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CrowdScience

Can We Make Artificial Organs?

CrowdScience

BBC

Science

4.81K Ratings

🗓️ 29 September 2017

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Human Organs are in short supply. But what if you could grow new ones in the lab? And if you donate your body parts to help others, where might they end up? That's what Sarah Gray wanted to know after making the difficult decision to donate the body of her son, Thomas, to medical science after he died from an incurable disease shortly after being born. Sarah then contacted the scientists whose research has been made possible by Thomas’ donation and discovered just how he is contributing to research which, may one day mean that organ donation is no longer necessary.

Presenter Bobbie Lakhera talks to Sarah about her decision and meets some of the scientists working to create biological artificial lab-grown organs, tissues and even bones.

Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at crowdscience@bbc.co.uk

Presenter: Bobbie Lakhera Producer: Louisa Field

(Image: A doctor taking or delivering a bag containing a human organ for transplant. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and maybe it's when I had a hand in.

0:04.0

I'm Tammy Walker and I produce podcasts for the BBC.

0:08.0

My role is to give new and diverse creators a voice with the opportunity to build a career.

0:12.0

That's the thing I love about podcasts.

0:14.4

You start with just a good idea, but then you have the space to see where it goes.

0:18.4

And doing that at the BBC means we can really run with the best stories

0:21.9

while developing the most unique audio talent.

0:24.4

So if you like what you hear, why not check out the huge range of

0:27.8

podcast we've got on BBC Sounds? The death was inevitable.

0:33.0

There was nothing we could do about the death. There was no surgery, there was no medication. There was nothing we could do to save his life.

0:50.0

But I thought there is something we can do to make his short life and his death productive.

0:57.0

And that was organi and tissue donation. That's author Sarah Gray, whose baby Thomas died shortly after birth.

1:08.0

Her family decided to donate his organs to science.

1:12.0

What they did was rare and exceptional and as we shall hear such

1:16.6

donations are incredibly useful for research and can help save many lives.

1:21.2

We'll come back to Sarah's story later, but the reason we reached out

1:25.7

to her in the first place was because of a question we received from a listener, who also

1:30.4

happens to be a kidney doctor in Brazil.

1:32.4

Hello, God Science, I'm Eduardo from Saint-Pélle. who also happens to be a kidney doctor in Brazil.

1:32.7

Hello, crowd science.

1:33.9

I'm Eduardo from Sao Paulo, Brazil,

1:35.9

and I'd like to know how far are we from making artificial human organs?

...

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