Guardian Science Weekly

Artificial wombs and the promise for premature babies - Science Weekly podcast

Loading player...
In October, a team of Dutch researchers were awarded a grant of €2.9m to develop a working prototype of an artificial womb for use in the clinic. But they are not the only ones working on this kind of technology. In 2017, a team in Philadelphia created the ‘biobag’, which could sustain premature lambs. Both teams hope their artificial wombs could allow premature babies to continue to develop as they would in a real womb, improving their chance of survival. Nicola Davis asks: What does current neonatal intensive care look like? Would an artificial womb really offer benefits? And what ethical and legal implications could arise if the technology is pursued?. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod
1 Nov 2019 English United Kingdom Science · Nature

Other recent episodes

Transporting the most expensive and volatile substance on Earth

A box the size of a filing cabinet was lifted by crane, slowly moved and placed very carefully in the back of an unassuming lorry earlier this week. What looked like a casual drive around the Cern campus was actually a world-first experiment in transporting antimatter, the most expensive and…
26 Mar 15 min

What sets human consciousness apart in the age of AI?

Why is it like something to be ourselves and how do physical processes create our subjective experience? These questions get to the heart of the knotty problem of consciousness, and they provided the spark for the latest book from award-winning author and journalist Michael Pollan. In A World Appears, Pollan…
24 Mar 21 min

Off Duty: The Crime

On the evening of 29 December 2011, police officer Clifton Lewis was moonlighting as a security guard at a Chicago minimart when two men walked in. They shot Lewis several times, then took off with his gun and police star. A week later, police had their suspects: four men affiliated…
21 Mar 26 min

Meningitis explained: who is most at risk?

Over the weekend, news emerged of an outbreak of meningitis among university and school students in Kent in south-east England. The outbreak has killed two young people and left several others seriously ill. Health officials confirmed that the meningitis B strain has been identified in some of the cases. To…
18 Mar 15 min

What’s behind the injectable peptide craze?

Grey-market injectable peptides – a category of substances with obscure, alphanumeric names such as BPC-157, GHK-Cu, or TB-500 – have developed a devoted following among biohackers and health optimisers. To understand how these unregulated substances have become mainstream and what they could be doing in our bodies, Madeleine Finlay hears…
17 Mar 17 min
All episodes