The Code of Life

I remember reading a news headline in 2018 that grabbed my attention. The story of twin girls Lulu and Nana that were delivered in a Chinese hospital. It was big news because the twin girls were the world's first gene-edited babies. Nine months earlier, He Jiankui, a Chinese scientist, edited their embryos to protect them from being infected with HIV, using gene-editing mechanisms called CRISPR. The news was met with horror and outrage in the scientific circles, and He Jiankui lost his job and was sentenced to 3 years in prison.  

I didn't give biotech much attention as a university student. However, this past week, I eagerly woke up around 3 a.m. every day so I can read about the potential and far-reaching consequence of gene-editing technology that was the main themes running through Walter Isaacson's new book The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race.

The book is a real page-turner and served as my morning caffeine in the early hours of the day. Coming in at nearly 500 pages, it dives into the essence of life and the exciting world of genomes and genetic coding, in what the author calls "the 3rd great revolution of modern times," following the atom and the bit which led to the digital revolution. 

Learning the new frontier in the science of DNA and RNA can be a tad challenging. RNA is a molecule in living cells similar to DNA, but it has one more oxygen atom in its sugar-phosphate backbone and a difference in one of its four bases. RNA plays a vital role in the book. The book's main character, Jennifer Doudna, was the co-recipient - with Emmanuelle Charpentier - of the 2020 Noble Prize for Chemistry to discover the CRISPR gene-editing technology.

Some of the book's most exciting parts feature how CRISPR scientists rose to the COVID challenge by developing rapid test methods and vaccine strategies and posted them to an open database to benefit the global scientific community.

The Code Breaker's central point was about genetic destiny. Jennifer Doudna and other scientists delivered us the first practical tools to shape it. If we had the power to free future generations of diseases such as schizophrenia or Huntington's disease, would we? The immoral choice would be not to, clearly? What if we could improve healthy human beings by editing out imperfections or flaws? But could we also lose something along with those diseases and deficiency and weaknesses, in terms of wisdom, kindness, compassion, and, in some way, more challenging to define humanity?​

The Code Breaker is a true page-turner. But Isaacson's main subject is CRISPR and not Jennifer Doudna. Isaacson lets Charpentier have the last words: "At the end of the day, the discoveries are what remain. We are just passing on this planet for a short time. We do our job, and then we leave, and others pick up the work."

Today, CRISPR is the most potent DNA-editing tool humankind has ever controlled, and figured out if and when to edit our genes will be one of the most consequential questions of the 21st century.  

The Code Breaker left me with more questions than answers. The ethical predicaments that CRISPR could unleash if people start editing our very own DNA. The honest discussion is about the tension between individuals and society. Overall, we might believe that society benefits when it includes "people who are short and tall, gay and straight, placid and tormented, blind or sighted." But if CRISPR gave parents the ability to eliminate one option in each case, it's not hard to imagine what would happen. Most of us today, including most geneticists, probably hope to kick these ethical issues down the road and to the next generation.

Coronavirus pandemic will accelerate the acceptance and deployment of CRISPR. After all, CRISPR began long ago as a virus-fighting tool in bacteria, and after more than 120 million COVID cases globally, engineering our bodies to resist disease appears far less radical. If nothing else, CRISPR might have provided the cheap, accelerated testing we lacked last spring to nip the pandemic in the bud.  

We, as a species, step by step, are discovering the secret of how we work. Now that secret has given us a fantastic tool, which is the ability to understand the code of life but with a little bit of discretion, and I hope a lot of wisdom and rewrite the code of life when we need to... Can we do that? Is it playing God? or is it like Prometheus snatching fire from the gods? 

Will the power of genetic modification and CRISPR undermine our experience of life as a gift? Will it produce a loss of humility? An unacceptable increase in human responsibility? a decay in solidarity as the species begin to diverge?  

The Code Breaker is a must-read. It is a story packed with the greatest of questions, from the origins of life to the human race's future. The tale is genuinely gripping, and the implications mind-blowing.