By Helen Soteriou

The Phoenix Theatre was the setting for Café Scientifique, with the man who is best known for two things: his jet black hair, and corresponding tash, and his work on assisted reproduction. The event sold out weeks ago; 200 people eager to see "the man off the TV" they were not sure how to address.

On this stuffy Tuesday evening, amidst a sea of floral patterns, there were only a couple of cups of coffee to be seen. General conversations on wedding receptions and hockey practice filled the air outside the auditorium, whilst people waited for 8pm to arrive. There was the obligatory confusion with seat numbers, one woman defending her front row place with the argument that she would not get the same view from the seat behind, which led to great expectations that lively debate would follow. Sadly, this was not the case.

Declining the use of a microphone, Professor Winston began by posing the question on tonight’s menu: "Assisted reproduction, what next?", and the moral and ethical issues that this raises. He then presented a number of newspaper headlines ("Sixty three-year old woman becomes a mother") to show where we are at the moment, and followed this with a history of theories of reproduction, including the view that semen contained little people.

He stated that it was implausible to argue that human life begins at conception, and that fertilisation was a continuous process.

The crowd was hooked. Winston continued, saying that nature can only select out abnormal embryos, but we can play God. "This is the greatest thing we can do," he said. "If we have science, we have freewill; we can make choices."

"Selecting an embryo is a private matter, and nobody else should interfere," he said.

Finally, he came to cloning. He believes that there is no argument against cloning except one, and that is that the embryo may suffer long-term, unpredictable effects. As for whether controversial scientist Dr. Panos Zavos has cloned a human, Winston stated that in spite of all Zavos’s "boasting", he does not think he has been successful.

The audience were then let loose. Fewer than 10 had issues they wanted to raise. There were no heated debates. In a disappointingly bland question-and-answer session, few people asked for clarification or explanation. One wanted to know whether we should bother with cloning. Others argued we should focus on current issues, such as adoption, while another regretted that we seem to be heading towards asexual reproduction.