Of course it is a very simple matter to identify genes which might modify intelligence or memory and start thinking about whether you want to enhance a human, and the next generation is going to have to deal with that issue. Should we be trying to enhance humans rather than trying to educate them and so on?
A young woman in her teens has about 300,000 eggs in her ovaries. By the time she is menopausal, none are left.
People think I appear on television to promote my image. That's not fair. I hate filming. I turned down 'Strictly Come Dancing.' But television is a wonderful opportunity to promote scientific ideas. 'Super Doctors' is a very thoughtful piece.
I'm a traditional Jew with an orthodox background, and it informs much of my approach to science. Of course I think it's very important that if you have those sorts of backgrounds you don't impose them on other people as a clinician, of course.
While nobody has identified any gene for religion, there are certainly some candidate genes that may influence human personality and confer a tendency to religious feelings. Some of the genes likely to be involved are those which control levels of different chemicals called neurotransmitters in the brain.
I've been all over the world on my own because, as a scientist, you travel a great deal if your work is reasonably successful or published. I get invitations to go to all sorts of strange countries where I would mostly be by myself and just meet other people there, instead of having travelling companions.
It is time my colleagues got real. All British universities doing worthwhile research use animals, and, instead of hiding, they should be boasting of their achievements.
Medicine, which I wouldn't be without, has also been a force for... less good. For example, if you look at our mishandling of the immune system, using antibiotics in children and avoiding infection, we've certainly increased the risk of asthma.
You can't be judgmental about babies. They are all have different needs. I was left with an enduring hatred of cheese because it was forced down me when I was young.
Over the past 20 years, I have presented many science programmes on BBC1. But none is, I think, more socially important, or of more human interest, than this ongoing series of 'Child of Our Time.'
I don't believe in regretting - one should try to move on. My mum was good at that. She was deeply in love with my father, and he died when I was nine. She remarried, and her second husband died, too. I saw the grieving process she went through. My mother had this way of moving on. It was a fine trait.
The trouble with climate change is it's an extraordinarily diverse and complex issue, but for example if the BBC would let me make some of the programmes I'd like to make on climate change, I bet you there would be a change of emphasis.
I don't think we will find a cure for all cancers in the next 50 years let alone 20. I think it's foolishness to say that.
Surgeons always underestimate the pain and disability involved in what they do to people.
There were never any doctors in my family. But my grandparents and my mother had a strong social conscience that was formative.
I don't believe the fertilised egg can be equated with the sort of human life that you and I represent, or our children represent.
It's very clear from Biblical history and Jewish history that Jewish monotheism wasn't developed in an instant, that it became gradually the accepted norm. But undoubtedly, Jewish ancestors were polytheists.
Our aggression is a deep instinct which survives in all kinds of manifestations in modern man.
My father died when I was nine, but I came from a stable family environment, which I think does contribute to being well-behaved.
I love the French detective series 'Spiral.' It's quite brutal to watch, but I'm already hooked.
However pragmatic you are, it is very demanding being a new parent.
Ethics is not routinely taught to science students except in medicine, and I think it should be.
My own field, the prevention of genetic disorders in babies, has been possible only because of humane work on animals.
I went to school with butterflies of fear every day for years - from primary school onwards - not just worried about being bullied by classmates, but by teachers.
I don't much like being a public figure, because so often how people appear is not how they really are, and I think one of the issues about our society is that we make judgments about people on the basis of very flimsy evidence.
