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Episode details

Radio 4,19 Aug 2026,28 mins

SeriesSeries 3

4 - Fighting, Gene Therapy for Huntington’s Disease, Plants

Best Medicine

Available for 37 days

Joining Kiri Pritchard-McLean this week is comedian Stephen Bailey who explains how fighting transformed his confidence. Professor Ed Wild shares a groundbreaking gene therapy that can treat Huntington's disease for the first time, and Professor Alessandra Devoto explores how plants like basil could help unlock future treatments for liver fibrosis. Best Medicine is your weekly dose of laughter, hope and incredible medicine. Award-winning comedian Kiri Pritchard-McLean is joined by a funny and fascinating panel of comedians, doctors, scientists, experts and historians to celebrate medicine's inspiring past, present and future. Each week Kiri challenges a panel of experts and a comedian to make a case for what they think is 'the best medicine', and each guest champions anything from world-changing science or an obscure invention to an everyday treatment, an uplifting worldview, an unsung hero or a futuristic cure. Whether it’s groundbreaking surgery, seaweed underwear, AI glasses to help people with dementia, horse therapy, sports, revolutionary gene therapy for Huntington’s disease or yesterday’s rubbish becoming tomorrow’s medicines - it’s always something worth celebrating. Hosted by Kiri Pritchard-McLean Featuring: Stephen Bailey, Professor Alessandra Devoto and Professor Ed Wild Written by Edward Easton, Jordan Gray, Frances Keyton, Kiri Pritchard-McLean, Ben Rowse and Rhys Thorne Producer: Tashi Radha Executive Producer: Ben Worsfield Theme tune composed by Andrew Jones A Large Time production for BBC Radio 4

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