Hello and welcome to Backchat. If the Nature podcast is Barack Obama writing you an email in Outlook,

then Backchat is Justin Trudeau wanting to discuss the philosophical implications of quantum computing.

This month, the physics expertise of Canada's Prime Minister, editing human embryos,

and what it's like to try and report for 24 hours straight. I'm Kerry

Smith and I'm delighted to introduce my three Trudeau's David Adam. Hello, I am an editor at

nature and I am partly responsible for the editorials pages. Also, Ewan Calloway. Hello there. I'm a

reporter at nature writing about life. And Richard Van Norton.

Hi, I'm an editor at Nature. Now, coming up this month, 24 hours in a synchrotron.

Politicians being knowledgeable about science should that surprise and delight us as much as it clearly does.

And the fuss or the lack of fuss about human embryo editing. Now, first up to the embryo editing story, which in one form or another has been much in the

news for the past year.

You and set the scene for us.

What was the first report of this, which is now about a year ago, and what's been happening

since?

Yeah, I think it was exactly a year ago.

I think nature first reported that scientists in China had edited, used to use the CRISPR-Castnion genome editing, to try and correct a mutation in unviable human embryos. This mutation was linked to like a blood disease called beta thalassemia. They weren't very effective at doing this, but the report, which is kind of a proof of principle,

proof of lack of principle, played in this firestorm over, you know,

whether we should be altering human embryos or other cells that, you know, go on to form human beings

and contribute to the next generation.

So that was, you know,

really, really it led to a lot of scientific soul searching, conferences, lots of, lots of essays

that David Adam and others got to edit, pro for against, you know, genome editing, germline genome

...