In November 2018 Chinese scientist Dr He Jiankui made a big announcement; he had illegally “edited” the DNA of Chinese twin girls Lulu and Nana in an attempt to prevent them from contracting HIV. The news made global headlines and the scientific community reacted with horror. But why is it so controversial to mess with our genes?

Dr Julia Shaw is joined by geneticist Dr Adam Rutherford to discuss the dangers of gene editing and how it relates to Nazism and the dark history of trying to breed “better people”, the subject of Adam’s BBC Radio 4 series Bad Blood: The History of Eugenics.

CREDITS

Commissioning Executive: Dylan Haskins

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Clip: The He Lab “About Lulu and Nana: Twin Girls Born Healthy After Gene Surgery As Single-Cell Embryos”