Introduction

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.

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Discussion Questions

1. Overall, what did you think of this book?
2. Do you think the author did a good job of explaining the scientific developments that led
to the discovery of CRISPR biotechnology in a way that made it easy for non-scientists
to understand?
3. What do you think of Jennifer Doudna?
4. The book focuses on Doudna, but also introduces many other scientists involved in this
research that are contributing in other ways. Did any stand out to you in particular? Can
you see another book being written about one of these other scientists?
5. What ethical and moral considerations have to be made with the introduction of this
revolutionary scientific research?
6. What are your thoughts on the choices that parents may have to make in the future on
gene-editing for their future children? Where do you draw the line between gene-editing
for “treatments” to genetic abnormalities versus gene-editing for enhancements?
7. What are the humanistic considerations of CRISPR technology? Do you see any benefit
of being inflicted by some of these diseases like sickle-cell anemia that have the ability
to be edited from our genes in the future with the CRISPR technology?
8. What are the implications of this scientific development for the future? Are there long- or
short-term consequences to the issues raised in this book? How will this research serve
those that have been historically underserved in t he medical community?
9. What stance does the author take on these moral issues?
10. What have you learned after reading t his book? Has it broadened your perspective?

From Sawyer Free Library

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