Christiane Nusslein-Volhard Quotes

I may be the only person in the world who has my own embryonic cells growing in a petri dish.

If we intensify our efforts we can have a cloned baby within a year or two, but I don't know whether we can intensify our efforts to that extent. We're not really under pressure to deliver a cloned baby to this world. What we are under pressure to do is to deliver a cloned baby that is a healthy one.

Cloning interferon was not something I wanted to get into.

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.

There are two kinds of cloning right now. One is therapeutic cloning which is for coming up with cures for life threatening, really, really awful diseases. Then there is reproductive cloning, which is to make a human being out of your DNA and a donor egg.

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.

We have created life.

Renegade scientists and totalitarian loonies are not the folks most likely to abuse genetic engineering. You and I are--not because we are bad but because we want to do good. In a world dominated by competition, parents understandably want to give their kids every advantage. ... The most likely way for eugenics to enter into our lives is through the front door as nervous parents ... will fall over one another to be first to give Junior a better set of genes.

I don't want to clone anyone, not even myself.

I would not want to see any relaxation of the law prohibiting human cloning.

We managed to write chapter one. Chapter two, we will have a child a parent can take home and raise as a cloned child.

Cloning represents a very clear, powerful, and immediate example in which we are in danger of turning procreation into manufacture.

People have freaked out when I tell them that my dragons are scientifically based... what else can you call a genetically engineered life form?

Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people.

We are not interested in cloning the Michael Jordans and the Michael Jacksons of this world. The rich and the famous don't participate in this.

We're not really under pressure to deliver a cloned baby to this world. What we are under pressure to do is to deliver a cloned baby that is a healthy one.

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.

There are lots of other issues in policy including the stem cell issue.

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.

There is absolutely no doubt about it, and I may not be the one that does it, but the cloned child is coming. There is absolutely no way that it will not happen.

Like the 'test tube babies' born of in vitro fertilization, cloned children need not be identifiable, much less freaks or outcasts.

What the public needs to understand is that these new technologies, especially in recombinant DNA technology, allow scientists to bypass biological boundaries altogether.

We should place priority on the development of safeguards against unwise, permanent alterations in the human gene pool. Now that we have become principle agents of evolution, it is crucially important to recognize that the pursuit of short-term goals through human modification can be dangerously inconsistent with the long-term best interests of the human species.

Future generations will look back at the beginning of the 21st century and marvel that intelligent people actually tried to stop biomedical progress just to protect their limited vision of human nature.

We discuss the potential drawbacks of genetic testing or genetic modification of crops. We do not discuss the suffering and environmental damage that will be caused by holding back innovation…. The debate is unbalanced here because it is complacent about the imperfect present.