Colin Blakemore
The Life Scientific
BBC
4.6 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 8 November 2011
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Colin Blakemore is a neuroscientist who nearly became an artist. He specialised in vision and the development of the brain, and pioneered the idea that the brain has the ability to change even in adulthood contrary to the popular view at the time.
Professor Blakemore, the youngest ever Reith Lecturer, is an influential science communicator and is committed to raising the profile of brain research. Because of his work he was targeted by animal rights campaigners for over a decade, but rather than keeping a low profile as advised, he decided to work with the activists and explain his point of view about the need for animal testing in medical research. He was appointed head of the Medical Research Council in 2003 but threatened to resign shortly after when he was refused a knighthood, because of his defence of animal research. He has been equally outspoken on many issues including classification of drugs and GM foods. His current areas of research include how the brain develops which has implications for many conditions including autism and schizophrenia.
He talks to Jim Al-Khalili about why he's not been afraid to stand up to his critics.
Producer: Geraldine Fitzgerald.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the |
| 0:03.8 | podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC. |
| 0:08.6 | It's a massive area but I'd sum it up as stories to help us make sense of the forces shaping the world. |
| 0:15.0 | What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism |
| 0:20.0 | and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines. |
| 0:23.7 | And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject |
| 0:28.3 | you might not even have thought you were interested in. |
| 0:30.2 | Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment, |
| 0:36.1 | you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:39.8 | Thank you for downloading the Life Scientific from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:44.0 | Hello, my guest today is a neuroscientist who claims his career is as straightforward and focused as you can imagine. |
| 0:52.0 | An undergraduate at Cambridge, a PhD in the |
| 0:55.2 | states, then back to Cambridge. Now he's professor of neuroscience at Oxford. |
| 1:00.3 | But this would obscure Colin Blakemore's frequent appearances in the headlines because of his staunch defense of science and in what he believes to be right. |
| 1:10.0 | Animal Rights Groups targeted him and his family for 13 years and the harassment |
| 1:17.0 | included bombs being sent to his children and letters laced with razor blades |
| 1:21.7 | but rather than keep his head down as advised, he chose |
| 1:26.8 | to enter into debate with the activists. |
| 1:30.2 | He's carried out groundbreaking work in understanding vision and the development of the brain, |
| 1:35.3 | which has implications for many diseases, including autism and schizophrenia. |
| 1:40.5 | Welcome, Colin. Now you've had this high-profile career in science. The scientist Pavlov said |
| 1:46.7 | that the world's divided up into artists and thinkers. Is it true you nearly became an artist? |
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