Genetic Engineering

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.9K Ratings

🗓️ 14 January 1999

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the implications of the developments in genetic engineering. Out of the city of Cambridge in the mid century came DNA and out of Edinburgh at the end of the century came the cloning of Dolly the sheep. These two facts might well do more to change the world literally, and our view of the world, than anything else that has happened at any time. Genetics have become the conversation of our day and with the Human Genome Project lumbering towards completion, its power grows. But are the consequences likely to be destructive and will what we think of as a human being, a personality, or even a person, change uncomfortably and irredeemably? With Grahame Bulfield, geneticist, honorary professor, Edinburgh University and Director of the Roslin Institute, Edinburgh; Bryan Appleyard, features writer for The Sunday Times and author of Brave New Worlds: Genetics and the Human Experience.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
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0:39.0	For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co. UK forward slash radio for. I hope you enjoy
0:46.5	the program. Hello today I'm joined by the geneticist Professor Graham Bullfield and the writer
0:52.2	Brian Appleyard to discuss the impact of the new genetics,
0:55.0	one of the most important advances in scientific knowledge in the modern age.
0:59.0	Our such advances as the cloning of Dolly the Sheep more for the benefit of scientists than for humanity is scientific
1:04.7	knowledge intrinsically morally corrupt or pure. Graham Bullfield is a geneticist, honorary professor
1:10.1	at Edinburgh University and the director of the Roslyn Institute in that same
1:13.4	City where Dolly the Sheep was created using adult cells. He says, quote, my job as a scientist
1:19.0	is to put as much information out into the public domain so that the public and government can judge it.
1:24.7	What we try to do with Dolly was to get a debate going."
1:28.3	Brian Appley had is a feature writer for the Sunday Times and an author known for his occasional
1:32.0	withering attacks on signs, for example, his
1:34.2	1992 book, Understanding the Present, Science and the Soul of Modern Man.
1:39.2	His in the past decreed the 20th century as being dominated by quote a supine technological determinism which is being
1:45.8	employed as a bracing antidote to culture and civilisation unquote.
	...

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