BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.

Hello, I'm Tina Dehealey.

You're listening to Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4.

A space to ask one big question about one big story.

Today that question is, what's wrong with a designer baby?

The whole world has been up in arms about a man in China, a Chinese scientist who

claims he's created the world's first ever genetically edited babies, two little girls.

Suddenly, an obscure genetics conference

which was taking place in Hong Kong yesterday

became front-page news.

I wanted to speak to someone who was there. I am one of the

BBC's China Correspondence. This is Robin Brant. I'm in a car heading back

from Shanghai's Pudong Airport after two very productive days in Hong Kong.

You were at this conference.

What happened yesterday?

Well so this is a three day conference, the second human genome conference, which really was a kind of a gathering, I suppose, of world experts. I was talking to one guy who did his PhD with a guy I went on to win the

Nobel Prize he was telling me. So they spent three days talking about the latest

developments in human genomes, but it was, you know, taken over really by this sensational revelation on

Monday or Monday in China time anyway by this scientist who said that he had

for the first time ever successfully managed to create genetically edited children, twin girls who

you said were born in Shenzhen which is in the south of China a couple of weeks ago.

So you know we didn't know if he was going to turn up I mean

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