Lord Robert Winston on ‘Manipulating the Human’

Prestigious lecture celebrates Faculty of Medicine’s 10th anniversary - News

Thursday 11 October 2007
By Naomi Weston

The UK’s premier face of science communication and leading fertility expert delivered the Faculty of Medicine prestigious lecture on ‘Manipulating the Human’ last week, in celebration of the Faculty’s 10th anniversary.

In this packed out lecture, Professor Lord Robert Winston looked back at the history of fertility issues, genetic modification and the way we can manipulate reproduction.

Lord Winston is Emeritus Professor of Fertility Studies at Imperial College London, where he led the team pioneering the pre-implantation genetic diagnosis able to identify defects in human embryos.

Professor Winston emphasised in his lecture how these issues of manipulating the human are not a new thing highlighting the work of Lazzaro Spallanzani, the Italian biologist who worked on in vitro fertilisation methods back in the eighteenth century.

"There are all sorts of ways we can manipulate reproduction now," commented Professor Winston as he explained how far we have developed our scientific understanding in recent years.

Major breakthroughs which illustrate our scientific advancement include regenerative medicine and the first human embryonic stem cell to be grown in the UK.

And for the future, what will be the next big advancement? "Epigenetics and looking at the ways genes function will be the most important development in my view in the next ten years," said Professor Winston. He added: "Beginning to understand the genome with the 25,000 genes can’t be the answer to what makes us what we are. What establishes us as humans is far more complex, we need to look at how genes function."

He concluded on a cautious note by saying: "The point to remember about manipulating the human is that it will always be dangerous, uncertain and unpredictable."

Professor Winston has presented numerous television programmes explaining the story of science and medicine to the public. He became a life peer in 1995 and speaks regularly in the House of Lords on education, science and the arts. Until recently he was Chair of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology.

Watch the lecture at: Lord Winston lecture