How to Build a Human

We are at the dawn of the Age of Biology...

Scientists have already decoded the entire human genome, a magnificent achievement in itself, but how can the human race expect to benefit from this important milestone? Genetic screening is already being used to eliminate disease and scientists are well down the road to successfully repairing DNA. But will we stop at repair or could we go on to improve on our species, to redesign the perfect human? This groundbreaking series explores the limits of a remarkable science.




The 21st century will be shaped by a revolution in biology, which will enable us to read the genetic code of life as we would read a book. The new age will give us an almost god-like ability to manipulate and build humans at will. We have gained the power to control the destiny of our species. This series will give you a glimpse of the future of humankind.

PART ONE - Creation
The ability to genetically engineer human beings will change the human race forever. The secrets of DNA, the genetic code for life, are being unraveled. How are scientists learning to manipulate it to create new human beings – or parts of human beings?




This film has access to the creation of the first cloned human embryo, and the people behind it. It gives us a glimpse of a future in which we will be able to bump into younger versions of ourselves in the street, replace every damaged organ with a new one that contains 99% of our own DNA, and nurture our offspring in artificial wombs.

Watch BBC - How to Build a Human Body - Episode 1 - Creation in How to Videos | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

PART TWO - The Predictor
More and more we are finding that the unique characteristics that make each one of us an individual, from our basic physical attributes to the complexities of our personality, can be traced back to the subtle mix of genes we received at the moment of conception.




But how much do these genes actually predict our destiny? And how much can that destiny be changed throughout our lives? Is it nature or nurture that builds us? The genetic age has opened up a huge realm of possibilities. Will we be able to read our own lives before we live them, predict our deaths and rewrite the story that is written in our genes?

VIDEO FOR PART TWO COMING SOON!

PART THREE - The Secret of Sex
Before science put it under the microscope, sex was a simple, uncomplicated thing. You couldn’t build humans without it. All you needed was a man, a woman, a liberal sprinkling of lust and Mother Nature did the rest. But is that now a terribly old-fashioned way of making new humans?




In the future we’ll be able to build humans in tanks, make copies of ourselves in labs and even have the power to change the course of our genetic destiny by turning women into men.

Watch BBC- How to build a human body - Episode 3 - Creation in How to Videos | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

If kissing is nothing more than a way of sniffing out compatible genes, what is the point of sex, and will it ever be the same again?


PART FOUR - Forever Young
Imagine yourself 150 years old, pregnant and still going strong. Is this scenario the stuff of science fiction? Scientists predict that in fifty years time every organ in the body, except the brain, will be replaceable. Even the heart can be renovated.




The future won’t just be a healthier short life. The search for eternal life is now being taken seriously. A number of tantalising and remarkable discoveries indicating how to stop the human body ageing are about to turn science fiction into reality. The key lies inside every cell in our body. Scientists now believe they will be able to extend the human life span to 150 years. Is this the first step to immortality?

Watch BBC - How to Build a Human Body - Episode 4 - Forever young in How to Videos | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

The Journey of Man - A Genetic Odyssey

By analyzing DNA from people in all regions of the world, geneticist Spencer Wells has concluded that all humans alive today are descended from a single man who lived in Africa around 60,000 years ago.

Modern humans, he contends, didn't start their spread across the globe until after that time. Most archaeologists would say the exodus began 100,000 years ago—a 40,000-year discrepancy. Wells's take on the origins of modern humans and how they came to populate the rest of the planet is bound to be controversial.

His work adds to an already crowded field of opposing hypotheses proposed by those who seek answers in "stones and bones"—archaeologists and paleoanthropologists—and those who seek them in our blood—population geneticists and molecular biologists.

Over the last decade, major debate on whether early humans evolved in Africa or elsewhere, when they began outward migration, where they went, and whether they interbred with or replaced archaic species has moved out of scientific journals and into the public consciousness.

In this documentary, Wells addresses these issues. In a straightforward story, he explains how he traced the exodus of modern humans from Africa by analyzing genetic changes in DNA from the y-chromosome.

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"As often happens in science," he said, "technology has opened up a field to new ways of answering old questions—often providing startling answers."

Of course, not everyone agrees with him...what do you think?

The Real Eve

Narrated by actor Danny Glover, "The Real Eve" reveals that our shared genetic heritage links every living person on earth and traces the expansion of modern humans throughout the world. The discovery of the Eve gene stunned the world. It seems we could all be descended from just a few females – or even just one. In this telling anthropological video, we access the very latest DNA reconstructions, and for the first time, tell conclusively the story of where, when and how the human race came about and then populated the world.




Mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to children, both male and female, unchanged and it mutates at a predictable rate; i. e., the more the genetic mutations in the DNA, the more ancient the origin of the population. Using these facts, some scientists are studying mitochondrial DNA to try to trace back the origins of the human race. Using this method, the scientists have traced the human race to one female in Africa several million years ago. Then they traced the migration patters of her descendants as they spread across the earth.




The Real Eve is a fascinating documentary presenting a new and controversial theory of human evolution. It does what all good documentaries do, it makes you think, and it entertains at the same time.

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Ghost in Your Genes

This documentary shows that biology stands on the brink of a shift in the understanding of inheritance. The discovery of epigenetics – hidden influences upon the genes – could affect every aspect of our lives.

At the heart of this new field is a simple but contentious idea – that genes have a 'memory'. That the lives of your grandparents – the air they breathed, the food they ate, even the things they saw – can directly affect you, decades later, despite your never experiencing these things yourself. And that what you do in your lifetime could in turn affect your grandchildren.

The conventional view is that DNA carries all our heritable information and that nothing an individual does in their lifetime will be biologically passed to their children. To many scientists, epigenetics amounts to a heresy, calling into question the accepted view of the DNA sequence – a cornerstone on which modern biology sits.

Epigenetics adds a whole new layer to genes beyond the DNA. It proposes a control system of 'switches' that turn genes on or off – and suggests that things people experience, like nutrition and stress, can control these switches and cause heritable effects in humans.

In a remote town in northern Sweden there is evidence for this radical idea. Lying in Överkalix's parish registries of births and deaths and its detailed harvest records is a secret that confounds traditional scientific thinking. Marcus Pembrey, a Professor of Clinical Genetics at the Institute of Child Health in London, in collaboration with Swedish researcher Lars Olov Bygren, has found evidence in these records of an environmental effect being passed down the generations. They have shown that a famine at critical times in the lives of the grandparents can affect the life expectancy of the grandchildren. This is the first evidence that an environmental effect can be inherited in humans.

In other independent groups around the world, the first hints that there is more to inheritance than just the genes are coming to light. The mechanism by which this extraordinary discovery can be explained is starting to be revealed.

Professor Wolf Reik, at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, has spent years studying this hidden ghost world. He has found that merely manipulating mice embryos is enough to set off 'switches' that turn genes on or off.

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The Genius Sperm Bank Documentary

In the documentary we see that in 1980, a Californian millionaire established a very exclusive foundation for biological determinism or, in other words – a sperm bank. In fact, Robert Graham’s scheme was straight out of a James Bond film. His ‘Repository for Germinal Choice’ was created with the express aim of creating a master race of exceptional individuals.

It was housed - like all plutocratic supremacy ideas should be - deep inside a subterranean concrete bunker. However, the crowning glory of his Blofeld-like plan was that only scientific masterminds could donate. The crème de la crème, you might say - genius seed frozen in liquid nitrogen.

Graham had made his fortune by developing shatterproof plastic spectacle lenses. In 1978, he sold his company, Armorlite, and focused on his real vision – keeping America great by selective breeding. Troubled by his dubious notion that poor "retrograde humans" were gradually diluting America’s gene pool, Graham vowed to do something about it.

“Early in my life it dawned on me that bright, desirable citizens weren't reproducing themselves,” Graham said, during a rare interview in 1983. “The local doctor had only one child, the banker had one child and the richest and most famous man in town was childless.”

In fact, the inspiration for his super-sperm bank was 1946 Nobel prize-winning American geneticist, Hermann Muller. Muller had long advocated establishing sperm banks in which donations from brilliant men would be stored until after their deaths. The media and scientific fraternity rounded on Graham when he first went public with his repository. He was accused of trying to create a "master race." He retreated from the public eye until 1982, when his first ultra achiever baby was born…

By 1983, Graham’s super sperm bank was reputed to have 19 repeat genius donors. Three were former Nobel Prize winners for science and all but one was anonymous, Dr. William B. Shockley. Dr. Shockley of Stanford University was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1956.

Though the donor’s identities were kept secret, other information was available. This included: · weight, height, age · colour of eyes, skin, and hair · various hereditary characteristics, including information on existing offspring · most importantly an IQ of around 180 (that’s approximately 20 people out of the entire British population) Graham also wrote his own comments for each specimen such as: "A very famous scientist. A mover and shaker. And almost a superman." The donors were only known by colour-coded epithets, like Mr. Fuchsia, Mr. White, and Mr. Orange.