A series of eight programmes on how the most fundamental of the biological sciences is being used in a new technology
Genetic engineering is without doubt the most profoundly significant of the new biological technologies. Its effects will change our crops, animals, the way we use and combat micro-organisms, and it may even change ourselves. Certainly the application of the genetic and embryological techniques being developed at present could have very great social consequences. In these talks geneticists and physiologists describe what is going on and point out the more important implications. 1: Evolution, heredity, and eugenics by PROFESSOR JAMES F. CROW , University of Wisconsin
Medicine may be regarded as an obstacle to natural selection in that it enables the sufferers of some genetic defects to live a happy and useful life when otherwise they might have died or at least failed to reproduce. This immediately creates a dilemma: we are increasing the frequency of undesirable genes in the population by our efforts to reduce individual suffering. Does modern genetics offer a solution?
Recorded at Wisconsin University for the BBC
Breeding for food, by Professor Alan Robertson : May 17