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Mint Slows. Full terms at mintmobile.com. Hello,

1:28

welcome to another week of science with more

1:30

than a medical tinge. As

1:33

more consumers buy kits to test the zoo

1:35

of bacteria that live in our guts, we

1:37

ask whether there's any science to back

1:39

up these tests and find

1:42

out what links the price of monkeys

1:44

to an inside science outing to see

1:46

some lab grown brain blobs. We'll

1:48

also be reflecting on the life

1:50

of Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel

1:52

Kahneman. First

1:55

up, the microbiome. I

1:57

think increasing numbers of us are aware

1:59

that We're not just individual

2:01

homo sapiens, we're also home to

2:03

a zoo of trillions of tiny

2:05

things that live in ecosystems on

2:07

our skin, in our intestines,

2:10

mouths, vaginas, everywhere

2:12

scientists look really. These

2:15

collections of bacteria, fungi, viruses

2:17

and occasionally parasites produce a

2:19

range of chemicals which can have

2:21

a huge impact on our health. That's

2:23

why you may have seen probiotics and

2:26

gut-friendly foods appearing in the supermarket. It's

2:29

a rapidly advancing research area and

2:31

that research has turned into a

2:33

multi-million pound industry, including

2:35

testing your own microbiome.

2:39

Often the deal is that in

2:41

exchange for a sample of your

2:43

poo, companies offer a comprehensive scan

2:45

of your gut microbiome and make

2:47

personalized recommendations. But how accurate are

2:50

these tests and what can they

2:52

really say? Earlier

2:54

I spoke with Tim Spector, Professor

2:56

of Genetic Epidemiology at King's College

2:59

London and Scientific Co-founder of personal

3:01

nutrition company Zoe, and

3:03

also to Jacques Rivel, Professor of

3:06

Microbiology and Immunology at the University

3:08

of Maryland, who's written a paper

3:10

calling for more regulation in the

3:12

testing industry. Jacques

3:15

started by telling us about his

3:17

recent unpublished experiment, which involved sending

3:19

a great deal of the same

3:21

poo through the US Post. in

4:00

composition. Oh wow, so I

4:02

mean is that a case of some people

4:05

being more accurate and some people being less

4:07

accurate or are they all totally random? It

4:10

felt a lot of randomness even some

4:12

companies where we send three sample you

4:15

know three of the same sample to

4:17

one company we had two

4:19

sample that said more or less the same answer

4:21

the third sample gave a completely different answer so

4:25

even on the level of what they

4:27

called wellness or healthiness we

4:29

know the methods that are being used to

4:32

perform those tests are not very standardized there's

4:34

different ways to do it there's you

4:36

know more rough way more advanced

4:39

way to do it and I think

4:41

this is creating all this range of

4:44

results. Tim bringing

4:46

you in what do you reckon to that it sounds

4:48

a bit like a wild west outlet? Yeah

4:50

I know I mean I you know read

4:52

Shacks report with interest and 32

4:56

companies and yeah most of them be

4:58

extremely worried about sending my samples too.

5:01

Yeah it is worrying and but

5:04

I think we have to be careful not to

5:06

throw the baby out with the bathwater and realize

5:08

there are some companies and I think I'd

5:11

like to think Zoe is one of the

5:14

more responsible companies that does have

5:16

high standards we publish in

5:18

the best journals like Nature Medicine and our

5:21

results and methods are transparent

5:23

and open but most

5:25

of them are not I do

5:29

agree and it is a worry

5:31

and but it's also it's also true in other

5:33

areas you know it's no different to the allergy

5:35

field or many other these other ones so we

5:37

shouldn't think it's only the microbiome that has this

5:39

problem. Let's get into the

5:42

tests if you want to test your

5:44

gut's microbiome Tim how does one

5:46

actually work? You

5:48

first need a stool sample and

5:50

you send that off to a laboratory and

5:53

in that laboratory they extract

5:55

the DNA from that sample

5:57

and most of that DNA

5:59

is can be coming from microbes.

6:02

That DNA then goes into genetic

6:05

analyzers just like you

6:07

would for human DNA and

6:10

through a whole series of databases and

6:13

computer programs it sort

6:15

of works out like a backward

6:17

jigsaw puzzle what bugs

6:19

there were that had those genes in

6:21

them, those particular combinations of DNA and

6:24

so you can identify them that way.

6:27

Isn't a lot of the advice that you end

6:29

up with about what to

6:31

eat to feed your microbiome once

6:34

you know what microbiome you have. Isn't

6:36

it pretty much the same information that

6:38

you give anybody whether you knew the

6:41

specific species that lived in them or not.

6:43

It's kind of eat lots of plants, nice

6:46

variation, not too much sugar, the

6:49

usual stuff, more broccoli. I

6:51

think there is generic information that is useful

6:53

to everybody. It's important to

6:55

note that at Zoe we don't just

6:58

use the microbiome result we do the

7:00

fat, the sugar and the gut health

7:02

is how we offer our advice and

7:04

at the moment the information we

7:06

give is still relatively crude

7:08

to what I think it can be in a few

7:10

years time. We can test me microbiome

7:12

now whether you're a coffee drinker or not but

7:16

we don't have enough of those examples yet but I

7:18

think as these databases grow we

7:20

will be able to do much more. And

7:23

Jack that's something you agree on that there is

7:25

going to be a lot more granularity on and

7:28

therefore use from knowing more about

7:30

a microbiome in the future. Yeah

7:33

no absolutely but this information is

7:35

built on the consumers money not

7:37

on investors money

7:39

like it's been traditionally done

7:41

in the biotech industry. You

7:44

know right now a lot of those company are

7:46

generating a lot of data which is very

7:49

very valuable to not just them but

7:51

to others and it's is

7:53

genetic data, behavioral hygiene

7:56

and lifestyle data and

7:58

health data that is coming. collected

8:00

by those companies. And on

8:02

top of that, those companies are making

8:04

people pay to give them all this

8:06

information. And then they can leverage this

8:08

information for generating more money. I'm not

8:10

saying that Zoe is doing this. They

8:12

actually that's not the kind of the

8:14

model they're building, but there

8:17

are many, many companies that are

8:19

leveraging consumers for this information. And

8:21

it's, it's more than than you

8:23

think. Tim, any come back on that?

8:26

Well, we're not making any

8:28

money on these on these at the moment.

8:30

So the investors are still

8:32

paying for everything. And

8:35

the consumers do. I think what Jack is

8:37

talking about is many companies start with

8:40

just marketing. And, you

8:42

know, Zoe spent several years just doing science.

8:45

Ultimately, you know, we

8:48

are sharing all our data with the community.

8:51

We want to publish as many papers and help

8:53

the scientific community as much as possible. Jack,

8:55

from the outside, how easy is

8:57

it to evaluate how good a

8:59

microbiome test is if you're just

9:02

a normal consumer? We actually

9:04

interviewed people who have used some of those

9:06

tests. And obviously, you know, I just

9:08

want to say it was done in the US only.

9:11

And we asked those people what they thought,

9:13

how difficult it was to find, to find

9:15

information, to decide on which one to do.

9:18

And it was difficult. People

9:20

don't get the information, even

9:22

publishing in very

9:24

prestigious scientific journals, which for us

9:26

scientists means a lot. For people

9:29

in the street, it just means

9:31

very little. It feels

9:33

like these microbiome testing

9:36

places that you use, Jack, kind

9:38

of blur the lines between

9:40

lifestyle wellness, which as far as

9:42

I can tell, I think you

9:45

can say pretty much anything. Jack,

9:47

why is this a problem if people get the

9:49

wrong results? Well, we talked about

9:52

the gut microbiome, but you have

9:54

to understand those tests also exist

9:56

for other microbiome on your body,

9:58

your skin microbiome. the urogenital

10:01

microbiome. Some of those companies

10:03

are even asking you to

10:05

buy some of the products they

10:07

sell which are not regulated

10:10

and they're asking you to put

10:13

them on your skin, put them on your vagina

10:15

or even eat them. And

10:17

those products are not drugs, they're

10:19

not regulated and couldn't close arms.

10:22

Right, right. I just want to bring Tim

10:24

in. Do you think that the science is

10:26

still at the stage where actually we shouldn't

10:29

really be having supplements or

10:32

putting things on particular microbiomes. It

10:34

should be more just encouraging the

10:36

ones that we want by eating

10:38

the right things. Well

10:41

I'm always a believer that real whole

10:43

food is the best way to deal

10:45

with your microbiome but I think in

10:47

the future we are going to have

10:49

things like personalized probiotics,

10:52

personalized prebiotics and

10:54

a whole range of future products as we understand

10:56

this whole field more. And if

10:58

that means a regular gut health

11:00

check like going to the dentist, well you

11:03

know in my view that's going to be a

11:05

good thing. Tim do you think given

11:07

the potential of microbiome

11:11

maybe it should be regulated like

11:13

a medical intervention? I

11:15

think it should be regulated. I don't think

11:18

it should be, it seems a medical

11:20

intervention because that would

11:22

actually stop innovation because

11:24

to register these things as medical

11:27

devices means that you have

11:29

to fix everything at a point in time, you can't change

11:31

it. So often by the time it

11:33

gets to the public it's a product that's four or five

11:35

years out of date. And at the

11:37

moment there's no regulation, let's be fairly sure about

11:40

this. So a more basic

11:42

one that says you have to present

11:44

your methods, you have to do some

11:46

simple reproducibility checks. So something in between.

11:50

Jack you called for more regulation in your

11:52

science paper, is what Tim outlined roughly what

11:54

you had in mind? I think

11:56

some level of regulation is definitely

11:58

required. stamp of approval

12:01

on the particular given test. So

12:03

there's still some hurdle to

12:05

pass to make sure that the

12:07

consumers inform and can say, yeah, this company,

12:10

I can trust them just like when I

12:12

go get my blood tested, I get

12:15

the results and I know the results

12:17

are right because it's regulated. Thank you,

12:19

Tim Spector and Jacques Ravel. The microbiome is

12:21

a vast topic so if you have any

12:23

questions about it feel free to send them

12:26

to us inside science

12:28

at bbc.co.uk. Yesterday

12:31

afternoon the death was announced of one of

12:33

the greats in psychology, Nobel

12:35

Prize-winning Daniel Kahneman. Over

12:38

the course of his long career he

12:40

became the key voice in the field

12:42

of behavioral economics and in his best-selling

12:45

book Thinking, Fast and Slow, he argued

12:47

that really we aren't the rational animals

12:49

we like to think we are. Often

12:51

we act out of instinct. Here

12:54

he is talking to Claudia Hammond, presenter

12:56

of Radio 4's psychology program All

12:58

in the Mind. Every one of

13:00

us has that experience that there are

13:02

some thoughts that just come to mind so

13:05

if I say two plus two something comes

13:07

to your mind and then

13:09

there are thoughts that you've got to produce laboriously

13:11

so if I say 17 times 24 well nothing

13:13

comes to mind

13:16

you've got to produce that number by

13:18

set of rules and it

13:20

takes effort and it takes time and

13:22

so there are really those two kinds

13:24

of thinking then there are many blends

13:26

of the two. You give

13:29

all sorts of examples in your books of things you can

13:31

you know test yourself on and I have to admit I

13:33

fell for nearly all of them and one of the ones

13:35

I particularly liked was this bat and ball example.

13:37

Can you tell us about that one? The

13:40

bat and ball example is actually fairly

13:42

difficult many people miss it. It's a

13:44

bat and a ball together cost a

13:46

dollar ten and the bat cost a

13:49

dollar more than the ball. How much

13:51

does the ball cost? Now

13:53

the correct answer is actually five cents.

13:56

I instantly said ten cents. Yes but

13:58

everybody everybody thinks then

14:00

since and that's the point of the example.

14:03

And Claudia Hammond joins me now. Don't worry, everyone

14:05

got it wrong. I know, I still get it

14:07

wrong now, honestly, on the way here I was

14:09

thinking through that again thinking, can I remember again,

14:12

why is it that it's wrong, why is it

14:14

that it's not 10 and working it out, but

14:16

it happens every time. Now

14:18

you've interviewed Daniel Kahneman several times over

14:20

the years, can I ask what he

14:22

was like? Oh he was really

14:24

nice, I remember well him coming to Bush House

14:26

in London as it was in those days and

14:30

he's really sort of self-deprecating. I like the

14:32

fact that he admits that he falls for all

14:34

these things as well, it's not that he's so

14:36

sort of clever that he was above all that,

14:38

that he falls for these same traps, these sort

14:40

of mental traps that we have. And

14:43

he was also, for someone who'd written

14:45

a best-selling book that was selling millions and

14:47

so he has to have been interviewed, you

14:49

know, hundreds of times, he really took notice

14:51

of my questions and you could see he

14:53

wasn't just going through the motions, he was

14:56

really thinking really thoughtfully about how to answer

14:58

them as if he was sort of appreciating

15:00

that moment of us discussing something interesting because

15:02

he was so interested in how we think. And

15:04

it is a best-selling book still, I mean if

15:06

you go to an airport you will see it

15:08

there in the business section. Yeah

15:11

and it's interesting because it's more than 500 pages

15:13

long, I have read

15:15

it and it's really good, it's really interesting

15:17

and it is quite dense, I mean a

15:19

lot of it is quite like a textbook

15:21

because it is absolutely packed with studies. I

15:23

would be really interested to know how many

15:25

people have actually read the whole thing and

15:27

whether people kind of expect it to be

15:29

that complicated when they start it, you know,

15:31

kind of thing I love but not everyone

15:33

would. But not many noble

15:36

laureates actually write a best-selling book, so

15:38

what was it about thinking

15:40

fast and slow that caught the imagination of

15:42

the public? I don't know, we're

15:45

all interested in a way in what we're like

15:47

and how we think because we are inevitably interested

15:49

in ourselves and that he

15:51

was saying that there are patterns

15:53

to our irrationality. So

15:55

sometimes people will characterise it as him just saying,

15:57

oh we're all irrational and we think the wrong

15:59

thing. all the time. That's not what he

16:01

was saying in a way. He's saying that we

16:03

make these predictable mistakes because we take

16:06

these mental shortcuts and that we need to

16:08

because otherwise it would take a really long

16:10

time to work everything out but sometimes because

16:12

of this fast system one thinking that we

16:15

do need we sometimes come to the wrong

16:17

decisions. Okay so can we have an example

16:19

of of one of those types of patterning

16:21

of wrong thinking? One of the things he

16:23

talked about a lot was something called anchoring

16:26

and this is where a number that can

16:28

be a completely random number then influences your

16:30

thinking. So if I were to say to

16:32

you, think about Gandhi,

16:34

the famous Gandhi. Did he

16:36

die before the age of nine? No,

16:39

no, no obviously sort of stupid question.

16:41

How old do you think he was when he died? 80? Oh

16:46

you're going for a high number there. Trust

16:48

you to ruin the experiment. Sorry. If you

16:50

ask people that question the average age they

16:52

say is 50 right which is quite young

16:54

but if instead you ask them beforehand was

16:57

Gandhi over the age of 140 when

16:59

he died? Another

17:01

ridiculous question because nobody's lived that long.

17:05

Then the average age people give is 67 so

17:08

this completely irrelevant number of was

17:10

he nine was the 140 influences

17:13

people's thinking and in fact the actual

17:15

answer you weren't that far off was

17:17

78. Oh I was just thinking of

17:19

the pictures where he just looks you

17:22

know like he's had a

17:24

life. Yeah. So Daniel Kahneman, 90 when

17:26

he died, what

17:28

would you say was his key legacy?

17:30

Well I think in a way he

17:32

has brought psychology to the public eye

17:35

and there have now been you know

17:37

dozens of psychology bestsellers since then and

17:40

what is interesting is he was applying psychological

17:42

insights to economics

17:45

and so in a way it's the field

17:47

of behavioral economics that has made psychology much

17:49

better known and that there is always research

17:51

going on around the world that people can

17:53

use in their everyday lives and that now

17:55

places are much more interested in listening to

17:57

psychologists when it comes to decisions about politics.

18:00

and to know that there are things that they have

18:02

to offer. Claudia Hammond, thank you

18:04

very much for joining me. Now the current

18:06

series of All in the Minds just ended

18:08

but if people want more psychology when are

18:10

you next on? The new

18:13

series will actually be on at 9.30 in the

18:15

morning on a Tuesday. We're moving times and that's

18:17

on in the middle of May but in the

18:19

meantime there's Daniel Kahneman's interview on BBC Sounds on

18:22

All in the Mind that's a long interview and

18:24

also hundreds and hundreds of other episodes of All

18:26

in the Mind for all your psychology needs. Excellent

18:29

plug there from Claudia, thank you for joining

18:31

us. Recently

18:33

a surprising headline caught my

18:35

eye. Apparently the global price

18:37

of monkeys has crashed but

18:40

why and how is it related to

18:42

the science happening in labs around the

18:44

world and in China where most of

18:46

the lab monkey farms are located? To

18:49

find out more we asked China correspondent

18:51

at the Financial Times Elina Olcott. The

18:54

value of lab monkeys

18:56

skyrocketed during the pandemic globally

18:59

because you had a whole

19:01

host of pharmaceutical companies launching

19:04

COVID vaccine studies and this

19:06

required non-human primates to do

19:09

studies on. At the same

19:11

time China banned export of

19:13

non-human primates. They're the major

19:16

source of supplies for these

19:18

monkeys globally which sent prices

19:20

rocketing in the US. Pre-pandemic

19:22

in China per primate it

19:24

was about 4,000 US dollars.

19:28

That sky rocketed to 26,000 US dollars in 2020 and it's now

19:30

fallen to about 10,000 US dollars. This

19:37

is really down to the

19:39

fact that you have falling demand for

19:41

COVID vaccines. At the same time

19:43

there's been a downturn in the

19:46

Chinese biotech pharmaceutical space. There's various

19:48

headwinds in the industry which

19:50

means that drug development has

19:52

slowed down and therefore the things

19:54

that you need in order to develop

19:57

drugs like non-human primates

19:59

has. fallen in price.

20:01

Drugmakers use monkeys for testing

20:03

because regulators actually say that they're very

20:05

important to prove the safety

20:08

of drugs in early research

20:10

because of their anatomical and behavioural

20:12

similarities to humans. But it's important

20:14

to note that monkeys actually represent

20:17

a really small portion of the

20:19

total animals used in clinical trials,

20:22

fewer than one in 1,000 in

20:25

the European Union and approximately three

20:27

in 1,000 in the US. But

20:30

monkeys have really been important in many

20:33

major medical advancements, for

20:35

example the polio vaccine and

20:37

life support systems for premature

20:39

babies. Thank you very much

20:41

to Ellen Olcott. The price

20:44

of monkeys sparked a conversation among

20:46

the Inside Science team. No

20:48

one likes the idea of animal suffering

20:51

and there's a mantra of governing testing.

20:53

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

20:56

But medical research still needs doing.

20:58

So what are the potential alternatives

21:01

to using animals? One

21:03

of the most exciting developments in this

21:05

space is organoids. They're little

21:08

organ-like clumps of cells grown

21:10

from human stem cells. They

21:12

replicate the most basic parts of

21:14

a specific organ in our body. There

21:17

are heart organoids, skin organoids, pancreas

21:19

organoids, but in my personal opinion

21:21

the most interesting ones are coming from

21:24

the brain, also called

21:26

neural organoids. To

21:28

find out more about them we went to visit a

21:30

lab in Cambridge to look at some

21:32

petri dishes with Professor Madeleine Lancaster.

21:35

Yeah, so they're sitting on this clear platform

21:38

that's permeable, so the fluid

21:40

underneath can get through, but

21:42

then there's air above. So they get plenty of

21:45

oxygen from the air above, plenty

21:47

of nutrients from the media below.

21:49

Okay, so the tissue in that

21:52

is the same stuff that's in my

21:54

head. Yeah, it's

21:56

neurons and it's the supportive

21:59

glia like astrocytes. and even

22:01

oligodendrocytes. And the neurons, they're

22:03

doing exactly what they would normally do

22:05

inside an actual brain. They're connecting with

22:07

each other, they're sending

22:09

signals to each other. They're sending

22:11

signals to each other. They

22:15

are proper brain blobs. They're

22:17

still pretty small, obviously. It's

22:20

millions of neurons connected to each other.

22:23

Our brains have, you know,

22:26

a hundred billion neurons. It's a

22:28

completely different scale in terms of

22:30

the kind of network

22:32

that you might be able to get in an organoid.

22:35

But it gives us a simpler version that

22:37

we can use to ask

22:39

important questions. Madeline

22:41

is not just any researcher. Over

22:44

a decade ago, she essentially started

22:46

an entire field of research when

22:48

she first created a neural organoid.

22:51

And, she admits, that wasn't exactly

22:53

on purpose. I was actually trying

22:55

to culture neural stem cells and

22:57

neurons in a classic 2D

22:59

kind of setup like people have

23:01

done for decades. And

23:03

I had some issues with my coding

23:06

of the dish. So cells don't normally like to

23:08

stick to something made of glass, right? So

23:11

you have to put special proteins and things on it.

23:14

And my protein mixture just had

23:16

gone bad. So what ended up

23:18

happening was the cells, instead of sticking, they ended up

23:20

forming these 3D floating balls.

23:23

And I just remember looking at them in the

23:25

microscope the next day and thinking,

23:28

wow, what is this? They've made

23:30

something really interesting. And then it

23:32

sort of became a side project of mine.

23:35

And then that's what turned into these neural

23:37

organoids that we work with. That

23:39

list is a field, basically, based

23:42

on something that went wrong with

23:44

a petri dish. Yeah, basically. These

23:48

brain blobs can help people study how

23:50

the brain evolves and why it goes

23:52

wrong, as well as offering a guinea

23:54

pig alternative for drug screening and development,

23:57

which could reduce the amount of animal

23:59

testing. But as I watched

24:01

the Petri dishes filled with these

24:03

little white blobs of brain, my

24:05

mind started wondering where this could

24:08

go. These are human neurons. Are

24:10

we creating mini-brains? And

24:12

if so, could these clumps of cells

24:15

become conscious and think or feel?

24:17

Which seems ethically complicated. Hi,

24:20

I'm Sarah Chan. I'm a reader in

24:22

bioethics at the Centre for Biomedicine, Self

24:25

and Society at the University of Edinburgh.

24:28

Is it possible, Sarah, that we're

24:30

creating mini-brains of some kind in

24:32

the lab? It's

24:34

important to realise that at the

24:36

stage we're at with neural

24:39

organoid research at the moment, we are

24:41

very, very far away from anything that

24:43

could be called a brain in a

24:46

dish. So our brains are sufficiently

24:49

complex. They're made up of so

24:51

many, many cells,

24:54

neurons, other sorts of brain cells,

24:56

organised in really quite complicated ways

24:58

that what's being done at the moment with

25:00

neural organoids in a dish is just nowhere

25:02

near that level of complexity. That

25:05

suggests that there is a border,

25:07

there is a line somewhere where

25:09

we are close to brains

25:12

in the dish. There

25:15

might come a line where we would get close

25:17

to that. Eventually, it

25:19

might be possible to develop towards something like that.

25:21

But we're a very, very long way from it

25:24

at the moment. I'm just

25:26

wondering what red flags would we

25:28

need to pass to feel that

25:30

we're closer to a

25:32

point of worrying about the ethics of doing

25:35

this kind of research? That's

25:37

a really good question. How would we

25:39

know? How would we know if we're

25:42

concerned about what would happen if

25:44

we were to create consciousness in a dish? How

25:46

would we know to stop before we got

25:49

there? On the science front, we

25:52

do still need to study actual brains,

25:54

not neural organoids, in order to start

25:56

to understand the basis of consciousness.

26:00

Madeline Lancaster and her peers have been

26:02

thinking about this from the start. As

26:05

soon as we saw this neural activity, we were already thinking,

26:07

you know, what does this mean? It's

26:10

very difficult to measure consciousness, but we do

26:12

know a lot about what is required to

26:14

be a conscious human being. And

26:17

we know a lot about, for example, the

26:20

developmental events that have to have happened, the

26:23

experiences that need to have occurred, right?

26:26

The brain has to have had

26:28

some experiences to be conscious of. And

26:31

so there's a lot of these kinds of things that we can say,

26:34

well, do the organoids have that or

26:36

not? Okay. So to give you an

26:38

example, if the technology gets better

26:41

and you can actually grow a much

26:43

bigger organoid with a blood supply, if

26:46

you grow one up for nine

26:49

months versus a fetus

26:52

growing for nine months, what would be the

26:54

difference? The body. The

26:57

lack of a body is very important. And

26:59

disembodied brain is not conscious. It

27:03

has nothing to experience, no way

27:05

to form a conscious experience. And

27:08

so that's a really important part that obviously these

27:11

organoids don't have. On top

27:13

of that, it's the organization. And

27:15

these organoids don't have that organization. So

27:18

they don't have a cerebral

27:20

cortex that's in the right

27:22

organization with a cerebellum and

27:24

then a Pons adjacent to

27:26

that and the thalamus and

27:28

all of these important networks

27:30

with a particular connectivity organoids

27:32

don't have. But we're thinking

27:34

about these things going forward. If we reach that

27:36

point, then obviously it would be something we need to be

27:38

concerned about. Is this an area of

27:41

science that needs to be regulated? And

27:43

if so, what would that even look like? It's

27:46

an ongoing discussion. I don't think that

27:48

there is really consensus on

27:50

what that should look like. It's

27:53

at the moment the regulation

27:55

surrounds the stem cells that we

27:57

start with, which I think is good. because

28:00

these come from donors who

28:02

need to give their consent to do work

28:05

with their faith. And so I

28:07

think a lot of the discussion should continue

28:09

around that and probably we need to have

28:11

more information given to donors as to what

28:13

we'll be doing with ourselves. In

28:16

terms of the actual organizing kind

28:18

of the ethics that might

28:21

surround them if they might reach a point

28:23

of consciousness, I think at

28:25

the moment the science is pretty clear that we're very

28:27

far away from that. But

28:29

if we do reach a point where we're

28:31

starting to get something that looks more like

28:34

a conscious tissue then I

28:36

think definitely regulation will need to be revisited.

28:39

Exciting stuff. Thank you to

28:42

Sarah Chan and Madeline Lancaster

28:44

for demystifying the ethical minefield

28:46

of brain blobs. That's

28:48

all for this week's program. Next week,

28:50

to celebrate 200 years since

28:52

dinosaurs were first described, Victoria Gill

28:54

goes and finds those very bones

28:57

and sees a recent discovery being

28:59

released from the rock that's enclosed

29:01

it for millions of years. But

29:04

from me for now, goodbye. You've

29:07

been listening to BBC Inside Science

29:09

with me Marnie Chesterton. The producer

29:11

was Florian Bohr with Louise Orchard,

29:13

Hannah Robbins and Eman Moyne. Technical

29:16

production was by Phil Lander. The show

29:18

was made in Cardiff by BBC Wales

29:20

and West in collaboration with the Open

29:22

University.