I used to worry that it would be bad. No, you know, if a mother had lost a perfect 6-year- old son and you could bring him back, and he was a perfect 6-year-old son, and if, clones will be clones, but because of epigenetic things I really don’t know to what extent, you know, the personality of the clone will be identical to that. We wouldn’t know whether it’s bad until we do it, so I guess under that argument I would do it. Saying that one clone isn’t like one nuclear bomb set off in Piccadilly Circus, it won't change the world. The other would! So we can exaggerate. It’s something we can, no, you could say well it proves it can be done and therefore the people of Singapore are just going to do it and we’re going to, we’ll just encourage people to be less responsible to ourselves. I think that’s sort of dismissing other people as not being sensible. So the older I get the more I would let happen.
So do you think in animal experimentation for example there are any limits to what you should be able to do, given that it’s an important enough question or the need is important enough?
No. No, I think the saving of one human life I just think you have to make a distinction between humans and any other form of life, you know. They’re 1,000 times or 100,000, they’re just not in the same league. If you have to kill all the mice in the world in order to save one human being, I’d probably do it.
How about chimpanzees, how many chimpanzees?
I don’t like chimpanzees, I’ll get rid of all! They’re particularly, you know, you know, and I’ll get rid of baboons even faster. A gorillas no, they seem, you know, they’re more like us. But I don’t like, you know, a chimp is too violent for me to have affection for, and I think it takes a rather awkward person to really like chimps.