I am going to give a talk on cell consciousness at a graduate conference in Cambridge called “Challenges of the 21st Century”. The purpose of this conference is to discuss issues which matter to people in the 21st Century with students from different disciplines. Therefore I am expected to explain how my work on cell consciousness would address the problems which people are facing day in and day out.

This is not going to be easy, I felt, after reading an article on Times by Jeremy Clarkson from TopGear. He said:

”...So you might imagine that all of the world’s scientists are currently in their bunkers, desperately trying to figure out why the world is running out of food all of a sudden and, more importantly, what can be done.

And now, it seems, the world’s boffins have got more important things on their enormous minds. Last week, for instance, as the fires in Haiti burnt, a group of eggheads at Yale University announced that after some exhaustive research, they’d proved women who eat chocolate five times a week are 40% less likely to get preeclampsia than those who indulge only once a week. “

Of course everybody is like that. A few years ago BBC radio 4 broadcasted a programme called “WHAT REMAINS TO BE DISCOVERED?” and they discussed the problem of consciousness. One of the questions they considered I think particularly relevant to general public is: “Why do so many of us hope that we are more than simply wonderful machines? ”. Of course we don’t think of it everyday, but this question pops up every now and then in different forms.

The debate on abortion is one such thing. We know that embryos are alive however young they are, but some claim that terminating them is ethical as long as it is before they become conscious. Then this argument would lead us to a tricky question: Is it unethical to kill animals which are conscious? If so, where would we set the boundary between “conscious” or “unconscious”? I do not believe that such boundary actually exists and I am trying to prove that by demonstrating the possibility of consciousness in cells.

I would appreciate your valuable opinions on this, and I will incorporate them in my presentation whenever possible. Many thanks in advance.