• Question: if you could go back in time and change one thing is science what would you change?

    Asked by anon-353584 on 16 Mar 2023.
    • Photo: Thomas Swift

      Thomas Swift answered on 16 Mar 2023:

      I would pay a lot of money, or apologise to, the family of Henrietta Lacks in 1951 before she died.

      Samples from her cancer cells were taken from her without her knowledge, and they have gone on to be the cornerstone of all our anti-cancer research. Without ‘HeLa’ cells as we call them we would not have developed life saving drugs over the last 90 years.

      But the scientists who sampled her did it underhandedly and didn’t tell her or their family they were taking samples from her body for scientific testing. Its not good that all biomedical research scientists are working on materials stolen from a very poor housewife in Idaho who was never compensated

    • Photo: Grace Roper

      Grace Roper answered on 16 Mar 2023:

      I would go back in time and make scientists more diverse from earlier. We are currently having a lot of conversations about improving diversity in science in many ways, including make it more accessible for women, people from ethnic minorities, and to LGBTIQA+ people. There are so many discoveries that could have been made if science had greater diversity earlier.

    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 17 Mar 2023:

      I don’t think I really want to do that…. time travel triggers all sorts of potential paradoxical problems if your believe in linear time or creates new universes if you believe in the multiverse model. Anyway I don’t want fiddle around with time!

    • Photo: Maryam Sani

      Maryam Sani answered on 20 Mar 2023:

      I would change the introduction of processed, convenience foods. Living naturally has so many benefits.

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