Professor Robert Winston

Professor Robert Winston has spent much of his career working in gynaecological and reproductive medicine.

His research has contributed to improvements in the areas of endocrinology and IVF, including the invention of genetic diagnosis techniques that have enabled families with gene defects to have children free from fatal illnesses.

A Labour Party representative in the House of Lords since 1995. Not too long ago, The European Court of Justice banned the patenting of embryonic stem cell research.

What impact will this decision have on stem cell research in the EU?

I’m not sure [the judgement] is very important. Does it matter? Probably not very much. Can it be enforced? Probably more diffcult, because other countries won’t adhere to that anyway.

America won’t. Also, there’s a confusion between patenting and invention. They are different. You can’t patent a gene because it occurs naturally, and the European Court was absolutely right to argue that.

What you might be able to patent is the way that you’ve detected the gene, because you’re using a technology there, which you’ve invented.

And in the same way with stem cells – you may not be able to patent the stem cells, but I don’t see how you can prevent someone from patenting the technologywhich enables you to use those stem cells. I think that would be a colossally diffcult thing to enforce.

Patents aren’t bad. In 1990, Alan Handyside and I invented the screening of embryos for genetic diseases. At the time we both agreed that we probably shouldn’t patent something which might be humanly useful. It was a massive mistake. We should have patented it. We wouldn’t have made a proft, but we would have prevented people using it to exploit women who don’t need the treatment, because we would have licensed it. So patenting offers a method of control

Do you think there is a place for religious faith in science?

Yes, of course. Why shouldn’t there be? Are the two mutually incompatible? No, of course they’re not.

But there are people who say that scientists can’t be religious. Well, they’re wrong. There are vast numbers of scientists who hold a religious view, or who go to church, or who, in extremis, pray – and sometimes when not in extremis. I don’t think they’re incompatible.

They’re different views of the world.

Do you think that it is possible to have a set of guiding ethical principles? If so, what would they be?

The idea that ethics are written in stone is not true. The classic example of that is the fnding by [Nicolaas] Hartsoeker, who in 1694 showed, under a microscope, that a sperm had a little man inside the head.

Therefore, people thought that to destroy the seed was like killing a person. If you think about it, the ethics were impeccable, but it’s wrong because the science is wrong. So our ethics have to depend on our best knowledge, and our knowledge changes.

The central ethical principle of all human ethics is very clear – the sanctity of human life. And pretty well everything stems from that.

It will become more and more interesting in the future. [For example,] if we believe that consciousness is an important defnition of our humanity – which it may well be – then what happens when we develop robots that have consciousness?

The continuum of philosophical thinking should give us pause before making didactic judgements about ethics.

A senior research fellow at the University of Dundee said in 2008 that people should be allowed to sell their kidneys for £28,000.

However, there are critics who fear that payments of this nature would create a market for organs. What is your position on substantial fees being paid to organ donors?

Well, I think that there is probably no reason why they should not be paid, providing you can be absolutely sure that people who are giving the organs are doing so without risk to themselves, and without coercion.

I think it’s much more diffcult to justify the donation of a kidney, for example, than it is for an egg. You have lots of eggs [but] only two kidneys, and there is an inherent risk in removing a kidney. On the other hand, we don’t see it as an ethical dilemma for a brother to donate a kidney to a sister.

And yet, the brother is putting himself at risk. One has to be very careful about making hard and fast rules because there will be different circumstances for different individuals.

Essentially four principles are involved. First, in any medical procedure, whether you are the recipient or the donor, there is a need for practitioners to respect the autonomy of the individual in front of them. The second issue is: Are you likely to do harm? Third: Are you likely to do good? And lastly: Is this a fair solution?

We probably should be doing much more to look at alternatives to transplantation, because no amount of donation of eggs, kidneys or hearts is going to really solve the ultimate problem.

Sometimes medical progress seems to be a double-edge sword – some therapies have unintended medical consequences and there are costs and outcomes that society isn’t prepared for. Is progress necessarily always something to strive for? Are there some areas that medical science really shouldn’t be exploring?

That’s what my book [Bad Ideas] is about. It says that all scientifc advances have a downside, starting with the fintstone hand axe, two million years ago.

Actually, once we’d invented that we changed our evolution. Without the hand axe, we wouldn’t have antibiotics. We wouldn’t have the motorcar. We wouldn’t have global warming. And we wouldn’t have an epidemic of obesity.

I would argue that pretty well every human invention ends up not being used for the purpose for which it was actually designed –we fnd some other better use for it. Secondly, most human inventions are not made with any particular purpose in mind, anyway. [In Bad Ideas] I say, “Nearly all technological advances have threatening or negative aspects, which are usually not fully recognised or predicted, at the time of the invention.”

I also say, “Many human discoveries have a benefcial application, which are not envisaged when the discoveries are made.” And that, “The announcement of any new discovery is almost invariably exaggerated, in its value.”

We need to recognise that no government, however democratic, can ever be trusted to use science wisely, because it follows, from those sorts of principles, that it won’t be.

And that we need to be as literate in science as we can be, because ultimately if we are really to use science wisely, we have to be able to control the technology to beneft from it maximally. That applies to medicine, but it [also] applies to physics and chemistry, and engineering.

From MRI scanners to robotic surgery, technology seems to be playing an increasing role in Western medicine. Do you think that this reliance on technology is a good thing? Are there any drawbacks?

Well, of course, there are always drawbacks in the reliance on technology. Probably one of the biggest problems in medicine is not the reliance on technology, but the apparent need for more and more controlled governance and bureaucracy, which follows.

Which ends up with doctors not talking to their patients, and nurses not listening to their patients, and people not caring for their patients, but treating them in a formulaic way. We are becoming more and more alienated as patients, and more and more alienated as doctors and nurses. Technology encourages that, because [we are] able to avoid intercourse with the patients and more and more diagnostic work is not done at the bedside, but in the laboratory.

What do you think will be the greatest medical breakthrough in the next ten years?

Why people think scientists can predict the future any better than anyone else is completely irrational. Why would I know that? Of course, there will be trends.

But the overall? Well, it may be something out of the blue. If you’re going to ask me what I would like to see developed, I can tell you that. One of the greatest needs, worldwide, is more progress in our battle against infection.

Whilst we think of global warming as being the big threat, actually the thing that is much more likely to wipe the human race out is global infection – we haven’t really invented a new antibiotic for two or three decades. So new approaches, particularly to viral infections that threaten humanity.

Lord Winston is Professor of Science and Society and Emeritus Professor of Fertility Studies at Imperial College London.

In the 1970s he developed gynaecological surgical techniques that improved fertility treatments. He later pioneered new treatments to improve in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and developed pre-implantation diagnosis. This allowed embryos to be screened for genetic diseases and has allowed parents carrying faulty genes to have children free of illnesses such as cystic fbrosis.

He now runs a research programme at the Institute of Reproductive and Developmental Biology at Imperial College that aims to improve human transplantation. Robert Winston has over 300 scientifc publications about human reproduction and the early stages of pregnancy.Robert Winston is also Chairman of the Genesis Research Trust – a charity which raised over £13 million to establish the Institute of Reproductive and Developmental Biology and which now funds high quality research into women’s health and babies.