This is pretty cool. Researchers have sequenced the DNA of an extinct cave bear. They seem to be overly pessimistic about the implications of this, though, at least in my opinion:

"In hundreds or thousands of years from now, we may have advanced our technology so we can create creatures from DNA sequence information," Dr Eddy Rubin, director of the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California, told the BBC News website.

I think that "decades" is the appropriate timeframe here. And this is the most interesting part, to me:

the scientists hope to be able to sequence the DNA of ancient humans, which lived at the same time as cave bears, raising the prospect of perhaps one day being able to "build" a Neanderthal from their genetic blueprint.

This would raise some interesting ethical issues. Would a Neanderthal be considered fully human, with standard-issue human rights? Or would he or she be kept in a glorified zoo? It might be dangerous to let them run loose, because we would have no idea what the temperament would be, and the fossil evidence of their musculature indicates that they could probably wrestle cave bears for recreation.

Just making one wouldn't necessarily give us insight into the subspecies as a whole, in terms of its mental capacity, temperament, etc. But it would be fascinating to find out just how smart a modern Neanderthal, raised in a modern technological environment, would be.

Would reconstituted Neanderthals be eligible for the NFL draft?

Interesting ethical issues indeed. I'd be against it: as long as there's only one species in the genus Homo, there is an unanswerable argument against racism: that fundamentally, we're really all one race, all descended from one stock. If you bring back Neanderthals, you give up that argument on their behalf. Considering how badly we Cro-Magnons have treated each other, I'd rather we didn't tempt ourselves to commit genocide against the Neanderthals (possibly for the second time).

Technically we are one species not one race. Race is really more like a dog bread. Just being nit picky.

"Race is really more like a dog bread."

Mmmmm. Dog bread!

/Homer

Interesting ethical issues indeed. I'd be against it: as long as there's only one species in the genus Homo, there is an unanswerable argument against racism: that fundamentally, we're really all one race, all descended from one stock. If you bring back Neanderthals, you give up that argument on their behalf. Considering how badly we Cro-Magnons have treated each other, I'd rather we didn't tempt ourselves to commit genocide against the Neanderthals (possibly for the second time).

I disagree. If our race is responsible for the genocide of Neanderthals (and it sure looks suspicious to me), then we have a responsibility to bring them back. What our responsibilities are past that point, I don't know, but to reverse the extinction of an intelligent race because we might succumb to temptation? That seems very wrong to me.

Quote: "If our race is responsible for the genocide of Neanderthals (and it sure looks suspicious to me), then we have a responsibility to bring them back."

And then what? We'd have to pay them restitution, also. Sorry, for all the genocide, here's 21.2 billion dollars.

Grunt! *Neanderthal eats stack of $20 bills*

"Would a Neanderthal be considered fully human, with standard-issue human rights?"

Would a Neanderthal be fully human? Or would he be a bald gorilla?

If we must pass judgment a Neanderthal's humanity (or lack of same) beforehand, from palentology...well, we already know that we can't do that.

We're already programming living things (mostly types of bacteria) but if you imagine how far it could go it get's quite creepy. If you think steroid use is bad, imagine players breed with an intermingling of DNA code for specific traits. Wait... a real virus writer that does something much more insidious than explode the cell it infects. The possibilities are endless and horrifying... unless you really would like to relive greek mythology? Ok, where are my meds?

I think Neanderthal was victim of an extermination "called competition". He was leaving for 300 000 years in western Europe and suddenly desappeared when Cro Manion came around 40 000 years ago... That is the more credible explanation.