Wanted: 'Adventurous woman' to give birth to Neanderthal man

[Electric Monk]

9. Neanderthal clone story blamed on poor translation

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/01/harvard_professor_blasts_neanderthal_clone_baby_rumor_web

Harvard professor blasts Neanderthal clone baby rumor on Web

Neanderthal clone story blamed on poor translation

(snip)

“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.