Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
As a medical student in the 1970s, I was taught that the foundations of diagnosis and treatment were to take a detailed history and to perform a comprehensive clinical examination.
We pretend that the debate about genetically modified crops is a debate about science when the reality is, actually, that the science is very clear. It is really a debate about values.
Cities are central to the shaping and delivery of national policy objectives, and in return, they are the places where social, environmental, and economic policies play out in practice.
David Sainsbury has been good for science and good for innovation in the U.K. He has been an outstanding science minister and shown extraordinary passion and commitment to his portfolio.
Science can tell us what can be done in principle, but it is then a matter for public debate as to what should be done. And ultimately, it is a role for politicians to decide the answers.
The U.K. is fortunate in its geographical position. We're an island. But we are living in a completely interconnected world where disruptions in countries far away will have major impacts.
My job is to advise politicians, elected officials, and government ministries of the best way to deal with important issues, both localized, national, and the grand challenges facing humanity.
Living in areas with a high population density does not need to be synonymous with overcrowding. Manhattan has an extremely dense population and is considered by many to be a highly desirable place to live.
An important task for government is to think about the future as well as to learn from the past, and the Foresight Programme, run by the Government Office for Science, helps in the development of this thinking.
Banks and credit agencies learn continuously about the purchases we make. This is convenient and diminishes the risk of theft. It also means that banks can know more about our lifestyle than our close relatives.
When governments work well, they safeguard citizens' health, well-being, resilience and security, and they increase prosperity. To do this, they must respond effectively to the new, the unexpected, and the game-changing.
New technology creates a new marketplace of words, creating totally new words and changing the meaning and application of existing ones. In doing so, it has a potent opportunity to create new misconceptions and confusion.
A computer, by definition, cannot be held accountable for anything because there is no mechanism to hold it to account, short of turning off the electricity supply or destroying the hardware. Only humans can be accountable.
People go on exploration; they're trying to find places that weren't known before. But it is an inevitable fact of research, as is in any other form of exploration of the unknown, that some people find they go down a dead end.
Distributed ledgers are inherently harder to attack because instead of a single database, there are multiple shared copies of the same database, so a cyber stack would have to attack all the copies simultaneously to be successful.
It would be silly not to admit that there are some sections of the public who are unconvinced by the benefits or have doubts about the motives behind it. We have to be clear that GM is not all about profits for multinational companies.
Distributed ledger technologies have the potential to help governments to collect taxes, deliver benefits, issue passports, record land registries, assure the supply chain of goods, and generally ensure the integrity of government records and services.
We take it for granted that because our shelves and supermarkets are heaving with food that there are no problems with food security. But we have limited land in the U.K., and climate disruption and population growth are putting pressure on food supply.
The problem of poor vision has gone unnoticed for too long - it's astounding that 700 years after glasses were first invented, there are still 2.5 billion people across the world without access to something as simple as eye screening or a pair of glasses.
Of course methane is a fossil fuel, but as long as it is burned efficiently and fugitive emissions of methane gas are minimised, it is a less harmful fossil fuel than coal and oil and is an important way-station on the global journey towards low-carbon energy.
There is a particular set of values commonly associated with being professional. Experience, expertise, trustworthiness, wisdom, and good judgement are all attributes aspired to by senior professional people, be they doctors, engineers, lawyers, civil servants, or the clergy.
Sharing data allows us to research, communicate, consume media, buy and sell, play games, and more. In return, businesses develop products, scientists undertake research, and governments use data to enable voting, inform policies, collect tax, and provide better public services.
The involvement of clinicians, researchers, and, most importantly, the thousands of people who have donated DNA samples will help us to correlate genetic variation with individual variation in health and disease and help to deliver on the long-term promise of the Human Genome Project.
People have extreme beliefs about whether it is right for humans to tamper with embryos in any way at all. Sometimes the values discussion gets conflated with the science discussion. We shouldn't pretend we're having an argument about science when we're having an argument about values.
Many families would like to avoid burdening future generations with inherited diseases such as haemophilia or severe developmental disorders. But most would think it wrong to edit the genes that influence the 'normal' range of human variation, from eye colour to intelligence or athletic ability.
Wellcome Trust focuses on supporting outstanding researchers, accelerating the application of research, and exploring medicine in historical and cultural contexts. We believe passionately that breakthroughs emerge when the most talented researchers are given the resources and freedom they need to pursue their goals.
The question is, are there useful things that we can do with the results of a genome sequence that would bring benefit? And the answer is, today, should the majority of people go and have their genome sequenced? Probably not. But are there particular circumstances in which genome sequencing is really helpful? Yes, there are.
I look forward to working closely with the Research Councils, Innovate UK, and Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), as we work together to create UKRI. I also look forward to working closely with all of our research and innovation communities to provide a strong and coherent voice for U.K. science and innovation.
In the case of health information, I spent twenty-five years practicing medicine, and I was all too familiar with the fact that information wasn't properly shared, so I wouldn't know exactly what was in the hospital records; patients would be lost. Computerization gives the opportunity to actually get the information much better.
We do some experiments in humans, some in mice, and there are some questions that can only be answered in nonhuman primates. It's true that you can't immediately say that those experiments will translate into human health, but nevertheless, it is obvious that having an understanding of human memory is going to be important for human health.