No, a "Universal but Arbitrary Genetic Code" Doesn't "Vindicate Darwin"

A reader sends along an article from earlier this week by science journalist Matt Ridley, writing in the London Times ("Gene editing isn't a slippery slope to eugenics"). Ridley says:

At a seminar today to mark [Francis] Crick's centenary at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, hosted by his famous collaborator Jim Watson, I shall argue that the genetic code was the greatest of all the 20th-century's scientific discoveries. It came out of the blue and has done great good. It solved the...