Synthetic Neanderthals

In an interview at Spiegel Online (Deutsch link) Harvard biologist Georgia Church explains (English link) discusses how recombinant DNA/stem cell techniques could in the near future lead to neanderthals being created/born:

Church: The first thing you have to do is to sequence the Neanderthal genome, and that has actually been done. The next step would be to chop this genome up into, say, 10,000 chunks and then synthesize these. Finally, you would introduce these chunks into a human stem cell. If we do that often enough, then we would generate a stem cell line that would get closer and closer to the corresponding sequence of the Neanderthal. We developed the semi-automated procedure required to do that in my lab. Finally, we assemble all the chunks in a human stem cell, which would enable you to finally create a Neanderthal clone.

SPIEGEL: And the surrogates would be human, right? In your book you write that an "extremely adventurous female human" could serve as the surrogate mother.

Church: Yes. However, the prerequisite would, of course, be that human cloning is acceptable to society.

That this is possible and in the relatively near future will be feasible is not news. Biologist PZ Myers of the very widely read blog Pharyngula gets all stinky about the ethics of this.
PZ is fundamentally right. We cannot bring a neanderthal child into the world as a science experiment; we have to think about the consequences to it (and the consequences of creating another hominid species on  Earth, assuming the experiment is repeated multiple times.) Yet it may be nigh inevitable that this will happen given enough time and widespread access to the technology.

Church is less judgmental about the technology. His argument is that society must decide, not him, and that diversity is an extremely important consideration; biological diversity (not just cultural diversity) is very beneficial and adding diversity to the human genome would be good. I have no idea.

Church also thinks that DNA techniques will lead to not only the creation/recreation of many animals, but may be a source for technical design:

SPIEGEL: And what will these machines be used for?

Church: Oh, life science will co-opt almost every other field of manufacturing. It's not limited to agriculture and medicine. We can even use biology in ways that biology never has evolved to be used. DNA molecules for example could be used as three-dimensional scaffolding for inorganic materials, and this with atomic precision. You can design almost any structure you want with a computer, then you push a button -- and there it is, built-in DNA.

SPIEGEL: DNA as the building material of the future?

Church: Exactly. And it's amazing. Biology is good at making things that are really precise. Take trees for example. Trees are extremely complicated, at least on a molecular basis. However, they are so cheap, that we burn them or convert them into tables. Trees cost about $50 a ton. This means that you can make things that are nearly atomically precise for five cents a kilo.

SPIEGEL: You are seriously proposing to build all kinds of machines -- cars, computers or coffee machines -- out of DNA?

Church: I think it is very likely that this is possible. In fact, computers made of DNA will be better than the current computers, because they will have even smaller processors and be more energy efficient.