Welcome to the Science Media Centre Podcast. In our 20th year we are looking back at some of the biggest stories the charity has been involved with.

In this episode, we discuss the events surrounding the 2008 legalisation of research using human-animal hybrid embryos in the UK. Our Chief Executive, Fiona Fox, is joined by:

• Prof Robin Lovell-Badge, Group Leader at The Francis Crick Institute
• Prof Chris Shaw, Professor of Neurology and Neurogenetics at King's College London
• Fiona MacRae, freelance science and health writer, and Science Correspondent for the Daily Mail from 2005 to 2016

When the SMC opened in 2002, one of the biggest controversies in science was the issue of embryo research. Dolly, the sheep cloned by Ian Wilmut in Edinburgh, heralded a new era of stem cell research offering the promise of new ways of understanding and treating common but incurable diseases like Parkinson's and motor neurone disease. The research world was excited about the new opportunities, but the cutting-edge new approach had fierce critics. The Catholic Church globally opposed any research using human embryos, and others feared that cloning for therapeutic reasons would become a slippery slope to human cloning and ‘designer babies’. The news media lapped up the row with lurid headlines about scientists playing God.

Into this febrile atmosphere arrived maverick scientists like Panos Zavos and Severino Antinori, booking hotel conference rooms in London and Washington to announce their attempts at creating the first human clone to an excitable press. The SMC came into this row determined to pioneer a new proactive and bold approach that would ensure that the public were hearing about this research from the mainstream stem cell researchers and clinicians doing it for public good and in a strict regulatory environment.

This podcast brings together two of the scientists at the heart of this cutting-edge research with the Daily Mail’s science reporter to reflect on the atmosphere at the time. In particular, it focuses in on the media’s coverage of a controversial move by the Labour government in 2006 to ban research on human admixed embryos. The podcast shows how the research community finally found their voice, won over the public and policy makers, and ultimately overturned an attempt to shut down this promising area of research.

Producer and Editor – Andy Hawkes

Audio Production – Lewis Sellars

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