Luke O'Neill If I Ruled The World

Luke O’Neill is a world renowned scientist, author and educator, and professor of biochemistry at Trinity College Dublin

- OWEN SCOTT

We would plant more trees There would be trees everywhere: native trees, trees from your own country planted. Wouldn’t it be marvellous? My wife is planting 6000 Irish trees on some land, with a grant from the Irish Forestry people. There’s this Japanese term, “forest bathing”, which is where you walk through trees and look up. It makes sense, we came from the forest after all.

Healthcare would be made accessible We need to keep working to make healthcare accessible to everyone. What’s the point in all of these new discoveries and medicines if people don’t have access to them? I feel that my discoveries have a lot more meaning to them if they actually help people. This is especially true with the ageing population. There’s a new discovery with Alzheimer’s—people need access to that and the world economy needs to be set up in a way that means people all over the world can access healthcare.