Thread of Life

The Reith Lectures

BBC

Society & Culture, Science

4.2 • 770 Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2001

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tom Kirkwood, Professor of Medicine and head of the Department of Gerontology at the University of Newcastle presents his second of five Reith Lectures investigating new insights from the frontiers of science and the choices and decisions we face in the uncharted territories of a greying world.

In this lecture he looks at a revolution in the life sciences; a revolution that has unfolded with breathtaking speed over the last half century and which has accelerated greatly of late. It is this revolution, he argues, that will allow us to understand the role of DNA in the ageing process.

We sometimes say, in extremis, that a person's life hangs by a thread. In fact, all our lives hang by a thread all the time. The thread in question is DNA, the medium through which we inherit our genetic destiny. DNA directs our growth and all of the vital processes on which we depend for survival. DNA is the thread of life, but is it also the thread of death? Does DNA control our end as it controls our beginning?

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. This lecture in the series
0:06.0	The End of Age, given by Tom Kirkwood, was originally broadcast in 2001.
0:14.0	Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Tonight we're in Long Island at the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory.
0:20.1	The subject of this series of five
0:21.9	wreath lectures is aging, and their argument is that aging is neither inevitable nor necessary.
0:28.4	We're very much among scientists here. Cold Spring Harbor is one of the world's leading
0:33.1	research centers. Its director Jim Watson won the Nobel Prize, of course, for the discovery of the structure of DNA.
0:40.3	And the thread of life is the title of our lecture tonight. Here in our audience are many distinguished scientists and others whose interest in the subject is perhaps more personal. People in other words like you and me, many of whom would
0:55.2	like to know how long they might live, what life might be like in terms of our health and our
1:00.8	sense of aging when we're old. To help satisfy some of our curiosity and perhaps feed it too,
1:07.6	may I ask you to welcome a man for whom the study of ageing is a professional passion,
1:12.4	the Professor of Medicine and Head of Gerontology at Newcastle University in the northeast of
1:17.3	England, the BBC's Reith Lecturer 2001, Tom Kirkwood.
1:36.1	Good evening. We sometimes say in extremists that a person's life hangs by a thread. In fact,
1:42.8	all our lives hang by a thread all the time. The thread in question is DNA, the medium through which we inherit our genetic destiny.
1:46.2	DNA directs our growth and all of the vital processes on which we depend for survival.
1:52.6	DNA is the thread of life, but is it also the thread of death?
1:57.7	Does DNA control our end as it controls our beginning?
2:02.2	In my first lecture, I described the revolution in human longevity that has taken place over the last few generations.
2:12.1	Tonight, I shall look at the companion revolution in the life sciences, a revolution that has unfolded with
2:19.9	breathtaking speed over the last half century and which has accelerated greatly of late.
2:26.7	It is this revolution that will allow us to understand the role of DNA in the aging process.
	...

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