Genetic dreams, genetic nightmares
Discovery
BBC
4.3 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 29 November 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Professor Matthew Cobb looks at how genetic engineering became big business - from the first biotech company that produced human insulin in modified bacteria in the late 1970s to the companies like Monsanto which developed and then commercialised the first GM crops in the 1990s. Were the hopes and fears about these products of genetic engineering realised?
Thanks to The State of Things from North Carolina Public Radio WUNC for the interview with Mary-Dell Chilton.
(Picture: DNA molecule, Credit: KTSDesign/Science Photo Library/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, let me ask you, son. |
| 0:03.7 | Have you heard George's podcast? |
| 0:06.1 | Me and Ben Brick are back with a blast. |
| 0:08.1 | This time with stories from Africa's past, not too distant, unsolved mysteries, unsung |
| 0:13.7 | heroes from untold histories, I'm trying to make sense of the present day. |
| 0:19.5 | Join me on this journey by pressing play. |
| 0:23.8 | Have you heard George's podcast? |
| 0:25.7 | Chapter 4. |
| 0:27.2 | Listen on BBC Sound. |
| 0:30.2 | From the BBC World Service, this is Genetic Dreams, Genetic Nightmares, a history of genetic |
| 0:36.2 | engineering. |
| 0:37.6 | I'm Professor Matthew Cobb from the University of Manchester. |
| 0:43.4 | It's 1975, three years after genetic engineering became a reality, it was about to turn into big |
| 0:53.7 | business. |
| 0:58.3 | As we heard in the last episode, in February that year, scientists met in California to |
| 1:03.2 | find safe ways of moving genes from one organism to another. |
| 1:08.2 | Their aim was to allay fears that the experiments might create plagues of genetically modified |
| 1:13.7 | bacteria. |
| 1:15.0 | In fact, the experiments were safe, the nightmares of GM pandemics faded, and governments |
| 1:20.8 | around the world became less alarmed. |
| 1:23.7 | But long before the dust had settled, there were moves to commercialise the technology. |
| 1:33.0 | Genetic engineering advocates talked of creating bacteria with genes for things like insulin |
... |
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