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

Walter Isaacson

Mar 2021 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

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.

Ratings and reviews

would rate zero stars if possible. actually i would rate negative 5 or 6 stars if possible. changing genes before birth...or conception(even worse) can and will have negative adverse effects. making your children less susceptible to this disease or that syndrome before theyre even born is beyond foolish...nature has a way of balancing...and "those who can afford it" can make all the cosmetic changes they like...in the end its paper thin amd skin deep

Walter Isaacson is one of the great biographers of our time. In this biography about Dr. Doudna, and so many of her comtemporaries, he not only tells of her life and discoveries but the stories of the early days of DNA research and how it lead to her research. I was engaged, compelled and drawn into the world of microbiology like I was reading a great adventure.

Walter makes the main topic and character so compelling by presenting sophistication as simple and accessible: I couldn't stop reading it. When I got to the last page, I wanted the narrative to continue.

About the author

Walter Isaacson is the bestselling author of biographies of Jennifer Doudna, Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, and Albert Einstein. He is a professor of history at Tulane and was CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair of CNN, and editor of Time. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2023. Visit him at Isaacson.Tulane.edu.