Mark Green

Last updated 11:47, Wednesday, 24 September 2008

I was interested to read about a modern-day twist on the body-snatchers of the 19th century ne’er do wells who would dig up freshly-buried corpses for doctors to use in experiments and anatomy demonstrations.

It seems scientists have been given permission to dig up the body of a Yorkshire landowner who died almost 90 years ago in the hope that it will help them combat a future flu epidemic.

Sir Mark Sykes died in France in 1919 from Spanish flu.

He was buried in a lead coffin which boffins hope may have helped preserve the virus enough to reconstruct its DNA, which could have a similar structure to modern-day bird flu.

The landowner died during the Spanish flu epidemic which killed more than 50 million people when it tok hold at the end of the First World War.

It might not work, it might be impossible to untangle the DNA, but it seems to be a great piece of lateral thinking by the scientists involved.

It certainly fills me with more hope and excitement than the recent ‘God’s particle’ experiment involving the billion-pound Large Hadron Collider which suddenly made ironing seem exciting.

But this scheme could open up a whole new branch of science and medicine, where we go back to the late, greats and use their DNA in much the same way that we use brain-boosting pills and vitamins.

At the risk of turning our great nation into a country of forensic molehills, could we not dig up a few more bodies to provide cures and fixes and possibly even improvements for the human race?

Politicians could be given a cocktail of Churchill, Gladstone and Bevan.

Scientists could be given a dose of Isaac Newton or Alan Turing, thinkers and commentators could take a swig of Thomas Paine or William Wilberforce for common sense and insight.

And everyone should be entitled to Eric Morecambe and Spike Milligan for their funnybones.