Robert Winston

IVF is very commercial. The people doing it are among the best-paid in medicine: they charge a lot per treatment and it's not in their interest to make it more effective. Having people fail means that they come back again.

Parents should talk to their children, even when they are babies and can't talk back.

I used to work for the World Health Organisation in poor countries all over the world - Bangladesh, Korea, the Philippines and India. You learn a whole range of things about how other people are living and try to connect with them to gain an understanding of where they're coming from.

Surgeons always underestimate the pain and disability involved in what they do to people.

You can't be judgmental about babies. They are all have different needs. I was left with an enduring hatred of cheese because it was forced down me when I was young.

I don't much like being a public figure, because so often how people appear is not how they really are, and I think one of the issues about our society is that we make judgments about people on the basis of very flimsy evidence.

Far too many scientists, including my good friend Richard Dawkins, present science as the truth and present it as factually correct. And actually, of course, that clearly isn't true.

My father died when I was nine, but I came from a stable family environment, which I think does contribute to being well-behaved.

I like travelling on my own. It means I'm completely free to think about what's around me.

I went to school with butterflies of fear every day for years - from primary school onwards - not just worried about being bullied by classmates, but by teachers.

However pragmatic you are, it is very demanding being a new parent.

I did not study science at school until I was 13, when I was totally turned on by a seemingly dreary old teacher who suddenly, unannounced, manufactured a huge explosion in the middle of a totally boring monologue. From then on, all of his class wanted to make explosions.