The UK was once a “world leader” in organ transplants, said the BBC’s “File on 4 Investigates”. But it has “fallen behind”.

The number of heart transplants carried out in 2024 was, per million people, lower than in most European countries – due to a lack of investment, stretched resources and “outdated” technology. Waiting lists for organs are at a record high, while family consent rates for donation have fallen dramatically.

What’s going wrong?
Surgeons blame the dearth of equipment, said the BBC, and point to new technology adopted abroad, such as scanners that can thoroughly check donor hearts for disease. There is also an issue with “brain drain”. With experienced transplant surgeons leaving for jobs abroad, junior surgeons are becoming increasingly “risk averse” and will only use the healthiest organs, said Jorge Mascaro, Birmingham’s former director of cardiothoracic transplants.

Transplant operations are also regularly cancelled because of a lack of theatre space, hospital beds or suitably experienced staff. And the NHS “continues to struggle” to provide effective post-transplant care, said the BBC: the UK’s five-year survival rates “lag behind”.

Has opt-out donation helped?
Evidence suggests that opt-out model of presumed consent to donate organs, now adopted in all four UK nations, hasn’t boosted donations. In the year to March 2025, there was a 7% decrease in the number of deceased organ donors, according to the Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation Activity Report.

Although the opt-out model presumes consent (unless the deceased had explicitly said otherwise), relatives have the final say. And family consent rates have dropped from 69% to 61% over the past five years. Surveys suggest a “common reason: they didn’t know what their relative wanted”, said The Observer.

What can be done?
There is a call for “better education in schools”, where discussion of organ donation should be included in the curriculum, said The Mirror. There is evidence to show that family consent rates increase to almost 90% if the deceased had discussed their wishes with loved ones.

A 2024 government-commissioned review of heart and lung transplant services made recommendations that included better holistic care and rapid action “to improve organ acceptance decision-making”. The government said it would write to the NHS, demanding that it “urgently implement” the recommendations to make transplant services “fit for the future”.

The ingredients for life on Earth may have come from outer space. Scientists have found a full set of life-building molecules in a nearly pristine asteroid sample, collected by the Japanese Aerospace Agency and brought to Earth in 2020.

Asteroid Ryugu has all five of the primary nucleobases, according to a study published this month in the journal Nature Astronomy. 

Back to bases
These five nucleobases are “compounds that make up the nucleic acids DNA and RNA, when combined with sugars and phosphoric acid”, said New Scientist. They are the building blocks of our genetic code; life as we know it could not exist without them. The bases are split into two categories: purines (adenine and guanine) and pyrimidines (thymine, cytosine and uracil).

Asteroids like Ryugu “formed 4.6 billion years ago when the planets were being born”, said Space.com. Since then, they have “remained relatively unspoiled”. The existence of nucleobases on an asteroid “hints that they can be formed without the presence of life, and may offer clues into how these compounds could be transported across the solar system”.

Nucleobases were also found in samples from asteroid Bennu, brought to Earth in 2023, as well as in the Murchison meteorite collected from Australia in 1969, and the Orgueil meteorite collected from France in 1864. However, the “precise mixture of molecules” varied depending on each sample’s “chemical environment and history”, said geochemistry professor Kliti Grice on The Conversation.

Life delivery
The nucleobases in all four samples “suggest key components of genetic material may have formed in space” and later been “delivered to the early Earth”, said Grice. The “story of life on our planet may be deeply connected to the chemistry of such ancient asteroids”.

The detection of the bases in Ryugu also “strongly supports their ubiquity in the solar system”, astrophysical chemist Yasuhiro Oba, the study’s co-author, told New Scientist. Other asteroids may contain actual strands of DNA and RNA and not just the components. “It is very likely that more complex organic molecules, like nucleic acids, are formed on asteroids.”

A winegrower lights anti-frost candles in a vineyard near Chablis, Burgundy, as overnight temperatures fall below zero degrees Celsius. Experts warn that a sudden cold snap sweeping across France may cause “irreversible” damage to crops.

Arnaud Finistre / AFP / Getty Images

Worcestershire: Apple Cross, Stoke Bliss
A handsome period farmhouse set in approx. 34 acres. Main suite, 6 further beds, 2 baths, 2 kitchen/breakfast rooms, 2 receps, 1-bed flat, brick stables, foaling box, barns, riding arena, garden, garage. OIEO £1.65m; Fox Grant.

Cambridgeshire: The Old Rectory, Snailwell
Handsome Grade II Georgian residence. 9 beds, 5 baths, kitchen, 4 receps, 4-bed cottage, 2-bed coach house, stables, paddocks, approx. 7.68 acres, parking. £2.5m; Savills.

Hampshire: Shirley House, Bransgore
Fine Grade II farmhouse dating back to the 14th century with an original chapel, set within 2.5 acres. 4 beds, 2 baths, kitchen/breakfast room, 4 receps, 3-bed cottage, stables, grazing paddocks, riding arena, garden, garage. £1.8m; Spencers.

Somerset: Brook House, Stoney Stratton
A splendid Grade II 17th century house boasting plenty of period features. 4 beds, 2 baths, kitchen, 2 receps, paddocks, stables, garden, parking. £740,000; Lodestone.

Lincolnshire: Smith’s Farm, Gedney Dyke
Traditional farmhouse in a tranquil setting of more than 4 acres. 4 beds, 3 baths, kitchen/breakfast room, 3 receps, brick stables, Olympic-size arena, barns, garden, parking. £675,000; Fine & Country.

The worst thing Charles can do right now is meet Epstein’s victims
Jennie Bond in The i Paper
Nobody “in their right mind would want to trade places with King Charles”, writes former BBC royal correspondent Jennie Bond. In addition to “an estranged son, a fight with cancer and a diplomatic tightrope to walk” on his upcoming US visit, he’s now facing calls to meet some of the women abused by Jeffrey Epstein. While the King clearly sympathises with survivors of abuse, such a meeting would risk “jeopardising any potential legal action” against his “disgraced brother”.

How will we know Labour is really cleaning up party funding? When Reform and the Tories fight like hell to stop it
Polly Toynbee in The Guardian
“Good,” writes Polly Toynbee, as the government bans crypto donations to political parties and caps donations from abroad. But now let’s have a “real clean-up”. We need to put “a ceiling on donations” and to “ban corporate donations altogether”. It won’t be easy: Labour would lose its trade union donations and “the Tories and Reform would fight a dirty campaign” of opposition. But “as the champion of clean politics”, Labour would “gain far more than it would lose”.

Who turned the dishwasher into a tinderbox for domestic strife? Not women
Hannah Betts in The Telegraph
“Dishwasher etiquette” is a domestic “flashpoint” that “reveals human nature in all its petty, mutually vituperative ghastliness”, writes Hannah Betts. Josephine Cochrane invented the dishwasher in 1886, and “you can bet that Mr Cochrane immediately declared her angling method lacking”. My partner claims I’m “a ‘jammer’ and ‘spray-arm blocker’” and that “I position spoons ineptly”. But he doesn’t even put his plate in the machine. He can “keep” his “overlapping angst” – “if you refuse to load, you can scarper”.