The Code Breaker

When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find a paperback titled The Double Helix on her bed. Initially thinking it was one of the detective stories she loved, she read it on a rainy Saturday and quickly became enthralled by the intense drama behind the race to discover the code of life. Despite her high school counselor telling her that girls didn’t become scientists, she decided she would. Driven by a passion to understand nature and turn discoveries into inventions, she helped create what the book’s author, James Watson, called the most important biological advance since his codiscovery of DNA’s structure: CRISPR, a tool that can edit DNA and promises to transform the human race while raising profound ethical questions. The development of CRISPR, alongside the race to develop coronavirus vaccines, heralds a new life-science revolution following the digital age of microchips, computers, and the internet, where children studying digital code will now be joined by those studying genetic code. But with this power comes difficult choices: should we use it to make humans less susceptible to viruses or prevent depression? Should parents, if they can afford it, enhance the height, muscles, or IQ of their children?