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

by Walter Isaacson

Hurlbut viewed Jiankui as “a well-meaning person who wants his efforts to count for good” but who was spurred by a scientific culture “that puts a premium on provocative research, celebrity, national scientific competitiveness, and firsts.”

“There’s no medical need,” Porteus said. “It violates all the guidelines. You’re jeopardizing the entire field of genetic engineering.” He demanded to know if Jiankui had run it by his senior people. No, Jiankui said. “You need to talk to these people, the officials in China, before you proceed any further,” Porteus warned with rising anger.

In the upcoming decades, as we gain more power to hack our own evolution, we will have to wrestle with deep moral and spiritual questions: Is there an inherent goodness to nature? Is there a virtue that arises from accepting what is gifted to us? Does empathy depend on believing that but for the grace of God, or the randomness of the natural lottery, we could have been born with a different set of endowments? Will an emphasis on personal liberty turn the most fundamental aspects of human nature into consumer choices made at a genetic supermarket? Should the rich be able to buy the best genes? Should we leave such decisions to individual choice, or should society come to some consensus about what it will allow?

The primary concern is germline editing, those changes that are done in the DNA of human eggs or sperm or early-stage embryos so that every cell in the resulting children—and all of their descendants—will carry the edited trait.

somatic editing, the changes that are made in targeted cells of a living patient and do not affect reproductive cells. If something goes wrong in one of these therapies, it can be disastrous for the patient but not for the species.

Another line we might consider, in addition to that between somatic and germline editing, involves the distinction between “treatments” designed to fix dangerous genetic abnormalities and “enhancements” designed to improve human capacities or traits. At first glance, treatments seem easier to justify than enhancements.

At what point do genetic modifications to fix such traits cross the line from health treatment to enhancement? What about genetic modifications that help prevent a person from getting HIV or coronavirus or cancer or Alzheimer’s? Perhaps for these we need a third category called “preventions” in addition to the ill-defined “treatments” and “enhancements.”

Using gene editing to prevent disabilities may make society less diverse and creative. But does this give governments the right to tell parents they can’t use such technologies?

How do we distinguish between traits that are true disabilities and ones that are disabilities mainly because society is not good at adapting for them?

Likewise, being born Black in America could be considered a disadvantage. A single gene, SLC24A5, has a major influence on determining skin color. What if a set of Black parents considers their race to be a social handicap and wants to edit that gene to produce light-skinned babies?

look at “disabilities” and ask to what extent they are inherently disabling and to what extent the disadvantage is due to our social constructs and prejudices.

The disadvantages from being deaf, for a human or any other animal, are very real. In contrast, any disadvantages to being gay or Black are due to social...

There is a whiff of cheating if an athlete succeeds by obtaining some physical advantages through medical engineering.

Most successful athletes have always been people who happened to have better athletic genes than the rest of us. Personal effort is a component, but it helps to be born with the genes for good muscles, blood, coordination, and other innate advantages.

But as we grope for a set of principles to include in our moral calculus, the distinction does point to a factor we should consider: favoring enhancements that would benefit all of society over those that would give the recipient a positional advantage.

This question of engineering away mood disorders gets to an even more fundamental question: What is the aim or purpose of life? Is it happiness? Contentment? Lack of pain or bad moods?

desirable? Or does the good life have aims that are deeper? Should the goal be that each person can flourish, in a more profound fashion, by using talents and traits in a way that is truly fulfilling? If so, that would require authentic experiences, real accomplishments, and true efforts, rather than engineered ones. Does the good life entail making a contribution to our community, society, and civilization? Has evolution encoded such goals into human nature? That might entail sacrifice, pain, mental discomforts, and challenges that we would not always choose.13

Ingenuity without wisdom is dangerous.

The diversity issue, it struck me, involves far more than just clinical trials. Judging from the list of attendees at the meeting, women are becoming well represented in the field of biological research. But there were very few African Americans, either at the conference or on the benches in the various labs I had visited. In that regard, the new life-sciences revolution resembles, unfortunately, the digital revolution. If there are not efforts at outreach and mentorship, biotechnology will be yet another revolution that leaves most Blacks behind.

If COVID doesn’t kill us, Zoom will. As Steve Jobs emphasized when he built a headquarters for Pixar and planned a new Apple campus, new ideas are born out of serendipitous encounters. In-person interactions are especially important in the initial brainstorming of new ideas and the forging of personal bonds. As Aristotle taught, we are a social animal, an instinct that cannot fully be satisfied online.

By honoring CRISPR, a virus-fighting system found in nature, in the midst of a virus pandemic, the Nobel committee reminded us how curiosity-driven basic research can end up having very practical applications. CRISPR and COVID are speeding our entry into a life-science era. Molecules are becoming the new microchips.

the height of the coronavirus crisis, Doudna was asked to write a piece for The Economist on the social transformations being wrought. “Like many other aspects of life these days, science and its practice seem to be undergoing rapid and perhaps permanent changes,” she wrote. “This will be for the better.”2 The public, she predicted, will have more understanding of biology and the scientific method. Elected officials will better appreciate the value of funding basic science. And there will be enduring changes in how scientists collaborate, compete, and communicate.

OMG - DFT is completely wiping out all of government funded research. We are stepping WAY BACK.

Instead, led by Doudna and Zhang, most academic labs declared that their discoveries would be made available to anyone fighting the virus. This allowed greater collaboration between researchers and even between countries. The consortium that Doudna put together of labs in the Bay Area could not have coalesced so quickly if they had to worry about intellectual property arrangements. Likewise, scientists around the world contributed to an open database of coronavirus sequences that, by the end of August 2020, had thirty-six thousand entries.4

People of my generation became fascinated by personal computers and the web. We made sure our kids learned how to code. Now we will have to make sure they understand the code of life.

Fathoming the wonders of life is more than merely useful. It is also inspiring and joyful. That is why we humans are lucky that we are endowed with curiosity.