Tony Blair Quotes

New technologies are often met with skepticism. But if the world is to continue the remarkable progress of the past few decades, it is vital that scientists, subject to safety and ethics guidelines, be encouraged to continue taking advantage of such promising tools as CRISPR.

Now, there is always a tremendous fear of science and progressing forward into areas of the unknown and it is a valid fear. Some of the genetic alterations of food are a little edgy.

Here at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, we have genetically rearranged various viruses and bacteria as part of our medical research. In fact, we have been able to create entirely new types of DNA molecules by splicing together the genetic information from different organisms - recombinant DNA.

Legislation against this type of cloning [therapeutic] is Canute against the ocean …. medieval views must not hold back the future…. We need government as a partner, not as an enemy.

We've been modifying the biological world at the level of DNA for thousands of years. Somehow there is this new fear of what we already have been doing and that fear has limited our ability to provide real solutions.

Genetic engineering is a result of science advancement, so I don't think that in itself is bad.

Humans are something very different from animals, and the numbers required to get cloning to work in animals are completely prohibitory with humans.

India has the opportunity to be a leader in genetic engineering, It has institutions that no other country has.

I think that in the 21st century, medical biology will advance at a more rapid pace than before.

The genomics revolution, proteomics, metabolomics, all of these 'omics' that sound so terrific on grants and on business plans. What we're doing is we are seizing control of our evolutionary future. I mean we're essentially using technology to just jam evolution into fast-forward.

The real world is far too complex and unpredictable to make something like the idea of humanity controlling its own evolution or engineering itself - well, I wouldn't say impossible but it should be approached with a degree of caution.

Novel technologies and ideas that impinge on human biology and their perceived impact on human values have renewed strains in the relationship between science and society.

During this period, I became interested in how the new techniques of cloning and sequencing DNA could influence the study of genetics and I was an early and active proponent of the Human Genome Sequencing Project.

I have been intimately involved in the techniques of genetic modification as a scientist since GMOs were first conceived. In that time, hundreds of studies and tests have been done on GMO safety - and we've seen no scientific evidence that GMOs are inherently more dangerous than crops produced by traditional plant breeding.

I think genetic research is a fascinating and fertile area.

Our grandkids will lead the lives of the gods of mythology. Zeus could think and move objects around. We'll have that power. Venus had a perfect, timeless body. We'll have that, too. Pegasus was a flying horse. We'll be able to modify life in the future.

Britain should be the world's number one center for genetic and stem cell research, building on our world leading regulatory regime in the area.

If genetic research doesn't seemed to have lived up to its therapeutic promise, it's because sequencing is just too slow and expensive.

I think we're going to move from a Homo sapiens into a Homo evolutis:... a hominid that takes direct and deliberate control over the evolution of his species, her species and other species.

Genetic engineering is a result of science advancement, so I don't think that in itself is bad. If used wisely, genetics can be beneficial, but they can be abused, too.

If you put yourself in a place where you're having to work at understanding something, then you keep yourself awake to all possible choices. How the body will look like in the future, the ethics of the body: those are questions that really fascinate me. Let's get the dialogue going.

I firmly believe that the next great breakthrough in bioscience could come from a 15-year-old who downloads the human genome in Egypt.

We cannot sacrifice innocent human life now for vague and exaggerated promises of medical treatments thirty of forty years from now. There are ways to pursue this technology and respect life at the same time.

Our increasing ability to alter our biology and open up the processes of life is now fueling a new cultural war.

Almost everybody is enthusiastic about the promise of biotechnology to cure disease and to relieve suffering.