In 2018, a Chinese researcher, He Jiankui, produced genetically edited babies using CRISPR attempting to improve their HIV resistance. The procedure sparked a huge wave of controversy putting him in jail for 3 years.

That’s the last time I heard about CRISPR. I remembered being confused why it’s considered illegal to give the next generation of human being an edge in surviving a terrible disease. Shouldn’t that be a good thing? I didn’t get to pursue that curiosity until I listened to this book.

In this book, Walter Isaacson, who wrote the biography for Steve Jobs and Benjamin Franklin, explored the history of CRISPR through the view of Jennifer Doudna and other scientists like Feng Zhang and George Church. Some of the interesting topics discussed in the book includes:

• how an initially curiosity-driven research unexpectedly turned into a practical tool that has the potential to alter the course of human evolution over the course of tens of years
• the competition between scientists to be the first to publish a paper or file a patent and how this rivalry accelerates scientific discovery
• the conflict between the openness of pure academic research and secrecy of patents filings with profit-driven motives, and how universities and research labs should balanced the two for the greater good
• the similarity between computer code and genetic code, and how we can democratize genetic code editing like we have done with computer code

The book portraits the history with fascinating stories of collaborations and rivalries between scientists. After all, scientists are also human. Their personalities and ethics impact their research which brings us to my personal favorite topic from the book, the ethics around gene editing.

Before we discuss the controversy around gene editing, let’s introduce a concept, germline editing. Germline editing is a type of gene editing that is inheritable. The gene editing done by He Jiankui is germline editing and that’s why it’s controversial.

Once the editing is done, that particular edited gene has the potential to remain and spread in the human gene pool forever.

This is exactly the reason why we, as a species, need to be cautious to pass the germline when CRISPR is still a relative new tool. There is still a lot of research to be done. The scientific community still doesn’t have the experience to ensure the safety of the procedure, let alone understanding the social impact.

Should we allow the wealthy to have super babies that are stronger, healthier and smarter before everyone else? With wealth and gene superiority being inherited, will there ever be social mobility again? Are we ready to have a class of super human overlords?

These questions may be overexaggerate, but it’s apparent that equality is worth considering here. However, you may reach a different conclusion if you start from a different angle.

On the flip side, how can a parent pass on an opportunity to have healthier baby if she have the financial means to do so? As a parent, I would love my kids to be more protected from diseases and live a healthy life. I would be outrageous if any parent would want anything less for their kids.

Well, you can see how this is complicated.

Germline editing is banned in United States and most major countries. It’s not that we will never allow it. We are just not ready at this point of time. More researches using CRISPR below germline are still advancing rapidly. As we can get more comfortable using CRISPR, the cost of CRISPR drops and more discussions on the social impact happen, these laws will change over time. There can very well be a future that human can choose their evolution path rather than relying on the mercy of genetic lottery.

Above is an over simplified version of the debate around the ethics of gene editing. There are a lot more interesting arguments and counter arguments around the topic in the book.

The book is a page turner. There are history, drama and thought-provoking ideas. If you are interested in the development of gene editing in recent years, this is a well worth read.