Genetic Engineering

In Our Time: Science

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 14 January 1999

⏱️ 28 minutes

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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	Thanks for down learning the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.uk.
0:09.0	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:12.0	Hello, today I'm joined by the geneticist Professor Graham Bullfield and the writer
0:16.0	Brian Appliard to discuss the impact of the new genetics, one of the most important advances
0:20.3	in scientific knowledge in the or pure. Graham Bullfield is a geneticist, honorary professor at Edinburgh University and the
0:35.2	director of the Roslyn Institute in that same city where Dolly the Sheep was created using
0:39.6	adult cells. He says, quote, my job as a scientist is to put as much information out into the public
0:45.0	domain so that the public and government can judge it. What we try to do with Dolly was to get a debate
0:50.3	going, unquote. Brian Appleyad is a feature writer for the Sunday Times and an author known for his occasional
0:55.8	withering attacks on signs, for example, his 1992 book, Understanding the Present,
1:00.6	Signs and the Soul of Modern Man. He His in the past decried the 20th century as being
1:05.2	dominated by quote a supine technological determinism which is being employed as a bracing
1:10.7	antidote to culture and civilization."
1:13.0	His latest book, Brave New Worlds, Genetics and the Human Experience,
1:17.6	published X Monday, is no less uncompromising.
1:20.6	Brian Applyard, genetic signs has been heralded as one of the great advances in the 20th century.
1:26.6	You yourself consider the discovery of DNA to be one of the greatest scientific events in history and yet you say that genetics
1:36.8	must be quote contained and humbled in brave new worlds why?
1:42.0	Well I think precisely because genetics is such a radical
1:46.0	science because it is so fundamental. It asks very fundamental questions about us.
1:54.0	Human cloning, which is very much in the news,
1:57.5	would be obviously a pretty radical transformation
	...

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