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The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
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42/99
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92/99
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Scholars' Citation Index
95/99
Volume of Reviews
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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
"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 ..."
"Between the main character's frantic road trip and the author's rolled-up sleeve, there is room to explore Doudna's childhood, trace her career, meet her competitors and collaborators, fret over the future fallout of the CRISPR revolution and marvel at its positive potential ..."
"Isaacson passionately charts Doudna's swiftly rising star ..."
"Like Lab Girl on steroids, The Code Breaker paints a detailed picture of how scientists work ..."
"Yet the real problem is that readers cannot be assumed to know anything about CRISPR and gene editing, whereas they would have known a good deal about the work of Jobs and Einstein."
"I wish Isaacson had created more of a mosaic, one similar to his history of the early computer industry—The Innovators, properly plural."
"makes eloquent and succinct work of laying out the parameters of the debate between advocates of individual liberties and of collective welfare, introducing readers to the ideas of philosophers John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and Michael Sandel."
"A magisterial biography of the co-discoverer of what has been called the greatest advance in biology since the discovery of DNA ..."
"The result is a gripping account of a great scientific advancement and of the dedicated scientists who realized it."
"A tough read at times with textbook-like digressions into the supporting science ..."
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