Department of Trade and Industry

I share the hon. Lady’s sentiments entirely. I know eminent virologists who do not believe that AIDS is caused by a virus, and who argue about it at conferences. That is the nature of involvement in science; one never knows what one might find out, and what we think today may turn out to be subject to another explanation tomorrow. That is the excitement of it, and that is why young people deserve a better education, as the hon. Lady says. I want to speak about risk. Points have been made about how hard it is to define it, and to get people to take it seriously, but I read that Natalie Angier, the science editor of The New York Times, has written a book called ““The Canon—A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science””, which she believes sets out the minimum knowledge required by an educated person. A similar thing has been done in this country in a book by Bill Bryson; it is an amazing read. The Royal Society of Chemistry, bless it, gave one to every school in the country. It addresses the basic questions that young people ask, such as ““How do you weigh the Earth?”” and ““Why is the sky blue?”” Some hon. Members will have heard that question asked the other week. The most eminent scientist in the country could not answer it, so narrow are the specialities. But that is the nature of science: one cannot know everything, but by interacting, we can share information. Angier mentions an issue that the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough raised: how can we define risk in terms simplistic enough to give people an idea of what is meant? She says:"““You would have to fly on a commercial aircraft every day for 18,000 years before your chances of being in a crash exceeded 50 per cent.””" Let us not mention the effect that that would have on climate change; that is another issue. That quotation brings the subject into perspective. She goes on to raise many other points. I have made the point that the question of how one goes about getting evidence is important. The issue of stem cells has been discussed in this Chamber and in the other place, and I remember those occasions well. Some hon. Members who are present in the Chamber today thought that we might lose the vote on the subject. There was concerted action not to argue the science in a peripheral way but to make it clear, and to involve patient groups and others. I did not see many civil servants or people from other Departments. What really won the argument was the parliamentary process interacting with people outside who ran patient groups. That was a real phenomenon, but it is not always picked up. For several weeks, we made the arguments, and we won the vote. It delighted many scientists in this country that Parliament made a decision that put us in the leading frame on this type of research. Of course there was, and is, no guarantee that stem cell research will deliver the cures for motor neurone disease and so on, but it is the chance to get the evidence that is important.