My customary view of Lord Robert Winston, once a year on the Jewish holiday of Passover, is from one end of a long table, as he presides at the other end and conducts the service. Thus it was something of a novelty to find myself face to face with him across a polished table in his office at Imperial University, with only a jar of multicoloured liquorice between us.  Declining the offer of a piece of liquorice, I ask him to tell me about his career in science, during which he has produced a prodigious number of publications, and made pioneering advances in fertility surgery and IVF.

“It’s been one of fits and starts really”, he begins. “It hasn’t really formed a pathway”. Unlike the modern student of science, whose career path he thinks is far less flexible than those of the budding scientists of his generation, Professor Winston’s early years in academia were somewhat unconventional. He earned a first from Cambridge, where he read Natural Sciences, before deciding that he “didn’t really want to look down a microscope” for the rest of his life.  “Of course, the irony is that I’ve ended up looking down a microscope for most of my life anyway.” This, Winston modestly proposes, is the result of a series of lucky breaks, the earliest of which he identifies as his achievement of a First at Cambridge. “I got a First by default”, he says. “During my clinical examinations I made a couple of diagnoses that had been missed by the examiners. I think the examiners were somewhat embarrassed. In one case there was an emergency decision that needed to be made, and the patient was sent straight to the operating theatre from the moment I examined her.”

After spending a few years in clinical medicine, Winston temporarily renounced academia to pursue a career in theatre, a longstanding passion of his. He took a production of Pirandello’s Each in his own way to the Edinburgh festival, where “it won a prize” – the National Director’s Award, it turns out – and had several offers to continue professionally. He returned to the medical world, however after a year – a move that was “more difficult than I expected, with long hair” – and began his attempt to re-immerse himself in academia by applying to three of the top institutions in his field of interest, obstetrics and gynaecology. He confesses that the application process was perhaps more intimidating than it would be these days. “I remember my first interview, which was in Chelsea. I sat at this table in a room where I was facing the light so I couldn’t actually see the twenty-five people around the table who were interviewing me, three of whom were wearing wing collars.” This is in keeping with the tone of medicine in the late 60s and early 70s, he assures me. “The junior house officers were required to wait at table for the consultants. It was utterly bizarre.” Rejected from all three of the institutions to which he applied, Winston wrote “in a fit of desperation” to the head of Hammersmith Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, which he had neglected to apply to, in the belief that it was too prestigious. In what he regards as an “incredibly lucky” turn of events, he was given a two month position there. “First of all I didn’t have the credentials for the research I wanted to do. The institution that I actually wanted to do it from wasn’t involved with that area of research, I hadn’t published anything at the time and I wasn’t a good student – although I’d got this first. I didn’t have ace credentials.” He adds, “oh and the other thing was, the research that I wanted to do was hair-brained.” With that stroke of luck, however, Robert Winston’s career was put on a trajectory towards success. The three year research grant that he obtained at Hammersmith supplied, he tells me, enough material to ensure that he was “pouring out publications” by the time it had finished. His radically new way of looking at fertility earned him international attention, in a whole variety of “weird places”. And then he “was very fortunate again” when he met Stephen Hillier, in collaboration with whom he worked for five years to alter the face of IVF.

Although he and Hillier improved IVF significantly, when they developed a way to induce ovulation and hugely increase IVF’s success rates, he had to fight to witness the fruits of his labour. “In 1985 there was a private members’ bill which would have prevented embryo research in Britain, and which nearly got through Parliament”, he recalls. “I think my work there with Anne McLaren – a very distinguished scientist from Cambridge – was…” He begins on a new tack. “She and I together, we literally sat up all night in Parliament, writing briefs for MPs to filibuster that bill. I think my media experience was colossally important. Because I understood that it was a question of being truthful, and not trying to exaggerate, and a whole range of things that we should do, but as scientists we don’t do very well.”

Professor Winston’s work in Parliament obstructing the passage of that bill is only one instance of his wider role as unofficial spokesman for the scientific community. When John Mansfield – then Executive Producer of the BBC’s flagship science programme, Horizon – approached him in 1974 to suggest that they collaborate on a programme, to be broadcast in 1975, speculating what science would be like in the year 2000 (they got most of it wrong), Winston began a career in television that would see him present and participate in a plethora of scientific programmes, including Bafta-award winning The human body. This was the next in a fortunate coincidence of circumstances for Winston – his exposure to the theatre, he says, made the initiation into TV easier (“the thespian stuff came back, I’d never quite lost that”), while it was this television experience, particularly his next collaboration with Mansfield as presenter for Your life in their hands (a programme about live surgery), that he believes gave him the tools to communicate his views so effectively in his bid to save embryo research in Britain, and share science with the public more generally: “John would get me to present something and would then say, “Robert I don’t understand what you’re saying,” “Robert, you’re being obscure”, or “Robert you’re being pompous”. And he was wonderful, because he taught me to think with much greater clarity how you get ideas across in a succinct way on screen.”

Although the skills Winston has honed as a presenter allow him to overcome others’ ethical qualms about some of his work, do his own personal ethics, and particularly Judaism’s ethical prescriptions, ever clash with the work that he is doing? He thinks about this, before embarking on an explanation as to why Judaism is a bit different to the other monotheistic religions, in its forward thinking views on science and the natural world. “In the Guide to the perplexed, Maimonides says that there are two views on how the world comes into being. One is that view that is held by Aristotle, that the universe has always been there, and is a constant. And the other is that it was created. And he says that, having looked at both arguments, he favours the argument which says that it was created. But then he says something extraordinary. If some new evidence comes along which suggests that this view is flawed, I will have to go back to the text and reinterpret it.” Although I express my scepticism of the suggestion that any religion has revised its views to the extent that they are in line with the latest scientific evidence, Winston is keen to distinguish Judaism from other religions. When one of van Leeuwenhoek’s pupils discovered sperm when inspecting semen under a microscope, he tells me, he claimed to see a fully formed homunculus within the sperm – a claim that still, in part, informs some religious views on Onanism and sex today. However, a Jewish text that was written in reaction to van Leeuwenhoek’s ‘discovery’, remarking on the support it gave to the notion that to destroy the seed was like murder, is now remote and recondite, since the view that it propounded has been updated in the light of new evidence. “Your ethical principles”, Winston concludes “are only as good as your observation of the natural world”.

Mr Jones – Are we not all agreed that if one’s partner accuses one of domineering habits, criticises one’s decisions, but still happily takes one’s money, and even threatens to leave, only to elicit more and more cash, then one should be quite happy, and not at all reluctant, to see the back of them?

Mrs Jones – Yes… yes my dear, the Westlothian question is a terribly taxing one indeed; perhaps we should discuss it at greater length later, maybe once our guests have left?

Are you perplexed by potical postulation? Desperate to keep up with the Joneses, but at a loss for what to say at the dinner table? Cherwell is here to help you perfect your chit-chat.

What:

After years of patriotic bravado, devolutionary teasing, and occasional weird allusions to that battle Braveheart fought in, the Scots may actually have to decide whether to stay in the UK. Motives for leaving include: oil wealth, hatred for Thatcherite English politics, opposition to English spending cuts, and general contempt for the English themselves. A vote would basically hinge on how many barrels of oil the North Sea has left.

Who:

Alex Salmond is still trumpeting independence while delaying an actual referendum, because independence would leave him unable to blame the English for, well, everything, and because a no vote would leave his entire political career looking rather silly. David Cameron cannot ignore Scotland’s voters, but equally does not want to be the guy, who, when asked if Scotland could put an end to five hundred years of political and economic unity, said ‘umm, yeah, I guess so’.

Soundbites to wow with:

‘Scotland has at best a decade before the oil dries up, and then what? The SNP’s post-independence plans amount to taxing and spending their way to a national revival that has apparently been just around the corner for about a century.’

‘Salmond’s weak point may be his commitment to taking Scotland into the EU, which, if Sarkozy and Merkel have their way, may prove to be a far more intrusive master than England ever was.’

Don’t say:

‘Did you know that Scots make up 10% of the UK’s population by number, but 15% by weight?’

The sustained and brutal repression of civil unrest in Syria has led to over 5,000 deaths in nine months, according to a recent UN report. Less than a year ago, similar scenes in Libya triggered the International Community’s decision to launch military operations in order to fulfil its “responsibility to protect” (R2P), a norm adopted by the UN in 2005 to prevent mass atrocities. Many are now calling for the same Western-backed military response to the Syrian crisis, but this article will argue that these calls must be resisted.

The socio-geographic conditions in Syria make an intervention extremely complex and a swift victory unlikely. The Libyan population was largely concentrated along a single highway linking Benghazi and Tripoli, making it possible to conduct a successful intervention using only air strikes.

The Syrian population, however, is spread more evenly across its landmass and a land invasion would be necessary to seize control of the country. Furthermore, unlike Egypt and Tunisia, the Syrian military is inextricably linked with the ruling Assad regime and will fight hard for its survival. An intervention would involve considerable loss of life and a commitment more similar to that involved in the Iraq war than the NATO operation in Libya. An invading alliance would be burdened not only with toppling a strong regime, but with nation-building too in one of the Arab world’s most socially complex states. History warns us that our results in such engagements have been mixed.

History also warns us of the importance of local support for intervention which, in the case of Syria, is questionable. Syrians have been angered by recent Western wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as American support for the Israeli persecution of their Palestinian neighbours. A Western led operation could galvanize large swathes of the population to support the existing regime and feed into the government rhetoric of a foreign-led insurgency.

Moreover, the destabilizing effects of an invasion in the short term could well be severe, with possible attacks on Israeli and Western interests through terrorist proxies as well as threats from an ever more muscular Iranian government. Invading a nation as geopolitically important as Syria involves great risks and too many unknowns.

Though the costs of non-intervention remain painfully high, it is important the West avoid sending in troops, lest they prolong the crisis and jeopardize attempts to secure real, long lasting democratic government in the future. The West is better off being accused of inconsistency than fighting a war that can’t be won.

How does China view its increasing power in the world?

There are, of course, different perspectives on this in China. Chinese material power has been growing steadily over the last thirty years with particular advances after 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization, and again after 2008 and the global financial crisis, which damaged China far less than most other countries. Thus, its relative power has grown quite significantly. For some Chinese, this suggests that the country deserves a larger voice in world affairs, and that its economic model has much to teach other countries. Other Chinese, however, realise that the country’s domestic development challenges remain huge and this makes them reluctant to consider taking on greater global responsibilities commensurate with its status as the second largest economy in the world.

How important is the economic relationship between China and the United States?

These two countries are economically very interdependent and the global economic crisis has brought this home to both countries. As of June 2011, China held nearly $3.2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, largely in US denominated assets. It certainly does not want those assets to decline in value. The US remains a major market for Chinese goods and Chinese leaders worry about the capacity of America to continue as the second major recipient (after the EU) of its exports. For America’s part, China has been the fastest growing major export market over the past 15 years or so. The economic crisis has had less of an impact on the Chinese economy; thus the value of that market to US firms is even more significant. One other pertinent point is the sense that some US officials have of a shift in the global power hierarchy in China’s favour. As US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is reported to have remarked to the Australian Foreign Minister, Kevin Rudd, in December 2010, “How do you deal toughly with your banker?”

What was China’s reaction to Obama’s announcement that the US defence strategy will now focus on the Pacific region?

Although the US government has tried to reassure the Chinese leadership they are interested in cooperation and engagement with Beijing, this defence move has been viewed negatively in China and is seen mainly as directed at it. Strategic mutual distrust is high in this relationship and this is unlikely to diminish as a result of changes in the US defence strategy. At a minimum the two countries need to think of ways of increasing levels of trust and diminishing the sense of rivalry, for example by strengthening their military-to-military ties.

What is the future of US-China relations?

Factors which help to stabilise this important relationship are the economic factors discussed earlier, the fact that the costs of military conflict between them would be extremely high (both are nuclear-armed states,) and that they do hold interests in common (e.g. stability on the Korean peninsula and in China-Taiwan relations). The relationship has also been institutionalised; there are now about 65 bilateral dialogue mechanisms between them and these are helping to build personal relationships and maybe even to manage tensions. Nevertheless, this relationship is going to be difficult and competitive in the years ahead. The US seems reluctant to accommodate itself entirely to a stronger and more prosperous China. China has a hard task before it in reassuring its neighbours that its rise will remain peaceful and in the absence of that reassurance China’s neighbours will want to see the US stay a major player in the Asia-Pacific region.