Amazing video! I'm getting everyone I can to watch it :) It's a little sad that, I believe, the BBC wouldn't run something like this at prime time on BBC1...

That said, I'm a bit worried about some of the superficial responses presented though (especially from the student teachers!) but I feel Richard P Grant and Seth Shostak "get it" in their quotes.

Simply, science is the ultimate tool in the /progression/ of humankind. I don't consider medicine, politics or global warming as separate things, as your video seems to. They're all part of the same thing - human advancement.

Dr Chris Langley's response seems naïve. He stresses that we need to question how important "technology" is (using MP3 players and the military) as examples of why the endless march of technology can be bad. But his counterexamples (universal water and Internet access) similarly demand the onwards march of technology! Just because moral and ethical questions might need to be asked does NOT mean we need to question the need for technological advances in general, just /which ones/ we pursue.

The way I like to look at science is that if we're not going to pursue it, we might as well keel over and die before a lack of advanced technology does it for us... which is perhaps why I'm rather passionate about it ;-)

My passion for science is a reasonably new thing, though. Back when I was in school, I found science really boring and the whole point of it was not relayed at all (it doesn't help when your teachers show no passion for the subject - surely science teachers should be scientists?). So hats off to you if you manage to get even a handful of kids passionate about it, because who knows what developments they'll have a hand in?!