
ReplyDeleteNeanderthal clone story blamed on poor translation
by Gary J. Remal / Boston Herald
http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/01/harvard_professor_blasts_neanderthal_clone_baby_rumor_web
The headline flying across the Internet yesterday seemed too outlandish to be true:
ReplyDelete“Wanted: ‘Adventurous woman’ to give birth to Neanderthal man — Harvard professor seeks mother for cloned cave baby,” Britain’s Daily Mail exulted.
And Harvard University geneticist George M. Church, the scientist at the center of the viral vortex, says it was: Way too outlandish, and entirely untrue.
“The real story here is how these stories have percolated and changed in different ways,” George M. Church, a Harvard geneticist who helped kick off the Human Genome Project, told the Herald last night. “I’m sure we’ll get it sorted out eventually.”
Church said his phone was ringing off the hook yesterday with reporters from around the world calling to talk to what they believed, and no doubt hoped, was a modern-day Dr. Moreau — the H.G. Wells character who created weird hybrid animals.
He blames a mistake in an article he says was written off an interview in the German magazine Der Spiegel, badly misinterpreting what he said — that such a cloning might theoretically be possible someday — and arriving at the conclusion that he was actively looking for a woman to bear a cave baby with DNA scavenged from ancient Neanderthal bones. He suggested poor translation skills may be part of the problem.
“I’m certainly not advocating it,” Church said. “I’m saying, if it is technically possible someday, we need to start talking about it today.”
Church said he was not even involved in the sequencing of Neanderthal DNA — a project that scientists said has helped determined that many modern humans actually carry traces of their distant hominid ancestors.
Church said his own work focuses on ways to use genetics, DNA and genome sequencing to aid in improving health care and developing synthetic fuels, materials and other products — not reproducing ancient human species.
Church said he has done perhaps 500 interviews about his research during more than two decades and this is the first one to spiral out of control quite like this.
But he said, “I’m not going to run away. … I want to use it as an educational moment to talk about journalism and technology.”