Professor Peter Piot

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.

Presenter0:34

My castaway this week is the scientist Professor Peter Piott. A microbiologist, he says he has spent much of his working life as an outbreak detective at the heart of Africa. Almost forty years ago a little thermos flask, the type usually used for coffee, arrived in his lab.

Presenter0:52

Inside was a sample of the blood of a nun working in Kinshasa, infected with a deadly and mysterious disease it became known as Ebola.

Presenter1:01

HIV AIDS has been his other great area of pioneering research and policy development. His early challenges, aside from the science, included ignorant politicians, the Vatican stance on condoms and tunnel visioned bureaucrats, not to mention pharmaceutical firms focussing more on profits than patients. Yet along with the struggles, he says he has, above all, met incredibly passionate and compassionate men and women trying to save lives, fighting for justice and searching for scientific solutions. So welcome, Peter Piot. For the past four years then, you've been director of the world-renowned London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for a microbiologist who in the past has spent really a lot of time out in the field.

Presenter1:46

How does this sort of job suit you? You know, in a big institution, I imagine s sort of sitting in the office quite a lot.

Professor Peter Piot1:52

Well, first of all, being head of the London School of Hygiene Tropical Medicine is going back to my roots, because I started my career in Antwerp at the smaller sister institute. And I love it because people are there, because they believe in improving health worldwide. You know, they're passionate about that. It's like the United Nations in one building. We have students of over sixty countries. And we work on health, but from the molecule to health economics and clinical and everything. That's what I feel so privileged. But also, I don't spend actually that much time in my office, to be honest.

Professor Peter Piot2:33

I can't sit still and so I travel a lot. I wanna see where our staff is and I'm on lots of committees and all that. So yeah, I thoroughly enjoy it.

Presenter2:42

It's thirty nine years since you first identified with your team this thing that you would go on to name as Ebola. As I understand it, the general figures in Guinea and Sierra Leone and Liberia are right now pretty much plateauing, but the picture is far from clear. How do you think the responses on the ground now and also from the governments, do you think enough is being done to make things better and to make sure those figures, now that they're plateauing, start to go down?

Professor Peter Piot3:11

In December I went to Sierra Leone to have a look myself and to see how we can evaluate a vaccine against Ebola, because that's what we may need. And actually I think the situation is definitely getting better. I was also impressed by the UK response, various agencies, NGOs all kind of working together in a way that I've rarely seen, which is good. It's all coming late and so lots of time has been wasted, but let's look into the future and I think that over the next few weeks we'll see a good decline of number of cases. But then I believe that it will take a long time before it's really over.

Presenter3:51

We're here to talk to you so much about your life and work, but also we're here to find out about your music. You've chosen eight tracks for us today. Tell me about this first one.

Professor Peter Piot3:58

The first track is a piece on the chora. The chora is a traditional instrument, a string instrument in West Africa. It's by Toumani Diabate. Toumani one day played for me and my wife in Bamako. And also we have the Cebola outbreak in West Africa. And it is very much on my mind. And you can't really understand a number of cultures without understanding and appreciating their music.

Presenter4:59

To Mani Jabate and Sinani. So given that, as you said, Professor Peter Piott, Ebola is very much on your mind right now. Is it the case that I mean people use the paranoes of patient zero. I don't know if that annoys you or not, but you know, the the first person to contract it. Is it the case that that person is identified?

Professor Peter Piot5:12

Yeah.

Professor Peter Piot5:16

Yes, we probably know who it is. A girl in Guinea, in a bordering village with Liberia and Sierra Leone, who was infected probably by exposure to a bat. We don't know that for sure. And out of that, other members of the family who cared for her were infected. And then at the funeral of these people, other people became infected because the funeral rites demand that the the body of the dead relative, the loved one, is meticulously cleaned and and

Presenter5:49

Yeah.

Professor Peter Piot5:52

cleaned with bare hands, but also people uh kind of hug it and so on. It's really saying farewell to the loved one. It's quite a a a nice ceremony, but it's become a deadly ceremony.

Presenter6:01

You have spoken in the past about the importance of touch among researchers and medics who are in there treating ill people. In the case of Ebola, of course, this is something that must not essentially take place. Do you think

Professor Peter Piot6:06

Research

Presenter6:14

Um that in a way that is

Presenter6:16

Very difficult for people to get their heads round because it's such an affront to what we take to be empathizing, sympathising and comforting with such human suffering.

Professor Peter Piot6:25

Yeah, in many cultures in the world it's you know touching each other when you greet, when you you know, the sorrow, there is joy is essential and maybe less in Britain. And so that's one point, and that's very deeply rooted. It's very rude in Africa in many places if you don't shake hands. I mean then there's really a big problem. Secondly, yes, when I was still seeing patients and I in the beginning I had quite some patients with leprosy and then mostly people living with HIV and there's an enormous stigma associated with it and people often have guilt feelings and don't know how to belie to behave. So I always would make sure I would touch them and say to put them at ease as a doctor. I think that's very important to make that physical connection also. But in the case of Ebola now that can be deadly.

Professor Peter Piot7:21

And uh so

Professor Peter Piot7:23

That kind of behaviour change is very difficult to induce. But when we were in Sierra Leone, people were no longer shaking hands, touching each other. There was the Ebola shake where you touch each other with your elbow for men, and women would just put their hand over their breast. And so that's a new way. Will it be continuing after the epidemic? Who knows?

Presenter7:48

Let's have some more music, Peter. Tell me about your second disc of the day.

Professor Peter Piot7:52

Second uh uh disc, and this is a song now, is by Jacques Brel, who is one of the great uh francophone singers, and he sings about uh Le Plapé. Le Plapy means the flat land, the lowland by the sea, uh about Flanders, where I grew up, and ironically it's uh a song in French.

Speaker 38:12

With the mother to terror.

Speaker 38:19

I devag the dune.

Speaker 38:21

Pour till wages, il vague, rochi, climarie, despair, et quien tajama que.

Speaker 38:31

At Marie Bass, with confines of bourilles avenue.

Speaker 38:38

Aveclauvente de List?

Speaker 38:41

Equitilitoni

Speaker 38:44

Loop blubby.

Speaker 38:46

Kielomia

Presenter8:47

Jacques Brell and Le Plape. So you were born Peter Piotte in Belgium in nineteen forty nine, the first of four children. Was it a very traditional Flemish upbringing? And if so, what does that actually mean?

Professor Peter Piot9:00

Yeah, I guess my DNA is Flemish, uh and it was a traditional Flemish upbringing. I come from a small village.

Professor Peter Piot9:08

Very Catholic and uh where everybody was kind of watching each other. And uh I grew up in a forest. Uh we had no neighbors. Uh walked to school where we did sports, where we got history of the world, not only of uh Belgium and uh lots of art and music. But whereas I loved it on the on the one hand, I I felt suffocated and when I was ten I had one goal in life, and that's get out of here. That was my goal in life, and I think I've managed to do that.

Presenter9:40

And your parents are ninety and ninety one, they are now. What were they like as young parents?

Professor Peter Piot9:44

My father was an economist by training. He's the first and was the only one in his extended family who went to university. We didn't see him that much. He was um travelling a lot and I found him quite severe, but he he would come home with friends and then they would uh drink and sing and one day even Jacques Brell came at home, you know. Really?

Presenter10:04

Yeah.

Presenter10:06

Were you there when he came back?

Professor Peter Piot10:07

Well, it is yes, I will say, uh, because uh he would typically come home very late uh and with his friends and say we are thirsty and we are hungry and uh was very proud of his children and we had to say hello and uh I hated it, but anyway. And um and my mother, she went to school until she was uh fourteen, fifteen because of the war she had to interrupt it and she worked in uh her father's construction business, which she for a while managed. So so she's quite a tough businesswoman.

Presenter10:35

You mentioned a moment ago when we were chatting that that you worked in the area of leprosy after your training.

Presenter10:41

As I understand it, leprosy made an appearance very early on in your life. T tell me how you got first got interested in it.

Professor Peter Piot10:47

Yes, the village I come from is Kerbergen and the next door, Tremelo it's called was the birthplace of Father Damien. Damien was a a priest who went to Hawaii, to the island of Molokai, and devote his whole life to caring for people with leprosy. And he died himself of leprosy. And there was a small museum. That was about the only thing in the that I could cycle to. And so I would go there and I would kind of dream about the pictures of Africa and Hawaii and so on, and then the figured patients with leprosy and a lot about stigma. And I was really impressed by it. And I think it influenced me enormously to go into medicine and what's called global health.

Presenter11:36

But it was tied together this idea you said a moment ago of sort of your your intention even as a ten year old was to get out. And so this represented not just doing things that were important, but also going beyond where you lived and traveling the world.

Professor Peter Piot11:42

Yeah.

Professor Peter Piot11:47

You lived in traveling the world? Yes, yes. Uh uh at some point I wanted to save the world, but that I've given up.

Presenter11:53

Let's have your third piece of music then, Peter Piot. Tell me about this. What are we going to hear?

Professor Peter Piot11:57

Well, the next one is uh a bit different. It's uh Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan and uh I desperately wanted to learn English and uh I tried to learn English with Bob Dylan and I still don't understand fully what he's singing about. It drove my parents absolutely nuts because we only had one record player and I had bought with my savings an L P and I would play it all the time and and I pretended that it was to learn English but of course it was about more than that.

Speaker 412:30

Uh

Speaker 412:32

How does it feel?

Speaker 412:37

To be without a hope

Speaker 412:42

Like a complete unknown

Speaker 412:46

Like a rolling stone

Presenter12:50

Isn't he a great poet? He is a great poet. That of course was Bob Dylan and Micah Rolling Stone. It was nineteen seventy six when you were working as a young microbiologist and into this laboratory comes this little flask, as I described it. I mean I read that it was the sort of I just didn't know it.

Presenter13:08

How how did it get there?

Professor Peter Piot13:10

Um it came there by uh a pilot from Sabina, that was the Belgian airline.

Presenter13:15

Yeah.

Professor Peter Piot13:16

Who brought it just bare hands from Kinshasa? Today that would be totally illegal.

Presenter13:21

So you you open it, you don't you don't really know what's in it beyond that it's a blood sample of

Professor Peter Piot13:22

Open it, you

Professor Peter Piot13:24

No.

Professor Peter Piot13:25

Yes, but we had gloves. I mean, I was then in training in virology and clinical microbiology, and we would always wear gloves for opening any sample and so on. So it was not that we

Professor Peter Piot13:37

were completely uh exposed.

Presenter13:40

And when you took the sample and put it under a microscope, you saw something very surprising and unusual, which was what?

Professor Peter Piot13:49

Yeah, to isolate the virus in these days this was very artisanal. You put the sample, the blood sample, you dilute it and so on. You put it on cells, on living cells, because viruses can only survive when they have cells to feed on, in contrast to bacteria that can grow on inorganic material. And you injected in mice and baby mice and guinea pigs. That was the primitive ways of virology in these days. And after a number of days we saw what's called a pathogenic effect. In other words, the cell layer that's like a carpet of cells, there were holes in it.

Professor Peter Piot14:27

And these holes are caused by the virus that kind of destroys these cells.

Professor Peter Piot14:32

And we put that fluid on, you know, under the electron microscope. And then we saw something we had never seen before.

Professor Peter Piot14:39

It looked like a worm.

Presenter14:41

Did you put on something more than gloves after that?

Professor Peter Piot14:43

No, we had gloves and face mask uh and we treated all these samples under a so-called laminar flow so that the the air is sucked into the safety cabinet so that it doesn't blow into your face. So they're they were like the regular routine uh safety, but not nothing like what we use today to work with this kind of dangerous viruses.

Presenter15:06

So, more on the extraordinary journey that you then made after you had discovered this virus in just a moment. But for now, it's time for some music. Tell me about your fourth, Peter Piot. What are we going to hear now?

Professor Peter Piot15:17

The fourth is from Giovanni Pergolesi, a piece called Stabat Mate. And when I was in high school, okay, maybe I was a rebel and I certainly enjoyed Bob Dylan and Rolling Stones and the Beatles and so on, but I also organized classic concerts. I tried to play the violin, which was a disaster for my environment. And I got really interested in Baroque music. And this is one of my favorite pieces. It goes really through bone and marrow. And it's the sorrow of a mother. And it's religious music. And it reminds me also something that's similar in a completely different context. And that's the area of the Queen of the Night in Mozart's Magic Flute.

Presenter17:05

That was part of Pergolesi's Stubbat Mattar, sung by Emma Kirkby and James Bowman, with the Academy of Ancient Music conducted by Christopher Hogwood. So, Peter Piotte, it was then that the mid-seventies when your discovery of this fascinating and lethal virus took you to Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. It had once, of course, been the Belgian Congo.

Presenter17:25

When you were doing work on the ground, how were you treated by the people who you were there to try to help?

Professor Peter Piot17:32

We were welcomed. I mean, we arrived when the epidemic had already gone on for a good month and in some villages one out of seven people had died and they were desperate. They had also decided for themselves that there was something wrong going on at the hospital. The hospital was abandoned and that actually stopped the epidemic.

Presenter17:52

Was this the hospital where the nuns were working in the mission and you had to tell them that all of many of the practices that they were instituting were in fact rather than helping people spreading this deadly disease?

Professor Peter Piot18:02

Yeah, one of the difficulties was to explain to the nuns who were doing absolutely fabulous work. They had a primary school, a high school, a school for teachers, and running a hospital, but eleven of the seventeen hospital staff had died, all nurses. The four nuns had died, one father, and they were full of good intentions and energy and so on, but not always very competent. And for example, one of the reasons we had this outbreak was that women who were pregnant attended the antenatal clinic and each of them got an injection with a syringe and a needle that was reutilized all over. It was injections with vitamins and in that sense they were indeed responsible for the death of quite a few of their

Professor Peter Piot18:52

You know, of the women then.

Presenter18:53

When you explained that to them, what was their response?

Professor Peter Piot18:56

It was very hard to explain. First of all, let's not forget they were still in shock, some kind of post-traumatic syndrome, because in this closed community of seven sisters, four had died. And this is a very isolated community. They live twenty-four hours with each other. So they were still really the sorrow was still enormous. They had lost so many of their local friends and people they were devoting their life to. And then in addition to explain that they had really a responsibility that was very, very difficult. And I'm not sure they ever accepted that.

Presenter19:34

Let's have some more music, Peter Piot. Tell me about your fifth choice of the morning. What's this?

Professor Peter Piot19:38

The fifth disc is by Bach from the St. Matthew's Passion, Komte er Dochter Haftmür Klagen. And it's conducted by Philippe Herowiger. And he was a year ahead of me in medical school in Ghent. He is a psychiatrist, but his real passion was music. And for me, he has brought passion into Bach and tried to interpret it as he thinks, because who knows, Bach wanted it. And so I think that all his interpretation of Baroque music is very different from anything else I've heard.

Speaker 420:54

Save the glory of God, Singh and Spirit Lord.

Speaker 421:03

Sing and bright.

Speaker 421:08

Seven faithful schools.

Presenter21:15

From Bach St. Matthew's Passion, that was Komt ir Tochter Herft mirklagen, come ye daughters, help me lament, with the choir and orchestra of Collegium Vocari Kent conducted by Philippe Heervichen.

Presenter21:26

Let's bring ourselves, then, up to the early eighties, and a new and unnamed virus began to be reported in the US among gay men. You and your colleagues recognised that many of these symptoms that were being reported you were also seeing among women who had come from Africa.

Professor Peter Piot21:45

I was then back in Antwerp, in Belgium. And

Professor Peter Piot21:51

And you know, clinically it looked fairly similar, but we had one big difference. A third of our patients were women. And that didn't fit what was then called with the awful name GRID, K-related immune deficiency. And also, my mentor at University of Washington, Stanley Falco, he always said, put yourself in the head, in the skin of the microbe.

Professor Peter Piot22:15

And I was thinking, you know, why would a virus care about the sexual orientation of its host? You know, that's a human interpretation, because what's the purpose in life of a virus? It's eternal life, and for that you need always a living being, is it an animal or a plant or a human being like we are. And I also thought if we see a hundred cases in patients in Belgium, there must be thousands in their country of origin, because who can afford

Professor Peter Piot22:46

to come to Europe for medical care with wealthy people, government officials or military and senior military officers and expatriates.

Presenter22:56

Was there a moment when you were in Kinshasa that you really realized that actually your approach and what you wanted to do lay in HIV and AIDS and that this was going to be your life?

Professor Peter Piot23:08

When I went to uh Kinshasa we didn't really know exactly what to expect. I had been there and so we went to the same hospitals that I had visited in 1976 and'7 also when uh there was the first Ebola outbreak. And the wards were full of young men and young women, my age, largely, in their thirties, a lot of them, emaciated, dying.

Professor Peter Piot23:35

And this is where I had what Freud calls in psychoanalysis the aha alabnis, you know. I said, Oh my god, this is a disaster. This must be heterosexual, and that in a mega city like Kinshasa, it's a disaster for Africa. And I still remember physically, because also I wrote it down in my notebook, that I took a deep breath and I said, This is what I want to do. This is what I want to work on, and I want to stop this.

Presenter24:06

Let's have some more music, Peter, your sixth piece of the morning.

Professor Peter Piot24:09

The sixth piece is by Franco, who is one of the great Congolese musicians. And I love Congolese music and Congolese dance. And it's a piece by Franco called Attanción Na Cida, Watch Out for AIDS. And he made that and he died himself from AIDS actually. And we asked him to sing a song about AIDS and HIV prevention, which was really devastating Kinshasa and Congo in these days. Because I was convinced also it's by using culture, popular communication, be it soap operas and music that you can reach people.

Speaker 424:45

Oh, Locida, interi blo maladi!

Speaker 424:50

Le Cidab, a malquin pardon.

Speaker 424:54

The cider, a malquine parnion person. Oh, c'est fleaux le cida qui les impuissant tu la médecine. Bendin satangan la bendin satang maman.

Speaker 425:07

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 425:11

See the funny egg of the mamma.

Speaker 425:15

Si de Poli aposotema maro.

Presenter25:18

That was Franco and Athension Nacida. So, Peter Piott, because of all this work that you were doing with HIV AIDS, you'd moved your family to Kenya at the end of nineteen eighty six, I think, and then on to Geneva in nineteen ninety two. It was nineteen ninety four when you were appointed as Executive Director of UN AIDS. One of your major achievements at the time was managing to reduce the costs of antiretroviral drugs. I'm wondering when you went in to bat against these huge pharmaceutical companies, what were your tactics for getting them to see the world the way you see the world?

Professor Peter Piot25:54

It took many years of a combination of activism and diplomacy to bring the price down because that had become a bit of an obsession for me. But what I thought also, I said, okay, we need pharmaceutical industry to produce these drugs. On the other hand, I always thought, you know, who should pay for innovation and for these investments? The poor should not pay for that. So the deal that in the end we made with industry was that, okay, you produce new drugs and you're good at that and that has to continue because the virus becomes resistant to the current drugs and so we need all these new drugs. In return, you get a monopoly, this is patent rights, for X years, and a good price for return on the investment in high income countries. But in return for that, these drugs are being made available for people in developing countries at a production plus price. And this didn't come very easy because pharmaceutical companies had no clue what was going on, certainly not in Africa. So I confronted them with that. We had activist groups chaining themselves to the gates of big pharma. But at the same time, we also negotiated. And a crucial time for me was the World Economic Forum in Davos, where I could sit down with pharma CEOs without their legal advisers and their handlers and say, look,

Professor Peter Piot27:23

you know, you want to be a hero or you want to be a villain and and and you can do something. In the end we it we brought it all together and at the same time there was generic manufacturers came up in India and they produced it at a lower cost and that together made it.

Presenter27:38

I understand from talking to you that as as a young man you had this very strong sense of social justice. What is it that has kept that alive inside of you, do you think? Because for many people it just gets snuffed out by the sheer drudgery and hell of trying to make things happen in these huge organisations.

Professor Peter Piot27:57

I really don't know. I think one is that I don't give easily up. So you can call that to be that I'm stubborn, but it's really you need a long-term goal and not deviate from that. And how you get there, that's tactics. And secondly, I think you need to protect yourself from being complacent. And that I built into my life in a sense by sitting down with people living with HIV, by travelling. And you have a need a good dose of passion. But I don't give easily up. Never take no for an answer.

Presenter28:28

Let's have your seventh. What is it, Peter?

Professor Peter Piot28:31

Seventh disc is from an opera by Gluk called Orfeo at Eridici. I had a good friend who died from it, Jodiwa, and he was a theatre and opera director in Belgium and the Netherlands. And he initiated me into opera, which I still really love. The song I selected here is Kefaro Senza Eridici. What would I do without Eridici? It's one of the most beautiful love songs that I know. It's sung by Kathleen Ferrer, who has an incredible voice, and also it's an old record from Glendeborn, and it gives also this sense that it comes from the underworld where the whole scene is playing.

Speaker 429:44

Yeah.

Speaker 429:46

Oh my dear

Speaker 429:49

Four dear

Presenter30:26

Part of Quefaro Senzo Erudici from Gluk's Orfeo Erudici, sung by Kathleen Ferrier with the Gleinborn Festival Chorus and the Southern Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Fritz Stiedre. So you left then, Peter Pierre at the UN at the end of two thousand eight.

Presenter30:41

What toll does a big job like that take on a person?

Professor Peter Piot30:45

Just before I stepped down from UNAIDS, I had dinner with Kofi Annan, who was my boss for ten years and who had just retired himself as Secretary General. And I asked for his advice, and his advice said, the first thing you do is sleep. Because it's true for about twelve years I had not really had one day of total relaxation. You get up in the morning and you wonder what's next, crisis in some office in whatever country, or an article in a newspaper attacking you for not doing enough, etc. etc. And yeah, it's enormously stressful. But I think I kept saying because I always continued on the one hand to be connected with the scientific community, but I was really tired. And indeed, I slept for months. Did you? That was not in one go. No. I didn't go into hibernation, but that was the first thing I did. But it's a tall, yeah.

Presenter31:36

Yeah.

Presenter31:42

And where has the time been for all of your personal life in this? You're married now for the second time. I mean, it sounds like you have been.

Professor Peter Piot31:47

Yeah.

Presenter31:49

Frantically and unusually preoccupied with work through your life.

Professor Peter Piot31:53

Yes, I'm already a bit of a workaholic, so that didn't help. And uh yeah, I didn't spend enough time for my personal life, that's absolutely true, and uh not enough time with my wife then and my children.

Presenter32:06

And what about now? Have you changed that?

Professor Peter Piot32:07

Have you changed that? Yes, I think it changed first of all with Heidi, my wife. We always travel together and being in London is fantastic. Museums, uh we love the various and the British Museum, because I can see the back of the British Museum from my office. I love that place. It inspires me. Uh music um and friends and and I love cooking and so on.

Presenter32:28

How will this scientist be on the desert island? You know I'm going to cast you away to this little island. You'll probably find it quite a f fascinating area.

Professor Peter Piot32:35

Yeah, well you have uh your brain. I mean a lot is going on in my head. You know, I'm a I've been a multitasker before that word existed. I can enjoy life also.

Presenter32:42

I can't remember.

Presenter32:43

You'll deal with it. Tell me about your final piece of music then. What are we gonna hear?

Professor Peter Piot32:47

Yeah, I'm probably too old for this one, but anyway, it's by a Belgian also, Stromai. He's one of the most popular singers on the continent. I went to a concert by him in Apollo in Hammersmith. It was sold out in a few days, and I think I must have been the oldest in the room. And I think he reflects our current society, multicultural. He's also a great poet. I think he's the new Jacques Brell, and he represents the future.

Speaker 433:16

Oh, baby, oops, mademoiselle. I pass au dragué, promisuré, che celebate, despourires putin, I pass in front and bones. It's vailler, revien, sami nous croix, I'm sorry, I polis, courtoir, and pe for, but

Speaker 433:44

Oh me double.

Presenter33:47

Stromaille and formidable. So I'm going to cast you away now, Peter Pior. Um we give people books. We give them a copy of the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and they get to take one other book, too. What's your book going to be?

Professor Peter Piot33:59

I love books with a difficult choice, but I would go for the complete works of Hugo Klaus. He's a a Flemish writer. He writes about difficult things. I really love his uh also his poetry.

Presenter34:10

It's yours, then, and a luxury too.

Professor Peter Piot34:12

I'll go for a an old English rose a better plant, so that I can enjoy it for many years on my island. In my garden in London bought forty different um English roses, old English roses, and not only for the shape, but also the the scent and the perfume.

Presenter34:28

How wonderful And finally, which one of the eight tracks would you save from the waves, if there had to be just one?

Professor Peter Piot34:35

I think I would go for for gluc or fee at uh redition.

Presenter34:40

It's yours. Professor Peter Piyott, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Professor Peter Piot34:45

Thank you so much.

Presenter35:26

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website: bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.