>>ose: welcome to the broadcast. tonit, science. we tk to nobel lauate harold varmusn hisook "the art and politicsf science." >> the have been a serie of articles ovethe last 10ears that the als of t war on cancer have not been achieved, and i-- i agre with tt, that we have n made the degree of progress many of us would have liked. but nevertheless, our ncept of cancer as a disease has radically changed. our ability to treat some of e many kinds of caers has radicall aered. >> re: weontinueith freeman dyson on his views on almo everything. >> i enjoy life and i don't particularly ce whether what i'm doing at thatmoment is imrtant.

>> rose: is whether it interests youis that the test? >> yes. >>ose: is it challengg and interesting to y? >> yes, and science to is just som and isjust like-- likeainting pictures or anything else. >> rose: twomen of science,s can varm and freeman don coming up. captioning sponsored by rose communicaons ptioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in neyork city, this is charlie rose.

>> ros harold varmus is here. in 1989, he w ardedhe the nobel prize in medicine ong with hiscollaborator jay chael bishop. since 2,000 heeb president the memoal sloan ccer center re in new york. was recently appointed co-chair of president barack obama's counc vasers on science d technoly. his new bookis called "t art and politics of sence." heeb is a friend of this broadcast and has been on th ogram many times a i am alwa pleased to hav him back the this tab. >> tha you. >> rose: i sayhat because her is the interesting thing, of all the times you have been on here by reang this book, i found owl all of these thingthat i didn't know about u. you're not a guy that went to college and said ious i want to be a doctor." i started wanting to be a door but i quickly learned the wer more ieresting things in the worl >> rose: here is what is also inresting "for my parents buy

d frank whomissed so much it." >> they were socially tive people. my father was a general practioner who at ontime, for many years the start par commissioner at jones state beach park, somebody committed to family values and a famil dowho loved hispatients. my mother was a psychiatri soci worker. they lived the american dream in a sens they were children of immigrants who took it aost a something that was a bit of birth rig to be able to grow in immigrant families and go off it ivy league schoo, bome mbers of the middle class, and enjoy life at a pretty high level. and, uortunately, my mother died of breast cancer in the-- wh she was 61. my father died o a heart attack in his mid-60s. they had a lot invested in their children, and when ey died, i wain my early 30 they-- they knew i had gotte

educat and married, but ty-- they nev saw the other parts of my career tt they would have found interesting and, you know, having seen me a ayoung person who wasn't alys so easy to get along wh i thinkhey probably would have joyed seeing my more matu years and me successes and-- parents like seeing their kids go to stockholm. >> ros exactly. ( laught ) >> or woing in goverent. >> rose: that's my pnt, make a nobel speech. >> or running cance ceers or other things thewould have thought useful. >> rose: the point is they would have been proud. >> exactly. they believein and tryo ach rlected in the career you ha which has spaed heal and public issues as well there is also th-- this book is t extension of a series of lekt-- lectures you ga,

lectes on one? >> jean strauss who runs the common center for the humanities at the new york public libraries asked me do three ltures called the norton lectures. i ively accepted and when re the fine print i realized i had signed on to turn the ree lectures into a ok. initiay i was intereed in-- actually at her instiitatn-- of talking aut the two cultures, the concept snow inoduced just over 50ears ag in which he pointed out there was a gulf beten the culture of the humanities d the culture ofcience that these ctures should be called upon to solve some of the problems in the world, ande argued that the culture of science was much more likely to soe the world's problems and the culture o e humities, and one of the thingshat gave him pain was a novelist who was in government d a respectable scientist was that t two cultures talked to each other rather poorl as we tried touild thatnto a

series the lectures, i realized it was simplistic. it was exciting the time becauspeople hadn'thought about it. i decided to giveone lecture on the rcuitous route i took to become a scientist. going ofto college and being influenced by great thes teachers and going toraduate school in engsh and finally making my way bk through an interest in fud and psychiatry to internal medici and finally serving inhe vietnam war at the i.h. where i learned to love science. then the second lecturwas about some of e central tmes in the sence i didhat proved to be important-- studying cancer genes. and the idea was to sho how ideas develop i science and how-not so much to tel them abt the specifics of exriments but to describe fo the audience how a scienti gets, in a sense, influenced by the companionship youeep, by

the ideas u hear, by the times that you live in, and ho som thgs work out and some don't, for reass that i tried to genelize. and then i was fortune in part becaus the nobel prize giv you opportunies. was priviged to be able to work for for t government, and i wanted ttalk about the retionship between science and politics, government. >> rose: and it ctinues in your presentole as an advis to thebama administration on science. >> rig. but the third lectu concerned the issues that you fe-- how you allocate money when you're in charge big budgets, how yotry to steer t ship of science into t right chaels. >> rose: athe risk of political interference. >> at the riskf political interference,how other things like a new fo of scienc that addresse embryos a stemcells and how scice publishing is affected by all kinds of financial considerations.

how we d the right thing by the world in trying to addss problems of global health. so a lot really deep issue th our society fate faces. >> rose: who is interesting about it, as you say in here, all of this ve you pause to ink, gave youpportunity, gave you mandate to thk about a life in science, whi is what this is. >> thinking about and wting it up are two different things. >> rose: someone said let me see what i wrote so i can know wha i thk. but there is this-- you scribe it as a kind of meandering. there was not someone--nd this s what i alluded to earlier-- things iluenced decisions y ma. talk a bit about that this notion of this le you have lived. >> yeah, well think-- i uldn't characterize it as simply a life in which i ve been buffeted by external forces. there are-- i would contend, some internal princies and gos,ut there's no doubt that

my ability to achof in certain domains habeen affected by circumstances, peoe. for exampl in the last 10 years, i've been work iredibly hard, as you've hea on this show before, totry to make the scientific literature mu more accessible to all sentists in the world, docrs and so for. at was something i hadn't really thought much about until one of my colleagues, a brilliant scienst named pa brown, told me what he had learned just by chance tt finding out the physicists in the world areutting their wor upn the web at a very early stage. and hetarted to thinkbout how we in the biomedica resech could use the intern in similar ways. these conversations led to other nversations with people at t n.i.h. who had bi, electronic systems for storing information and for putting itn-- andor putting infmation abo publicatns on to the web.

and one tng led to thenext and we built a public digital librar, n called pub med central, which all n.i.h. supported work must be depos this w the result of a political bale woe won-- and a whole neset of journals called op access journals i think th principles wiin me that dered that the scientific community work moreffectively togeer, share their knowledge were there, bui needed the stulation of some ideas from the outside. to mount this campgn which has been quite successful. >> rose: how did the academic experience in english terature inrm and influence your abilities in science? >> well, i don't think there is a simple way texplain that. but i do think that many people underappreciate throle of reading,riting,nd speaking

in a life in science it's oen a disappointment to people to learn that you may get in science because you le to doxperiments, and as soon youave your first faculty position, you know that your life is going to be devoted to a ve great extent to writing grants andapers, giving talks tostudents and colleagues to trying to thi things tlou in a logical fashion, and the experice of working wh wor understanding wh's on the page taking pride in a pie of wring. i mean, i still have to say that i am somewhat obssive about-- about the use ofanguage. and sometimes become consumed withetails about writing. bu you know, a y-- >> rose: what you say is portant. the abily toxpress yourself

enhances the argument you wa to make. >> certaly. >> rose: which wilson and others amply demonstra. >> if you nt to make your ientific work clear to people andinteresting it does help to ve some sense of the narrative, and the-- rose: let me tak you to cancer rearch. when you g there, epidemiology was more prelent than whatou began too yourself. >> well, i think one wayto ink abouthis is tha you know, people had known for a long time that canceras a majocause of mortality. we knew that normal cells were behaving in an o way when they became cancerous. but the nature of the transformation, the y in which a normal cell would convert into a canr cell,as pretty mysterus. the only really poent handle, from my point of view, knowing that there was epidemiolical ta saying smoking w a caus of cancer andcertain industria

pollutants were causes of ncer and knowing sething about the kedz of abnormal chromosomes e could see in cancers. stl, the only really powerfu experimental tol that wa available was-- werehe setf viruses found in animals that could make a cancer. indeed, someone who would have-- myeighbor, if he were living now instead of wking 100 years o,eyton rouse discoved the virus that made my career powerful, a virus of chickens ich you think, well, you know, why would anybody wanto work on ahicken virus when we' trng to cure human disease i think 's very important to remember how much wo with experiment amals has meant to modn medicine. >> rose: just o reference in terms of people who influenced your life. y michael bishop. >>es. >> rose: wha did he d >> i went out shopping in

california for a place tdo post-doctoral work aft ending a couple of years at the n.i.h. i loved the n.i.h. as a place to train, ira pasto who wa a markable person, marrieto the poet laureate in maryla. that w the only reason i got a placin his lab. ias an english majorand clinician t he tooke in because he thought iight be able to talk to his wife and enjoy lab parties a ltle more than she had in the past. but we worked on a problem at actually taught me lot, t probleof understandingene control and bacteria using molecules th are important in human gene regulation, taughte that models were crucial for,ou know, making somethg that was complex seem simple andble to yield insight. but i wanted to do something that was mor medically

pertent, and having leaed at the n.i.h. about the existce cancer viruses wanted to find some place to it. but i wa also attracted to californiaor purely sentimental, romanc reason, havinged to with landscape and mountain and seashore, si went out there spping for a labo rk in. i dn't know who mike bishop was when i went out spping pii talked to a lot of senior famous pele, some of of whom d an some who did not particularly want me to come to tir lab. and sobody mentioned this young guy mike bishop was doing work in san francisco and i went over there a met him a the university of calornia san francisco and there waan ininstantaneous recognition that we were two guysifferent in our deep background but we trained in simar ways and had a silar outlook o how to approach canrhrough vir and how to u the new tool of molecur biology to do th. >> rose: y have characterized that research as more wagner than mozar well, the research i characterized that way becse

there were themettic qualitie it wasn't our single discovery of the fact th the sarcoma virus that could make a chick cell into a cancerell, didn't have big reverberatis until a lot of other folks-- us and,s, many oths-- discovere this theemps universal theme and the light tif of showing that enronmental cancer genes we derived fromormal cells, and th as shown bythers that those genewere often mutated in human cancers a that the protei made by those genes were often bad acting enzymes that could be untered by drugs. l of those things tt came together over e years it make this part of cancer rearch so important for thinking about how

woe approach t disease. andmany people mplained-- there have bn a series of arcles over the last 10 ars-- the goals ofhe war on cancer havnot been aieved. and i-- i agree with that, tt we have not de the gree of progress many of us would he liked. t nevertheless, our concept of cancer a a disease has radically change our ability treat somef the many kinds o ccer as radically altered. i think many of us havereason-- have good reason to be optimistic what has been p in place over the las 20 or 30 years trying to understan cancer at s fundamtal level aurs well for the future. >> re: you have said o this program and others, and other people he said on ts program that there are my cancers a many causes of cancer, not just one use of cancer. >> sure b there's a common pathway. >> ros and a common pathway is... >>utations that change the behavior of gen that are

important in normal life so they distort the ilities of our cells to grow a todie, to do the thgs they normally do. >> rose: for the record, what is it that you did with protooncaegeans-- am i saying that right? >> it's the form of a gene before i undergoes a mutation that makest cancerous. >>ose: tell me what you think this country needs in termsof health ce reform. >> there are several things. there's no dbt the-- the social reformener me says w ha to cover everyone. i me, we are the most adnced econom we're a democracy. is painful to me to know that nearly 5million people in this country don't have a way to cover their health carecosts, except to go to an emeency room, whicis a terrible way to be taken care . and yet, in this process of creating aess to health ce

r everyone-- which i think is ndamentally important-- that moment h to be seized now because there's no one-- even the most right wing o republicans is saying something's got to be done about our health care syem, that the costs are running away, that there are inequits that everybody recognizes, and we have a preside who is committed to this, and thiis a moment which we must pass a reform bill that makes health care available to everyone. but in t frenzyo do this-- and think, you know, the frenzy is justified-- but we don'want to lose sht of some of thethings about american medicine that are tly traordinary. you ow,t's easy to say amican health care cos too much. it's true. hospitals waste moy, we have poor incentives, we shodn't be doing fee for service. weught to fd other waysto

reward val, not just acquision of procedures. but don't want to forget that one of the things that's really extraordinary about american mecine has made america the leader and not in health care provisn but in the science of medicine has to with our academic heah centers, wher we train doctorsfrom all over the world, whe we do me of the mostoutstanding research, where we generateew findin that influence the way medicine's practiced everywhere. those values are ve hard to mash bause they go out into the-- througho the gbe and the ogress that's bei made in medicine-- which i very real and, you know, our successes in cancer care may be somewt mited, but our successes in controlling lo of othe diseases, infectiousdiseases and cardiovascular disses and many others, is equally extraordinary. we need to be careful as we legislate health care refo that we don't end up shorhanging academic health

centers. i ruan acamic health center, the sloan memorial ketng health center, a we want to eat everyoneho has enuntered cancer as a disease we are not making money. on the contrary, we lose hundreds of millions eve year. dicare does not rmburse us for the cost of taking care of cancer patients. we have a special rate, still doesn't cover it complely. there has to be som way to enre that the academichealth center whileontributing to cost contr like everybodyes, also are aduately mpensated to continue to do the research and traing and provide the coined of intens, specialized care that is unique to many of the interestshat attrac patientsrom all over the worl i don't know yet quite how t do at. we havto do that by having rates for specialized cents that are determined by health

advisory board, whether we provide specialinds of compsation for these centers. but there's got t be som way to preserve what is uly exaordinary inamerican dicine. >>ose: do you have ideas for what oht to be in the heah care legislation? >> i definitely want to see a public pair stem. i ink we have to hav that. 's one way to genete competition for the inrance industry. and i think can be done. from many, many aects of medicine, a medica-plus sysm is going to work the extension of medicare is the logicalhing to do, extendi it t all branches of o ciety. but weave to fire out a way to me the--what i anticipate will be a tremenus movement into a public pair system compatible with the exisnce of academic centers like ourselves. >> rose: finally, your role on

is science advisoryommittee. what is ithat you guys are going to d- and i mean by that no gender-specific? >> well, we ha guys and ga on this commtee. the president has beenery clear with me and my co-chair, eric lander and john holden, e official-- and works full ti in washington. he sai to us since decembe when he appoted us before he was inaugurated, he said, "i want scien to be the centerpie of my administraon. i accept the idea that is advisoryouncil whichas had its ups and dow-- nixon dissolved itsome people nored it, someeople filled it with politicalappointees-- i want this to be fu ofxciting interestg people from a lot of fields. >> rose: what is ithat he wants advice on? >> wt the president ss that has attracteall of us to this council, he sees the conneion between doing basic and

technology-rated science and evy aspect of his major programs-- educaon, manufacturing, the enomy, health ce, improving-- trying to control our climate, energy-- all of these things he es as closely linked to scientific acvity. so weave on this counci21 people who represent virtually everdiscipline in science and technology and people from many different states andeople of different genders and lors and are going to take on, we hope, with his blessing, a large number ofmportant tops. wee currently working on a report on influenza, but virtually every aect of modern society that influenced by science and tenology will be suected to our scrutinyhen we feel at we can give adve to the presint that will help him develop a sensibleolicy r the country. >> re: harold varmus, nobel

laurea, an interesting story of one man's discovery as he pursues his life in scienceut also coming ou o a classical education. thank you. >> chaie, thanks very muc for hang me on. >> ros on our nextharlie rose we're in cairo with an execute television interview with the president o ejip, hosni mubarak. join us. >> do you think iselill allow iran thave a nlear weapon? beforeettenyahu and before anthe minister of defense in israel--nuclear weapons in iran

but ou understanding is the whole reon should be free of l forms or types of mass structive weapons. >> rose: it is also said are you urging president oba to urge israel not to engage in a strike against iran. >> look, i wld like to say sothing. the nuclear capabilitof iran, if it goes like this, and it happened that military force is used, this-- ain, thisis the whole gion. agai, mise of miliry power. that is why i say this should be solved amically, peacelly.

d i call on iran to ha this flexibility to negotia wi representatives of thenited states of erica to resolve this iue in order that no military actions would be brough about. we want to stop all military activity. >> rose: freeman dyson isere. he has spent a lifetime grapplinwith some of the toughestroblems in expes beyond as a young physicist he received worldwide cognition. he has become a bt-selling author on tops from biotecology to extraterrestrial telision. he has emergeed as a critic of climate chan. in march the "w york times" ofiled him in an article called, "the globingarming her tech". how did freeman dyson, leral

intellectual, prlem solver wind upnfuriating the vironmentalists? we'll ask th and more. m pleased to have freen dyson ba at this table. welcome. >>hank you. rose: i' get to this in a moment but you really stirred themp when you talk aut obal warming, don you. >> so, at article, of urse, is totally misleadg. obal warming is a very smaller part of my concern. the thor is a very fine writer >> rose: he is, indeed. >> but it is mostly fiction rather than fact. >> rose: howan aery fine writer, write fiction rather than fact. >> he had hisgenda which wasn mine. rose: what was his agenda? >> his agenda was to write a piece about global warming. rose: right. he told me he was going to do a profile of me and it was-- he twisd it into a story about global warming, which is really-- i don't claim to bean exrt on that subject.

i'm not an activist,and certainly amot an appropriate person to be apolitical activi. so it gave, i think other a very misleading view. however, i mean, the pictures are betiful, and so i can't complain ( laughter ) >> re: it's like ur tie. yohave a beautiful tie. >> which m wife chose for me this morning. >> rose: this morning. shpicks out your cloth when you leave in morni? >> t usually >> rose: the t. or for televion. >>or television, yes. >> re: well, she has goo ste. >> thank you >> rose: so whats your view on glal warming? >> well,'m very skeical-- >> rose: however small large it is in context of all the ings u talk about? >> i am very sptical about th all the pronouncements made by the perts. i knowow completel uncertain the subject is,o i wou say just don't belie the experts t i don't cla to be an exrt myself so i won't argue

with abody about details. and i'm certainly no a spokman for the opponents of the prevailing dmas. i han't given muchime to it and i don't pretend to know at the real answersre. what i'm-- what i kw for sure is thamost of the pple who make pronouncement don't know, either. >> rose: all right, mae you n't know, so let mow st ask some questions and you can say, "i don't know." do you deny the world is getting warmer? >> no. rose: you don't deny th. clearly thworld is getting warmer. >> i wen to greenland, myself, where e warming is most extre. and it's quite spectacular of course what you see in eenland. what is also true is the people there love it. the peoplehere hope it continues. it maukz the lives a lot more pleasant. >> rose: do you believe there continues to be global wming in those regionsthat we wi eliminate the icend, therefore there will be a rising of the water level and, therore, at some point iwill teaten us all? >> no. i don believe that.

i mean, the point is thathe sea level has been rising for 12,000 years. and it has nothing to do with global warmi. >> rose: nothing? >> it's a separate problem. mean-- >> rose: does globalwarming contribute to? >> probably. but we don't knohow much. and it certainly not-- the main problemhen you're dealing with ridesg ocean-- iean, we know it's been gng on for 1200 years. wean it hasvery little to do with human aivities. so it will be great-- it wi be a terrible mistake to thi you lved the problem of th rising ocean when yore only dealinwith climate. >>ose: what else need you do? >> well, we don't know. it's-- we don't know theauses. it's absd to imagine that you can treat a diseaseithout doing a diagnosis. if you're a scienti, you don't jump to, conclusis. >> rose: right

but here's what some people s. they say if climate warmst, say, the curnt rate for the next 100 years, the diffence in clite will be as dramatic asthe difference the end of the ice age. >> i think that's extmely unlikely, but of course don't know. certaiy there's no that he was that that'true. >> rose:hy are ey so eited abt you saying all these thingsf you simy areaying, i don't know?" what is it you are saying that ally gets under the skin? >> i don know whether it gets under their skin. hat again, was exaggerated in the ew york times". rose: the "new yortimes"? i. >> i never got underanybody's skin as far as i know. jim hencen, for example-- >> rose: a revered-- or reupon maybis a better word-- >> he is m friend. anwe're porayed in that articl as enemies. th that he was a manipulator just as i was. >> rose: do you and jim hanson have thesame view abt climate

change? >> no, but we are friendly-- we have divergeant vows but we are quite go friends. so-- society of us, i think, felt aggrieved becau we were-- rose: that you were somehowan tagganist other th different opinions about a central issue. >> yes, we happen to agree about a lot of things. >> rose: i'm going to ask you about thesfact. the average temperature has climbed 1. degrees fahrenheit sie 1880, much of this in recent decades. is that true? >> yes. >> ros the 20th centiy last o decades we the hottest in 400 years. >> that's probabltrue, butthe last-- actuayhe last decade has en cooler. d-- >> rose:ooler than the previo decade? >> yes. and it's not at a clear whether the rise is continuing

orot. >> rose: youlso believethat certain biotechnologies will in the end serve to reduce the impact of global warming. >> yes, i think--f course, first of all i don'telieve glal warming is bad i think that's first question be settled. >> rose: another so is global warminbad? >> no, would say warming is certainly real, but it's mostly happeninin cold placest high latitude, a is also happeninmore in winter than in summer, an it's also hpening more atnight than inayti. >> ros is the emission oso much c.o.2 intohe atmosphere a good thing? >> yes. >> rose: even thou it break whever it do up there. >> yes, i wod say it's a very good thing. it makes plants grow better. butplants cannot consume all the c.o.2 out there. >> no, but they're doing better because ofhe co2. 's true of crop plants d for all o forforest.

ainst that, youhave possie rmful effects of warming. but i think it is important that warming is happenin in place, that are cold, in place where's it's winter rather than summe and it's summer reasoner nighttim >> rose: what's interesting i that are you not arguing with the facts. you are arguing wit th collusions. >> right >> rose: for examp there's meltg at mont's natul park. is that a gd thing? it's a good thing and a bad thing. >> rose: you don't think that human contribution to global warming as significant as the critics,those who very vehemently oppose global warming

and want to doomething about argue. >> that would say we don't know. what wdo know is glaciers wer swinging in stzerland and many other places long before human activity becam ropt. >> rose: let me talk about-- in the context of freeman dyson's remarkable life, here e you in your 80s? what concerns yo today? whato you worry about? >> i wor about nuclear apons. >> rose: have written abt nuclear weons. >> that the number one problem, for me, andll t diussion of global warming distracts people from more importanthings. ll, they canold two things in their head. >>ast night we h in prince son a commemorationf hebrh ma, and twourvivors spoke

about thei expos. that's what shoulde talking about. >> it's becoming a more visible issue. rose: including the psident of t united states and henry kissinger, and sam nunn. >> especially the gang ound reagan. >> that's i think thbeauty of it that it is something that the right ngepublicans genally belie in. so it's somethi we may have a chance to do. >>ose: mually assured deruction is not a good idea. >> i d't think it's a good idea it works up to aoint. it's not something wehould rely on. >> rose:nd do you think the united states, to lead t way, should reduceits stockpile of weapon by how much?

>> i would say tota i mean i'd le-- >> rose:ust go right outnd get rid of all them and show the world t right direction. >> that'shat nixon did with biological weapons andt was a wonderful move. he did it youn laterly causey so he didn't have to ha it ratified by the senate. he didn't have to netiate with anybody. we said if we get r of our weapons we will destroy t stockpilesand it happened one afternoon. >> rose: would e be less of a nation? >> i don't think so p. but that's a tter of opinion. the public believes clear weapons give them securit i don'think so. it's question of balance, of course. >> re:uppose we gave up all our nuclear weapons. do the think they would giv u theirs?

>> no. e real danger is somebody steals afew of them, and gettg rid of ours wld certainly lp. they're more likely. >> i ce walked into a room in thisountry, whe there were 41 hydrogen bombs jus lying arou on the floor. >> re: i've been on a suarine where they had 18. >> they're all over the place i don't think theye particular low safe. you thk if people using day today's strategi might very well steal nuclear weapon from the united states rository. >> yes. i mean, it's of course-- you depend on thfact that people are careless and we are as caro as oth poem. but it's mor likely to pakistan

and other places le that where there is under stability so, anyway, don't say it's necessarily. at wore any woe than the othe people who are takincare them. oim saying we' not perfect. you coider that the greatest problem ofannd humanmind? >> at the moment, yes. >> rose: dog away with-- gettg rid of property the sam level. and how are w doing on that very well, china andndia are becoming rich. that the center of gravity to the world,hina and india. if they become rich countries the majority ofoneykind is rush marine tour snjts in the

remain of your life, whether 10 years,r 20 ars or what you-- what would you like to achieve? >> i don't he any illusions at i willarks chief the great things. i like to help push peopl and push tngs in a sensible w. as you know most peoplethink your more interesti ideas in physics me a long time ago. >> that's true. >>ose: i know. >> i enjoyife and don't particully care what i'm dng that moment thats inrested. is it chlenging and intereing to you yo? >> science, of course, to me is sun and justike painting pictures or anhing else. >> rose: is puzzle. >> wel i would say 's a technical skill, which is fun t exerse. >> rose: yeah. there is this idea that physics has had i sentry, and the.

>> i think that's quite likely to be true. it's ctain that physics has slowed down dung my lifetime. largely just bause the experiments have become sslow. but biology, at the sa time, has en speeding up. so i think it's probly true that thi century is the century of biology. >> rose: because of the discovery of dnand the mapping of t human genome. >> i think all these scientists are dven by tools rather than idea sglool. tools for the blogists, an gene synthesizers, now we can re and write-- >> rose: are understanding more about disease than we have in the whole history of human

ki. th's going slow. the healinpart of biology is really tough. >> rose: it's not ey to understand how these work. >> ctainly, we're not doing woman with the war again cancer. >> rose: why do you think that ? >> it's a lot more complicated than we hoped. >> that's true >> i have tremendou respect for nature, th nature is almost always smarter tn were, and that what mak biology s exciting. why is nature mucsmarter th we are >> it's had a much longer time to work out the details. and it will take care of itself. this is not to name drop but i've done one interview wh him stevin hawking. >> good, and oths who worked with him and studied under him. >> that's one person i have enormousespect for some he's

great inoth respects as a man being and as a scntist. i thk he's one ofhe few people i would say clearly deseeaise nobel prize and hasn got one. i don't know why. >> i he considereone of the top 10 physici in the world today? >> by me, yes. ( laughter >> rose: andhat's all that matters, isn't i >> not all that matters, but-- anyway, he's terrific and he wears--. he's amazingly tough >> rose: you know him though. >> the last ti iet him he was in a bar in tokyo. >> rose: at a bar! >> drirchgsing whiskey and having a gd time. what were u dog there. i was there just to do that, too. i think he was ving more fun than i was.

>>ose: what happed to the per collider? >> the super collider-- >> re: exain to us whait was just so we kno that. >> it's a b machine in geva on th border between switzerland d france. >> rose: or there rather than here becse they paid for i >> yes, the europeansuilt and paid for it. i think it wl do lot of teresting science. >> le what? >> it will discover thgs that weret expected. that what the science is all about. if you knew i advance what you re going to discover, it's n interesting. so we hope it wl discover lots of tngs that nobodymagined, but it has technicalroblems. big machines very ten d there' nothing unusual in that. they switched on and sothing broke. >> rose: to their gat disappointment. >> this disappointing, but

sooner or laterhey'll it rking. >> rose: b when? >> weon't know. but we have to think on a long-term scale. that's why physics is swing down. >>ose: because they'reoing huge matmatical computations and more so they took 10 years to build it, and10 yearseso-- >> rose: get it right. >> to get i actuall to work. that is mostf the of a lifetime, whicis a shame. >> rose: what the great qution you would like to see answers? >> to me mind the most exciting estions are really in biing on. at question ve--. i even got so concerned i wte a book about it-- "the originf fe." it is a good problem because everybody i equally ignorant, even could write a book about itnd it's a cplete myery. >> rose:hat did you determine about the origins of life?

>> well, i'm sply sculating that it hullly had two oranges. >>ose: adam and eve. >> that we have at our-- living ete urdz made of o components, which i sortf hardware and software, like mputers. >> rose: lifgs creteures are made ofhardwareand software. >> the hardware the chemistry of things, whathey call metabolism. eating and drinking and pressing all the materials. all of activ things like nerves and muscs so far are made of harlardware, oteins. and then the is thoftware that is genome, jus the instructns for how to build it. so we have those two components which are very separate in lif as fay we know it.

i'm making the hypothesi, but reallyt was unlikely that th were both thererom the begiing. it's mh more lightly that they record separately yohad life evolving without genes for a lo time. genes were then an iependent creare, whi originally were parasites andhen took over the direction so to botto then a syiosis, a colborative system which both of them worked tether. that seems to me aeasonable poinof view but i don't claim it true. >>ose: what do yothink about the technologs of nanotechnolo? >> there againt's been hype too much. but, clearly, it's very real. we've got a lot of interesting materials that are deepstancy

inthe wam way as geneti. rose: stevin hawking tks about e search for the theory of everything. are you interestein rayheory of everything? >> i hope itdoesn't exist itould show that god h been lock wh imagination. >> wait minute, god would be-- >> ros: howo you get your mind around ligion and science? >> well, i thinkhey both are real and they both say sometng about the univse. but they're qoit different. i think of them as two windo through-- you can look at both athe same time. >> rose: d so for scitists who say tohose peoe of fakt, i appreciate your faitbut i

can't believe ything thai can't see ahat i can prove. >>ell, that's, course, correct statent if mean by "belief" "scientic belief. but i think a religionis not ju about belief. >> rose: it's about? >> it's about a way ofife, a community. it's big pitaature and music and architecture. it's a big part of ur human. which is really not so much dependent o belief. >> rose: are y a religus man that definion. but iertainly don't bieve any particular theology. >> rose: what do you think o riard dawkins? >> i like richard dawkins a human being but i think he's done a lot of harm by telling young people that you have to be an eightist it in order

become a scientist that's a stupid thing to y. itctually pushes away a lot of ung people from science who don't want to give up religion >> rose: are y optimistic about all of us? >> yes. >> rose: in thend? >> oh, very optimistic. it's quite amazing we've been able to do in theshortime we have bn here. we have tants which to me are quite extraordinary because ty don't have anybvious survival value. for example, calculang numbers i need to calculate numrs in der to survive. it not at akpleer. whshould we be abe to compose string quaets or paint paintings >> ros so you are optimistic out our future because you

lookt where we've ce from, and wee evved not badly. >> i would say we're doing-- >> rose ev though we've built these bombs that cld destroy us. >> we've been doingmacingly well. >> rose: have you been kind to the planet? >> yes. >> re: a lot of people don't have tt view. are you in a stink minority th includg our friend evan hooker december. no the fact is of crse we've done a lot of damage tohe planet, t we also repairthe mage. i ew up in england, and england was far more filthyhen thanhere was now. england is much more-- is coaratively green. you n go to londo and your

collar doesn't get black each day, and th tham sing ppened in los angeles. the sl in no, si. >> rose: have you en to beijing? >> yes. >> rose: and you're n bothed by tha and you wa them to bui every coal-burning plant they cld buil >> global warming people don't make adistinction between carbon diode, which is essentially, in my view, harmless, and the other things which are told is horrible, ceain smog, nd nitrogen oxide and all that stuff. there's a lot of very ugly stuff in coawhich you can get rid of by scrubbing the hole and e gases thatome out of the fire ation. so the chinese certainly can do a lot more of that a they are doing lot more than that.

>> ros: you are a member of caisson. >> wt is that? >> is a group ofonsult antz thatork forovernment. wove been just in existence 50 years. >> rose: 5 >> yes. we're jus tell our separate birthdays. we're doing atudy about nuclear weons, which is one of th things we've always en interested in. we've goneb bn asked boy congress to assess the state of the stockpile and how you can taken a thought pile that is reliable without doing tes. >> rose: suppose they comeo you and jason said,ere's the oject. we want you to help us decide a weon. >> i would lk at the details. jason is not in theusiness of

inveing weapons, away. advising the government about all kinds otechnical problems mostly minor. what we are get yet clearin stupid ideas >> rose: that sms to melike a rthy function. >>hat's what i thinks most useful about what wre doing. somebody tellss they have a woerful scheme for detecting submarines, and you only need $100 million to get stard. and thene demstrate that the ing is no good. >> rose: it's a please to have you here. >> thank you. >> ros freeman dyso, an inresting man. and you've had a remarkae life and youontinue to live with great irit and great fun and i mire you for this spirit and passion you bringto conversaons. >> thank you caioning sponsored by rose communications

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