•Shekhar Gupta: If stem cells, cloning,cancer research, molecular biology are considered the frontier areas of today's medical science, then my guest this week is its superstar. In fact, she's been called the queen of that business. Professor Elizabeth Blackburn, welcome to Walk The Talk.

Elizabeth Blackburn: Thankyou. I'm thrilled to be here.

•Shekhar Gupta: You have an added distinction, you've been fired by President Bush.

Elizabeth Blackburn: Yes.

•Shekhar Gupta: It's a nice thing to have on your T-shirt, 'I was fired by George W. Bush'.

Elizabeth Blackburn: For doing what I just do, which is to say "get the science right, get the science right".. That's my job as a scientist to do scince and tell my research team 'make sure you get the science right, make sure you get the science right'. That wasn't a very popular attitude in the Commission or the Council that I was serving on as an advisor.

•Shekhar Gupta: Because people confuse faith with science.

Elizabeth Blackburn: Well, yes and I was serving on a commission whose mandate really was to..

•Shekhar Gupta: The Commission on Bioethics

Elizabeth Blackburn: The President's Council on Bioethics which is a federal commission whose mandate it is to advise on National Science policy, for national purposes. So I thought it was very important to get atleast the science right and then one makes decisions after that, once one has got the science right and so it was very interesting and I believe, quite characteristic of other aspects of this past administration that there was this wish not to get the science right and that ofcourse is very antithetical to how scientists feel.

... contd.