Neanderthal is a byword for backwardness, but this relative of ours, which disappeared only25,000 or 30,000 years ago, was clearly human. The Neanderthals had burial rites, built fires, probably had language, made tools and even had a larger brain than homo sapiens. Now, according to an article in the journal Archaeology, some scientists want to clone them.

According to George Church, a genetics professor from Harvard Medical School, Neanderthal cells could be significant in the discovery of treatments for largely human-specific diseases such as HIV or smallpox. He says that if they are different enough to modern humans, they may possess genetic immunity to these conditions. Also, differences in their biology could lead to new gene therapy or drug treatments.

A first draft of the Neanderthal genome was released a year ago, but it is likely to contain many errors. Creating an artificial genome is… click here to read whole article and make comments