This film documents a lecture by Sandy Starr – deputy director of PET – about the life and legacy of JBS Haldane, who at one time was the best-known scientist in Britain and who helped to pioneer the idea of IVF.
In the lecture, Sandy compares the timeline for biological innovation set out in Haldane's Daedalus with what has actually been achieved up to the present day.
Other topics covered in the lecture include Haldane's role in the popularisation of science, Haldane's use of ancient ideas to inform a vision of the future, and the fact that although Haldane was commendably outspoken in his criticism of eugenics he nonetheless became an apologist for other distortions of genetics (specifically Michurinism and Lysenkoism).
If you cannot see the film of the lecture below, go here to view it.
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