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We investigate how self-injecting is leading to people being hospitalised and is creating new challenges for support services.
Laura Foster meets NHS endocrinologist Dr Bonnie Grant, criminologist at the University of Lincoln Dr Luke Turnock and Jon Findlay, Harm Reduction Lead at Waythrough.
They discuss the problems they are seeing from self-injecting on hospital wards, at needle exchanges and talked about in online discussions.
Also this week, scientists have identified a protein that provides one of the strongest clues yet as to why two conditions that are major causes of stillbirth and severe health risks for pregnant mothers occur.
It could be a breakthrough for predicting pre-eclampsia and foetal growth restriction and Laura talks to Dr Gordon Smith, head of the department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Cambridge University, about how they identified a little known protein and how the discovery could help millions of women every year.
And there has been a lot of headlines around the idea that making medicines in space could improve cancer treatment. British company BioOrbit has just had a mini drugs factory return back from manufacturing crystrals for cancer antibody treatments on the International Space Station. We’ll be asking whether this could be something that becomes part of day to day medicine in the not-too-distant future.
Presenter: Laura Foster
Producer: Tom Bonnett
Editor: Martin Smith
Sound engineer: Tim Heffer
Production coordinator: Stu Laws
The show was made by the BBC’s Audio Science Unit in collaboration with The Open University.
