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BBC Inside Science

Rules and ethics of genome editing, Gender, sex and sport, Hog roasts at Stonehenge

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Technology, Science

4.51.3K Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2019

⏱️ 31 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When the news broke last December that Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui had successfully edited the genomes of twin girls using the technique known as CRISPR-Cas9, scientists and the public were rightly outraged that such a procedure had taken place. Jiankui is currently being investigated by Chinese authorities for breaking legal and ethical guidelines on human genome editing. This week, in the journal Nature, several top scientists have called for a global moratorium on gene editing in the clinic. Which might be surprising, because we thought these rules were already in place. Dr. Helen O’Neill, a Lecturer in Reproductive and Molecular Genetics at UCL explains to Adam Rutherford what the current rules are, and they debate whether we need a ‘voluntary moratorium’. It’s hard to miss the current discussions on sex, gender, and biology. One arena where debates are getting quite heated is sport. In 2016, the International Olympic Committee announced that male-to-female transgender athletes will be allowed to compete in the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, without having gender reassignment surgery. They do have to demonstrate reduced blood testosterone levels (usually achieved through hormone therapy). Female-to-male transgender athletes can compete ‘without restriction’. Gerard Conway, Professor of Reproductive Endocrinology at the Institute for Women’s Health at University College London, joins Adam to help us understand many of the issues concerning testosterone and its putative effect on athletic performance. The festival hog roast has been happening for more than four and a half thousand years. Hundreds of pig bones have been unearthed from henge sites including Durrington Walls near Stonehenge in Wiltshire – and these have helped put together a picture of life in Neolithic Britain, especially when people came together from all over the country, and brought pigs with them for big feasts. Dr. Richard Madgewick at Cardiff University carried out isotopic analysis on the pig bones to work out just how far people travelled with their pigs to attend these social events. Producer: Fiona Roberts

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.

0:04.7

Join me as I serve up personal conversations with my sensational guests.

0:08.8

Do a leap interviews, Tim Cook.

0:11.2

Technology doesn't want to be good or bad.

0:15.0

It's in the hands of the creator.

0:16.7

It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room.

0:20.7

If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes, you're doing the wrong

0:25.4

thing.

0:26.4

Julie, at your service.

0:27.4

Listen to all episodes on BBC Sales.

0:31.4

Hello You, this is Inside Science from BBC Radio 4, first broadcast on the 14th of March

0:36.2

2019 and I'm Adam Rutherford.

0:39.0

This is my last one for a few weeks.

0:41.0

Marnie and Garth will be scienceifying in my absence, but it's a really meaty

0:44.9

program today both metaphorically and edibly. We're tackling two of the biggest ethical debates in science.

0:51.1

In a minute, we're going to be talking about gene editing in babies

0:53.8

following on from calls for a global moratorium on the clinical use of new forms of

0:58.3

genetic engineering on humans. And gender, transgender, and biology is one of the defining issues of our time and one of the spheres in which that is most significant is sport.

1:09.0

The test case for the female runner Kasta Semenya is drawing to its conclusion in the next few weeks, so we're diving

1:14.6

into the complex murky relationship between gender, biology and sport.

1:19.1

And to finish off, it's supper time, and we have a hog roast in Stonehenge not a music festival but evidence

1:25.2

of huge pig-based feasts in the late Neolithic with pigs brought from up and down

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