Interviewer: Hello everybody and welcome to Have your say. Let me introduce our guests. We
have Professor John McIntyre who teaches at Glasgow University. John McIntyre: Hello.
Interviewer: And we also have Judy Thornball who's a Greenpeace activist. Judy Thornball: Hello.
Interviewer: Before you call them, let's listen to the three people we've interviewed about today's topic which is new sciences.
Les: Hello. Yes. My name's Les. I'm fifty-one and I'm a bank executive. Overall I would say that I'm against new sciences. It's very difficult to generalize and some new sciences are obviously of great benefit, but there is such an acceleration and lack of control on the progress of new sciences these days that I feel that people have to put the brakes on and stop the galloping progress. I use the word progress in inverted commas because I'm not sure that all the new sciences are "progress". I think they're progressing possibly backwards and in a very dangerous way. I do not like the idea of cloning at all. It seems to me against nature, clever though it is. The other big controversy of the day is in genetically modified foods. This again is something I find very dangerous and against the natural order of things. We don't know how far this can go and it's very difficult, once it's set in motion, to control. And as I say I'm against these things, because… because of that… the lack of control and the acceleration of the… of the progress, if progress it is.
Lynn: My name's Lynn and I'm thirty-one years old and I work as a waste disposal manager. Am I for or against? As far as genetically modified food is concerned, I think people have been genetically modifying food for such a long time already, for decades, and so I don't really see what the problem is and it hasn't been proven that it's harmful to your health, so I… I feel more or less for that. So… I think it can be very positive to modify genes, so for example you can get rid of a harmful disease, blood diseases, I think maybe Parkinson's disease, I think it's very important. I just think we have to be very careful about restraints. Man has always been genetically modifying
nature since time began and you can't say where it begins or ends. I think we just have to be very, very careful about regulations. And as far as other new sciences are concerned, I do think cloning to me seems very dangerous. I don't know where you stop cloning. But I think there are other aspects, like long-distance surgery, which are absolutely amazing. When you see a surgeon operating in New York on a woman in France, I think it's fantastic. And I think that although there's lots of criticism, if you are the patient and you're ill, I think then your criticism stops quite quickly.
Phil: My name's Phil. I'm thirty-eight and I'm a tube-driver. There's a lot of talk about these new sciences and I see that a lot of people are afraid and… and criticize the scientists. I think it's… we really should be directing our… our questions to the politicians and it's up to us to decide what we want to do with these new discoveries, for example, genetically modified crops. Well, I'm sure everyone would love to have all these fruit and vegetables all year round whenever they want them but if they're going to be too expensive and if we don't know if they're carrying… diseases, then I don't see the point. But there are other fantastic advances in… in scientific discoveries. Solar power, it seems to me one of the answers to the world's energy… energy problems, of how to… how to produce energy in the house, and… and wind power as well, the two of those, I think they really should be developed more and more. So, in general, I'm not against the new sciences. I think it's up to the… the politicians to establish the frameworks by which there are limits to how far they go.
Interviewer: Well, now it's your turn to have your say… Our two guests are eagerly waiting for
your questions…
