The knight of science

Published January 26, 2013, Business Times

Society must be comfortable with science to fully exploit it, says Royal Society president and Nobel Laureate Paul Nurse. By Anna Teo

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- PHOTO BY ARTHUR LEE

    'My view is that you need to have the science and we need to try and get as clear as we can, free of politics, ideology or religion, what the scientific position is, and then we have the political position subsequently.'
    - Sir Paul on how science should inform policymaking

BRITISH biologist Sir Paul Nurse won the 2001 Nobel Prize for his work on the role of DNA in cell division. But his greatest discovery, arguably, came only six years later in 2007, outside the lab - findings about his own genetic origins. And it came courtesy of the US Department of Homeland Security.

Then president of Rockefeller University in New York, the scientist - who had been knighted in 1999 for services in cancer research and cell biology - was mildly miffed when his application for a US green card was rejected on grounds of incomplete paperwork. His parents' names were missing in his birth certificate. He duly applied to the UK General Register Office for the full version of the certificate - and was flabbergasted upon receiving it.

Listed as his mother was the person he'd known all his life as his sister, Miriam, while the space for his father's name was a blank. His wife put two and two together: The parents who had lovingly raised him were actually his grandparents, and his sister was his birth mother. All three had died by then, carrying the secret to their graves; even his two older brothers (now his uncles) had never known this.

Sir Paul found out later from a relative who had been 12 years of age and living in the house where he was born, and who had been sworn to secrecy about his birth: His mother became pregnant at 18 and was sent away to her aunt's in Norwich for the last months of pregnancy and his birth. His grandmother then turned up, pretended to be the mother and returned to the family home with her "new son". The grandparents "brought me up to protect their daughter", he wrote in an addendum to his Nobel autobiography in 2008.

His had been a very happy childhood in a working class household - his "mother" was a cook and part-time cleaner, his "father", a handyman and chauffeur. But the irony wasn't lost on him - here he was, a celebrated geneticist whose own genetic identity had been kept from him for well over 50 years.

Five years on, "I still don't know who my own father is", the man who today is possibly Britain's most influential scientist says airily in Singapore recently. "So actually I'd quite like somebody to take me on as a research project and help me find out where I genetically come from."

He was in town en route to an Antarctic adventure at the Scott Base research station. Affable and ebullient, Sir Paul is a man of eclectic interests - from astronomy to hill walking, hang-gliding and powerful motorbikes.

In 2010, he returned to the UK and took up office as the 60th president of The Royal Society, the world's oldest scientific academy founded in 1660. His predecessors include luminaries such as Christopher Wren, Isaac Newton and Ernest Rutherford. Sir Paul, who turned 64 yesterday, has also, since 2000, been a member of the UK Council for Science and Technology that advises the British prime minister - a role he's eminently cut out for, given his passion for science and his strong, outspoken views on how to make science work for the public good.

And as chief executive of the Francis Crick Institute opening in central London in 2015, he's the brains behind the vision of returning Britain to the forefront of biomedical research.

"The UK has a tradition of good science over many, many years and I don't fully understand why it is but it is," says Sir Paul breezily, speaking to BT after a public talk at the Biopolis earlier this month that had people spilling over to the aisles of the auditorium. "It's not that we invest more than other countries, we don't. And we can attract good scientists to the UK. I think we're particularly good, in the last half century, in the life sciences. But I think you always have to reinvent yourself to keep good, and this is why I came up with this idea of the Francis Crick Institute."

Billed as the largest biomedical research hub in Europe, if not the world, the institute with an operating budget of over £100 million (S$194.3 million) will house 1,250 scientists.

"I recruit from around the world, as Singapore often does, and with a focus on younger researchers, giving them the freedom and support to do work when they're very creative," he says. "And so this is a reinvention of a way of doing science that, I think, in the long run will be extremely effective. The government agrees with that, because even in the middle of recession, I've managed to keep the funding on board, and this is a lot of money, it's a billion US dollars for the building alone. It's like putting Biopolis up in one building in one go, the whole thing, just to give you a sense of the scale. So I'm using that as the next gear change in biomedical science."

But Sir Paul is wearing his Royal Society hat on this trip to Singapore - he's exploring if there is still a role in Commonwealth countries for the Society, which back in its early years was a repository of scientific specimens, cartographic etchings and other findings of explorers, officials and merchants from around the globe. Today, the Society engages in robust debates of the day back home on subjects such as global warming and genetically modified crops, giving scientific advice that has, in some cases, drawn ire from certain interest groups.

Unfazed, Sir Paul stands his ground on the need for science to be placed more centrestage in society and economy, and how scientific advice should inform public policy - which he drove home during his speech here.

"I think that science has a role to play both in culture and in understanding who we are and what we are in the world around us," he tells BT. "In some respects, I'd even say science is the most revolutionary activity of human beings, because science changes our view of the world. If you look at it over the centuries, you can see that it's wrought major changes - major changes in our understanding of ourselves and the world come about mostly from science, even starting with whether the earth is in the centre of the universe, to what it is to be human."

So there is a cultural aspect which is not always fully recognised, he says. And scientific knowledge is, in his view, "absolutely crucial for the well-being of human beings" - in driving the economy, sustaining economic growth, protecting the environment or improving health.

"All of these important issues for the public, in the end, are reliant on science. So we have to have a society that's comfortable with science if we are going to fully exploit what science can give us. And that in turn requires having good debate about science, and when one can use it, when one shouldn't use it, and all of this means being open, transparent, interacting with society about scientific issues because otherwise we won't get the best out of it. That's why at this time of my life, I've become even more a stronger advocate of science."

He's still a practising scientist pursuing his lifelong interest in the mysteries of how cells work, he makes clear. "I still do that, because it's what keeps me sane, you know; it's what I'd done and it's what really turns me on, frankly," he declares. "My lab is in the UK. I have a small one still in New York. But also, being engaged as a practitioner in science makes it easier to fully understand all that's going on."

And, outside the lab, "all that's going on" necessarily include debate about the implications and consequences of scientific and technological advances. Singapore's Bioethics Advisory Committee, for instance, is seeking public views on the ethical, legal and social concerns in neuroscience research.

"What we're mainly talking about here is how science can inform public policies that are important," he says. Science is but one key component of policy. "So what decisions are ultimately made depend on other issues to do with public opinion, societal views about issues, whether things are economically viable, and so on. So there are all sorts of factors that come into developing policy."

What's critical in policy making, however, is "to be clear, or as clear as you can be, about the science that goes into it", he says.

"And sometimes I make this sort of distinction that, first, you should have the science, and then you have the politics, where you introduce these other components. And the dangers come when individuals mix up the science with the politics so that, because they don't like an outcome, they then try and sort of fix the science, when actually it's a political argument they're making."

Take the controversy around climate change. The experts' consensus is that human activity has resulted in global warming. At the extremes, however, people contend, even belligerently and without solid evidence, that temperatures have barely risen at all, or warn of catastrophic warming in the next 100 years.

And those opposed to the idea of any concerted effort to reduce global warming - such as curbs on industrial activity, which could risk economic growth - turn to attacking the science, often involving the cherry picking of data, says Sir Paul.

"Whereas what they should be doing is saying - 'This is the science, but for the time being we should still have economic growth because we need to get people out of poverty' and so on. I think that's a perfectly legitimate response. It may not be one that I agree with but it's legitimate. But what some do is say - 'The science is all wrong because I don't like the results of the science', and that is naive and actually stupid, but that's what happens.

"So, my view is that you need to have the science and we need to try and get as clear as we can, free of politics, ideology or religion, what the scientific position is, and then we have the political position subsequently."

Likewise issues around therapeutic cloning and stem cells. "These are actually all related to issues like abortion, and the real question is - when does life begin?" says Sir Paul, who was a committed Baptist believer as a teenager but now calls himself a "sceptical agnostic".

"And when life begins is informed by science but is not answered by science and, in fact, it's not answerable. Some people would argue 'at conception', some people would argue 'when a child can live independently', and everything in between is argued. So 'when does life begin' ends up being a legal question."

As a cell biologist, it makes "no sense" to him to say that life begins with conception. "I think, absolutely, by the time a foetus can live independently, then this for me has a legal status of being life. I'm much, much more comfortable with abortion at an earlier stage. When it comes to stem cell research where you're just dealing with very early stages, I have no problem whatsoever with that. I have strongly supported stem cell work. And when it comes to reproductive engineering, I'm much less comfortable with that but I recognise that this is as much to do with my personal feelings and not particularly scientific. Some people would argue that if you can do it and do it safely, you should do it. I would like to see more debate about it, personally."

Advances in stem cell technology, which "open up the possibilities of producing many cell types that can be used for regeneration of damaged muscle, damaged nervous tissue", will be a key area in the field of genetics and biomedicine, he says.

Another interesting area that will "become increasingly important in the coming decades" is the interaction between genetics and the environment, he adds. "The fact that we can sequence the human genome now very quickly, and very cheaply, I think will revolutionalise environmental studies."

Just 10 years ago, it cost millions of dollars, and took about five years, to sequence the human genome. "We can now do it in 15 minutes! And it costs US$1,000! I mean, it's just extraordinary, it's incredible," he says.

"I expect, over the next decades, real progress in understanding your genes and understanding the effects of the environment in predisposing disease. You need both. We are a consequence of our genes and our environment."

That basic truth has special poignancy for Sir Paul, of course, given the extraordinary circumstances of his early years. Little wonder that, as a boy, he had always felt "a little bit different" from his "siblings", all three of whom had left school at 15. He, on the other hand, went on to university - although he "was never very good at exams" as a boy, and actually left school to be a technician in a Guinness laboratory because he failed his French exam six times, and an O-level in a foreign language was required for entry to university. He did, eventually, make it to Birmingham University after an "extensive interview" with its genetics department, and went on to do a doctorate.

For a geneticist driven all his life to "understanding how a cell works, how life works", he would want to piece together the missing bits of his own genetic identity. "Yeah, I would," he says about mapping his own genome, adding with a laugh, "I'm just waiting for somebody else to do the hard work."

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 Sir Paul Nurse

President, The Royal Society

Director and Chief Executive, Francis Crick Institute

Nobel Laureate (Physiology or Medicine, 2001)

Born Jan 25, 1949 in Norwich, England

1970: BSc, University of Birmingham

1973: PhD, University of East Anglia

Postdoctoral work at universities in Bern, Edinburgh and Sussex

1984: Joined Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) in London

1988: Chair of Microbiology, University of Oxford

1993: Director of Research, ICRF

1996: Director-General, ICRF

2002: CEO, Cancer Research UK

2003: President, The Rockefeller University, New York

2010 to date: President, The Royal Society

2011 to date: Director & Chief Executive, Francis Crick Institute

1998: Albert Lasker Award (USA)

1999: Knighted in Britain for services in cancer research and cell biology

2001: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (jointly with Leland Hartwell, Tim Hunt)

2005: Royal Society Copley Medal