The Gene: Unlocking the Human Code, with Siddhartha Mukherjee

Intelligence Squared

Arts, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2016

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Genetics has revolutionised not just how we think of biology but how we think of ourselves. We are, in the words of one geneticist, the first organism that has ‘learned to read its own instructions’. Now, with the breakthrough of gene-editing technology — whose precision allows us to alter a single letter of DNA — we can now not only decipher but rewrite our genetic code. We may soon be able to treat diseases such as cancer not simply with drugs, but with genetic manipulation. Yet behind this medical revolution lies the prospect of something altogether more worrying. Already, we possess the technology to add to our genetic code at will, and thus create the world’s first generation of ‘transgenic’ humans. As we intervene genetically on ourselves with ever more accuracy, do we risk changing what it means to be human? In a potential quest for the genetically ‘normal’, will we risk annihilating the very diversity and mutations on which evolution depends? These are some of the questions that the Pulitzer... Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you by Krakhan.
0:03.0	Crypto is like finance, but different.
0:06.0	It doesn't care when you invest, trade or save, do it on weekends,
0:11.0	or at 5 a.m.
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0:15.2	crypto is finance for everyone, everywhere all the time.
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0:29.9	Thank you for downloading this Intelligence Squared podcast.
0:33.0	For more information on our debates, talks and discussions,
0:36.0	visit Intelligentsquared.com and sign up to the newsletter.
0:40.0	Well, thank you all. It's a delight to be here again. Let me see some familiar faces and some new ones.
0:45.0	And our guest in conversation this evening is Siddhartha Mukuji, who is a cancer physician, still sees patients, you know keeps his bedside manner brushed up and
0:56.9	also runs a lab looking at stem cells both of these at Columbia University in New York and
1:01.6	Sid is also a writer as some of you all know so is
1:04.3	his book the Emperor of All Maladies was on Times list of a hundred most important
1:09.3	books ever written so no pressure there and won the Pulitzer Prize and also as we were discussing
1:16.0	just earlier also won the Guardian first book prize which I think is a is a good
1:19.8	accolade for a book prize that crosses over between literature and scientific and factual books.
1:26.5	So we're delighted to have Sid along.
1:28.6	And we'll chat between us.
1:31.4	We hope you'll pay attention for a little while there'll be time for questions
1:34.0	in the second half and it's not we're not going to give you a tutorial there's no white
	...

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