Health risks of bin strikes, measles warning and ethics
Inside Health
BBC
4.4 • 575 Ratings
🗓️ 29 July 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With bin strikes in Birmingham having gone on for months, James Gallagher heads to the Small Heath area of the city to ask what the health risks could be from rubbish left on the streets. He meets campaigners Shafaq, Ashid and Danni from End the Bin Strikes who tell him what residents are worried about. To discuss what diseases could be brewing and how they might spread, he's also joined by Professor Malcolm Bennett from the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science at the University of Nottingham and Martin Goldberg, Lecturer in Microbiology from Birmingham City University.
Following news that a child who contracted measles has died at a hospital in Liverpool, James also talks to Professor of Children's Health Helen Bedford from University College London about the risk of measles in the UK. And, over the past week James has been reporting on the news that children have born using a technique which uses two women’s eggs and a man’s sperm to prevent mitochondrial disease being passed from mother to child. The babies inherit around 0.1% of their overall genetic code from the donor woman. The UK became the first country in the world to make it legal back in 2015 after a big ethical debate about what should and shouldn’t be allowed. These kinds of ethical issues are becoming more and more pressing as technology is revolutionising fertility science. To discuss what questions we could be asking next, James speaks to Dr John Appleby, Co-Director for Medical Ethics and Law at Lancaster University.
Presenter: James Gallagher Production: Tom Bonnett with Debbie Kilbride and Minnie Harrop Made in collaboration with the Open University
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, you're about to listen to a BBC podcast, and I'm Ed Gamble, host of another BBC podcast, |
| 0:05.4 | The Traitors Uncloaked. But my show is available only on BBC Sounds, just like Ellis and John's |
| 0:10.6 | Saturday bonus episodes, the Pop Top Ten podcast with Scott Mills and Ryland, and comedy specials |
| 0:16.2 | from the likes of Harriet Kemsley, Susie Ruffel and Rommas Shranger Nathan. However, and maybe I'm biased, it's really all about the traitors uncloked. |
| 0:24.3 | So for a whole bunch of exclusive scoops and podcasts, listen only on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:30.5 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:34.2 | Hello there and welcome to the Inside Health podcast. I'm James Gallagher. Today, we're on the streets |
| 0:39.6 | of Birmingham where the bin workers are out on strike. We look to the left here now. Once it starts |
| 0:44.7 | piling up, people think it's okay to dump here. We look at the people that are just living on the side |
| 0:49.3 | of the road. They've got all the windows closed. We're asking what could be festering in those bin bags |
| 0:53.9 | and whether it's making people ill. |
| 0:56.2 | And there are calls for more people to get vaccinated against measles |
| 0:59.4 | after a child died in Liverpool. |
| 1:01.9 | It's so highly infectious, it's considered to be one of the most infectious human diseases. |
| 1:07.4 | So it takes enormous effort to control it. |
| 1:10.6 | We'll be discussing whether we can turn the tide on measles. |
| 1:13.6 | And then, you'll have heard the first babies have been born in the UK |
| 1:17.6 | that were made from two women and one man. |
| 1:20.6 | So we're heading to the frontiers of fertility science, |
| 1:23.6 | making babies out of skin cells, growing them outside the womb, |
| 1:26.6 | editing their DNA to prevent disease, |
| 1:29.3 | and ask, where should we draw the line? |
... |
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