royal institution christmas lectures
luck, genes and stupidity (5/5)

The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures return to Five once more this year, this time presented by intensive care doctor and extreme sports enthusiast Hugh Montgomery. Entitled ‘Back from the Brink: The Science of Survival’, this year’s lectures explore the theme of human survival –who lives, who dies and why? Tonight’s final lecture explores the role of genetics in human survival.

Initiated by Michael Faraday in the mid 1820s, the Christmas Lectures are held annually and are the flagship of the Royal Institution. They serve as a forum for presenting complex scientific issues to young people in an informative and entertaining manner, and are well-known for the participation of students in demonstrations and experiments.

This Christmas, Dr Hugh Montgomery explores the science behind human survival. Honed over four billion years of evolution, the human body is an extraordinary and complex machine. We must find fuel and fluids, balance their intake, create an internal currency of energy, and spend it performing a whole range of tasks. But what happens when these systems are pushed to their absolute limits?

Through countless cases of survival in the face of adversity, it is clear that the human body can cope with remarkable extremes of temperature, long periods of starvation, intense pain and massive trauma. But are all of us survivors, or are certain people special? And if these people are special, is their ability to survive instinctive or learned?

Tonight’s presentation examines the part genetics has to play in our ability to survive. Is everyone’s ability to survive the same? Faced with the same perils, would we all cope just as well? And if not, is it down to luck or relative toughness, or is there such a thing as the will to live?

Dr Montgomery’s main focus tonight is the complex world of genes –what are they and how do they make us different. How much of the way we are is ‘nature’ and how much ‘nurture’? Do our genes influence our chances of survival? Can they protect us from infections, or help us survive them? Can they allow us to run further and faster? Can they even make us feel more or less pain?

In the second half of his lecture, Dr Montgomery talks to some people who have survived in the face of adversity. To what degree do they credit their endurance to training and preparation, toughness, the will to live, genetics or just good, old-fashioned luck?