Sir Walter Bodmer: Genetics, Cancer & the Future of Humanity | Tomorrow Today

**Walter Bodmer** (0:00)
Without the Genome Project, we could do nothing in the way we're now studying any medical problem, any health problem.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (0:11)
He's probably the world's most renowned oncologist, genetic scientist.

**Walter Bodmer** (0:22)
So it's fundamentally a genetic disease at the cellular level.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (0:32)
I don't have any knowledge whatsoever about cancer. I'm deeply curious about it.

**Walter Bodmer** (0:42)
The most terrible crime is that we wasn't in forever.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (1:16)
Sir Walter Bodmer.
He's a phenomenal, phenomenal scientist. He's probably the world's most renowned oncologist, genetic scientist, and basically, he's also the guy who's gifted to the scientist community the way to talk to humans, which is the Bodmer Report. So I'm incredibly honored to have him. It's my lifetime dream to talk to you. I've been chasing you down through many different channels. Finally, I get to sit down with you here in London. And sir, I don't have any knowledge whatsoever about cancer. I'm deeply curious about it. I'm curious about technology. I'm curious about where genetic engineering and science is going in general.
And I would love for you to unpack it for our audience through this conversation. But before we get rolling on that, I know that you were conferred Sir Walter Bodmer. So tell us a little bit about that.

**Walter Bodmer** (2:26)
I'm not sure what I can say, except that I was honored and pleased and surprised. I was relatively young. It's now almost exactly 40 years ago since I was made a Sir.
And I assume it was for my contributions to science in general. That's about all I can say. I mean, it's a great honor.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (2:45)
And was it for like a specific topic that you were contributing to us or?

**Walter Bodmer** (2:50)
Not as far as I'm aware. You have to find out who promoted me and what they said I took it for.
It's hard to decide. I've been involved in promoting people and helping. I mean, it's a question of what you feel their contribution has been. And in a useful way, it can be in sport, it can be in the arts, the humanities, or it can be in sciences, in my case. Good.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (3:15)
Good. Awesome. Like, you know, like you're such a humble man. So tell me about your origin story.
Like, you know, you came from Germany at the age of?

**Walter Bodmer** (3:25)
My father was Jewish, and I was born in 1936
And already, of course, by that time, Hitler's anti-Semitism was very, very widespread. So although my father at that time was already a successful physician in Frankfurt, with a largely Jewish practice, he realized in the end, he would have to leave. He didn't think he would need to. And so we left Germany because of Hitler in the middle of 1938, when I was two and a half. So I don't really remember anything about Germany, but it was a difficult time. It was a difficult time for him. He had to retake medical exams so he could practice and so on. When you think back of those times, you're made to realize something that, unfortunately, some people still suffer from, that many people who live in the Western society haven't experienced really what a situation like that that then came with the Second World War, how it can influence your lives.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (4:37)
So you were age two at that time?

**Walter Bodmer** (4:40)
Two and a half, yeah.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (4:41)
Two and a half.

**Walter Bodmer** (4:42)
The half makes a difference when you're only two.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (4:48)
Why do you say that?

**Walter Bodmer** (4:50)
Well, the thing that I find strange is that I remember nothing from when I was in Germany, and yet I remember things that must have happened fairly soon after we came to England. I had two older brothers and they were, of course, much more conscious of what had been happening in Germany.
And my first reaction was, I refused to learn how to speak English. I'd only just learned how to speak at all, and that was in German. And then having learned some German, I refused some English, so I refused to learn German again. But then I learned German at school, and it's still reasonably okay. My parents spoke to me in German.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (5:38)
What is the memories you had of like, you coming here to UK? Like, is it very quiet?

**Walter Bodmer** (5:49)
It wasn't a memory of what I had in Germany, it was an experience of what I was having as a very young child. And then during the Second World War in England. And I have to say a strong antipathy against Germany for many years when I was younger.