Neanderclone

Making a human sub-species, the Neanderthal de-extinct? What are the ethics of such an endeavor? Would a public which is  generally eager to believe the hype, occasionally scientifically poorly literate, sometimes outright hostile to science, and at times all three at once, buy such a claim?

In a world where bizarre and outright incorrect claims have become the norm, what can you still do as a parodist? Is the claim that a somewhat unusually massive modern human is a “de-extinct” Neanderthal really so much more bizarre than the recent claim of the “de-extinct” dire wolf, which was in fact a grey wolf with a few genetic edits?

Good backgrounds on the recent discussion of the dire wolf “de-extinction” by Jerry Coyne, Michael Le Page and Adam Rutherford are linked here. I don’t need to re-peat what these folks wrote very eloquently.

Here is the video with the claims by the Canadian startup “Neanderclone”, claiming to have de-extincted a Neanderthal. The creature they have looks like one, and walks like one, so it must be a Neanderthal?