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

by Walter Isaacson

The modern foundations for each of these perspectives was expressed in two influential books written fifty years ago: John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, which comes down on the side of favoring the good of the community, and Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia, which emphasizes the moral foundation for individual liberty. Rawls seeks to define the rules that we would agree to if we had gathered to make a compact. In order to make sure things are “fair,” he said that we should imagine what rules we would make if we didn’t know what place we would each end up occupying in society and what natural abilities we would have. He argues that, from behind this “veil of ignorance,” people would decide that inequalities should be permitted only to the extent that they result in benefits for all of society, and specifically for the least advantaged. In his book, this leads Rawls to justify genetic engineering only if it does not increase inequality.3 Nozick, whose book was a response to that of his Harvard colleague Rawls, likewise imagined how we might emerge from the anarchy of a state of nature. Instead of a complex social contract, he argues that social rules should arise through the voluntary choices of individuals. His guiding principle is that individuals should not be used to promote a social or moral goal devised by others. This leads him to favor a minimalist state that is limited to functions of public safety and enforcement of contracts but avoids most regulations or...