Man is a competitive creature, and the seeds of conflict are built deep into our genes. We fought each other on the savannah and only survived agains….

Childhood depression tends to be more common in inner cities, being most frequently related to serious social deprivation, bullying, domestic violenc….

Now we have technology where we can modify the genomics of individuals by gene transfer and genetic meddling, we may find that people will want to mo….

Both in Britain and America, huge publicity has been given to stem cells, particularly embryonic stem cells, and the potential they offer. Of course,….

I think that good parenting should allow children to be children. That naivety and slightly open way of looking at the world is very valuable..

It is important that legislation keeps pace with scientific progress..

We can't any longer have the conventional understanding of genetics which everybody peddles because it is increasingly obvious that epigenetics - act….

Scientists need to be prepared to engage, and the best people to engage with are students, ideally from primary school because there's no question th….

I think it's important for scientists to be a bit less arrogant, a bit more humble, recognising we are capable of making mistakes and being fallaciou….

Nearly all inventions are not recognised for their positive side either when they're made. So, for example, scientists didn't go out to design a CD m….

Childhood is not dead. Children were worse off when we were hunter-gatherers; they were threatened in medieval times and exploited during the Industr….

I was born with my moustache and, no, I've never been tempted to shave it off. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about my face and, like Gilbert a….

To build and strengthen new connections, the brain needs the challenge of fresh and unusual stimuli. .... There's a lot of evidence to suggest that r….

Our aggression is a deep instinct which survives in all kinds of manifestations in modern man..

I don't like seeing myself on television and I don't enjoy filming. What I actually enjoy is thinking about how I am going to express something or ho….

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

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….

Ethics is not routinely taught to science students except in medicine, and I think it should be..

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 socie….

My first vote was for a communist in east London when I was a medical student. But I've voted Tory, Labour and Lib Dem in my time..

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 progra….