Question: does any of your work involve harming something

Nicola Ibberson answered on 11 Jun 2012:

I guess you could say so – in my work you have to harm a patient to obtain a blood sample from them, and then you may mentally harm them by giving them a very difficult test result, which may tell them that they are going to develop a severe, fatal disease later in their life. We also harm bacteria by altering their genetics, but this helps us to understand human disease a lot better. Sometimes you have to do the ‘greater good’ – i.e. harming something/someone in order to help a much larger group of people/animals.