The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race [B1294]

2022 PB in excellent condition. A Best Book of 2021 by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Time, and The Washington Post. The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a "compelling" (The Washington Post) account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and have healthier babies. 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. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered she was right, in a way. 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 codiscovery 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. Her story is an "enthralling detective story" (Oprah Daily) that involves the most profound wonders of nature, from the origins of life to the future of our species.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "A great read! I really appreciated how Isaacson not only told Jennifer Doudna's story but also highlighted the many other scientists who contributed to the discovery of CRISPR. He made a complex subject accessible and engaging, weaving in background stories that brought the science to life. A difficult topic turned into an inspiring and very readable book, for which I highly recommend it!"; "As far as scientific storytelling goes, this is the most beautiful one I've encountered. It is an opinionated one though, as the author provides his perspectives on things as he introduces key players and their actions in the story that goes beyond Jennifer Doudna."; "Loved a lot of themes in this book: woman in science (getting snubbed and doubted), collaboration vs competition (it's a fine line), and application vs basic research."; "Now this was veryyyy interesting. obviously the ethical debate regarding gene editing was captivating and philosophically challenging but i was not expecting to learn so much about the hyper competitive world of science; racing to get your paper published first, patent wars, nobel prizes, secrecy, betrayal, discrediting people and their contributions, intellectual property law, etc. it was all so fascinating to hear about because no one tells you that this is how things actually work."