You can now modify the genes of large animals, and the largest animal we are concerned with is the human.

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.

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.

There were never any doctors in my family. But my grandparents and my mother had a strong social conscience that was formative.

I like travelling on my own. It means I'm completely free to think about what's around me.

We can't any longer have the conventional understanding of genetics which everybody peddles because it is increasingly obvious that epigenetics - actually things which influence the genome's function - are much more important than we realised.

I did not study science at school until I was 13, when I was totally turned on by a seemingly dreary old teacher who suddenly, unannounced, manufactured a huge explosion in the middle of a totally boring monologue. From then on, all of his class wanted to make explosions.