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

by Walter Isaacson

He coined the phrase “procreative beneficence” to make the case that it is moral to choose the best genes for your unborn children.

even dismissed the concern that this could allow rich people to buy better genes for their children and thereby create a new class (or even subspecies) of enhanced elites.

And while you were at it, might you throw in blond hair and blue eyes as well?

Genomic Prediction.

Prospective parents can choose which embryo to implant based on the characteristics they want in their child.

“intellectual disability” and “height.”

The problem is that the value of diversity, as our thought experiments showed, can conflict with the value of individual choice.

What abouft inequality!!

But what moral right do we have to require another family to forgo a desired genetic intervention simply for the sake of adding to the diversity of society? Would we want the

Yes. Its called public policy.

gene editing could exacerbate inequality

YA THINK!?!?

We even accept, perhaps with a roll of the eyes, those who hire SAT tutors and send their kids to computer camp.

Not severyone accepts it

But the fact that inequality already exists is not an argument to increase or permanently enshrine it.

Permitting parents to buy the best genes for their kids would represent a true qu...

Add to that the natural instinct of scientists to pioneer procedures and make discoveries.

And think they are God

Despite such objections, it’s possible to aim for some social consensus on gene editing rather than simply leaving the issue totally to individual choice.

kept to a minimum by a combination of legal sanctions and social shaming. The

“Evolution has been working toward optimizing the human genome for 3.85 billion years,” says NIH director Francis Collins, who is not an atheist.

If it’s wrong for us to use CRISPR, the reason cannot merely be that it’s unnatural. It’s just as natural as all of the tricks that bacteria and

Darwin wrote about “the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horridly cruel works of nature.”

If we humans find ways to rig the natural lottery and engineer the genetic endowments of our children, we will be less likely to view our traits as gifts that we accept. That would undermine the empathy that comes from our sense of “there but for the grace of God go I” toward our fellow humans who are less

“To acknowledge the giftedness of life is to recognize that our talents and powers are not wholly our own doing.”

When we create chemotherapies to fight cancer or vaccines to fight coronaviruses or gene-editing tools to fight birth defects, we are, quite properly, exercising mastery over nature rather than accepting the unbidden as a gift.

Wisdom involves finding the right balance.

Its not about that. Its about not being selfish.

The idea that germline editing was “unnatural” began to recede in her thinking.

“I am not sure how to make a sharp distinction in medicine between what is natural and what is unnatural, and I think it’s dangerous to use that dichotomy to block something that could alleviate suffering and disability.”

Yes, the "playing God" arguemnt is a red herring

“How could you not want to make progress on coming up with ways to prevent such a thing?”

“She was very emotional about the cruelty of those who would prevent germline editing,

But his visit convinced her that if germline editing became a safe and effective way to eliminate Huntington’s, she was in favor.

more sympathetic to the view that many gene-editing decisions should be left to individual choice

“I’m an American, and putting a high priority on personal freedom and choice is part of our culture,”

One moral issue that continues to loom large for her is inequality,

By limiting gene edits to those that are truly “medically necessary,” she says, we can make it less likely that parents could seek to “enhance” their children, which she feels is morally and socially wrong.

The line between medical treatment and enhancement can be blurry, she acknowledges, but it is not totally meaningless.

we can’t unlearn this knowledge, so we need to find a prudent path forward,”

efficient way to add new sequences into DNA.

transposons,

“Feng then quietly raced to get his paper published first,”

find it hard to share the Doudna camp’s outrage about Zhang. The two papers both involve harnessing jumping genes, but they differ in important ways and each makes a distinctive contribution to the progress of CRISPR.

Who asked you?

Well, yes, I think, almost every field can be, from business to journalism. What distinguishes biological research is the collaboration that is woven in. The

The problem is that the distinction is difficult to define and even more difficult to enforce.