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The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
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About This Book
When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled The Double Helix on her bed. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn't become scientists, she decided she would. Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the book's author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his co-discovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions. The development of CRISPR and the race to create vaccines for coronavirus will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution. The past half-century has been a digital age, based on the microchip, computer, and internet. Now we are entering a life-science revolution. Children who study digital coding will be joined by those who study genetic code. Should we use our new evolution-hacking powers to make us less susceptible to viruses? What a wonderful boon that would be! And what about preventing depression? Hmmm…Should we allow parents, if they can afford it, to enhance the height or muscles or IQ of their kids? After helping to discover CRISPR, Doudna became a leader in wrestling with these moral issues and, with her collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize in 2020.
Reviews
"Whether it's arcane biochemistry or the ins and outs of patents, Isaacson lays everything out with his usual lucid prose; it's brisk and compelling and even funny throughout."
"The timing of Isaacson's book could hardly be better ..."
"A vital book about the next big thing in science—and yet another top-notch biography from Isaacson."
"It features a nail-biting race, more than its fair share of renegades, the highest prize in chemistry, a gigantic battle over patents, designer babies and acres of ethical quicksand."
"Isaacson leans heavily on profiles to tell the broader story."
"It is, in part, but it is also a history of DNA and CRISPR research, a story about women in science, a digression on the significance of yoghurt, a long moral essay and an account that feels interminable of laboratory politics ..."
"It is Isaacson's genius that he explains this complicated process—and how Doudna reached it starting from ground zero—in clear, concise, layperson's terms."
"The result is a gripping account of a great scientific advancement and of the dedicated scientists who realized it."
"an impressively balanced account of the ethical debates and tussles over credit that proves both nuanced and persuasive ..."
"In his enthusiastic embrace of science—communicated dramatically by the inclusion of two photos of the author in a white lab coat—Isaacson portrays himself as a member of the scientific tribe and no longer as an impartial observer ..."
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