We're all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

You travel across the country you visit departments you give talks you talk about the work at your laboratory - what's going on what the opportunities are there - you talk about your own research.

For years I had no time for exploratory travel.

I was strongly encouraged by a science teacher who took an interest in me and presented me with a key to the laboratory to allow me to work whenever I wanted.

In the Radiation Laboratory we count it a privilege to do everything we can to assist our medical colleagues in the application of these new tools to the problems of human suffering.

I set up a laboratory in the Department of Physiology in the Medical School in South Africa and begin to try to find a bacteriophage system which we might use to solve the genetic code.

Now a cholera epidemic was sweeping through Southeast Asia and south Asia in the early 1970s so I started medical school and I joined a laboratory to work on this.

I began the study of medicine impelled by a desire for knowledge of facts and of man. The resolution to do disciplined work tied me to both laboratory and clinic for a long time to come.

Put off your imagination as you put off your overcoat when you enter the laboratory. Put it on again as you put on your overcoat when you leave.

It is not only my laboratory and my place of work but also my home so that on the 30th October I was able to share my happiness immediately with my students and collaborators and at the same time with my wife and family.

All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

So someday in the near future hopefully rather than having a foot or a leg amputated we'll just give you an injection of the cells and restore the blood flow. We've also created entire tubes of red blood cells from scratch in the laboratory. So there are a lot of exciting things in the pipeline.

Now an embryo may seem like some scientific or laboratory term but in fact the embryo contains the unique information that defines a person. All you add is food and climate control and some time and the embryo becomes you or me.

The kitchen's a laboratory and everything that happens there has to do with science. It's biology chemistry physics. Yes there's history. Yes there's artistry. Yes to all of that. But what happened there what actually happens to the food is all science.

But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation the wonder of science scientific ways of thinking and the history of scientific ideas rather than laboratory experience.

The object of oratory alone in not truth but persuasion.