Radio choice Charlotte Runcie

The First Heart Transplant: Beat by Beat

RADIO 4FM, 11.00AM

Heart Week is a season celebrating 50 years since the world’s first heart transplant. In this programme, cardiac surgeon Stephen Westaby describes – from the point of view of someone intimately familiar with heart surgery and its complexities – how the first heart transplant was achieved by the South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard and his team of 30. It was an accomplishment which changed medical practice forever, but also provoked serious ethical and philosophical questions at the time.

Documentary WORLD SERVICE, 11.30AM

The medical theme continues on World Service, where Owen Jones, professor of law and biology at Vanderbilt University, asks how developments in our understanding of neuroscience are affecting law-making. In particular, now that we know that the brain doesn’t fully mature until we reach our twenties, should this information affect the way we try and punish young offenders in the criminal justice system? Fascinatingly, in San Francisco, prosecution is already adapting in line with new brain data.