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

I first heard of Walter Isaacson on an episode of The Knowledge Project podcast where he was talking about how curiosity fuels creativity. He was recounting a few of the more prominent people he was written biographies for and the common characteristic they all have in common: creativity. It’s what aligns Steve Jobs, or Leonardo da Vinci, or Albert Einstein, or Jennifer Doudna. That’s what groups all the principal players in The Code Breaker. Ostensibly a story about Jennifer Doudna, the 2020 Nobel Prize winning biochemist, and her pioneering work with the gene-editing tool CRISPR, there is a full ensemble cast of dedicated science professionals jockeying to make the next big biochemistry discovery. The book naturally pits Doudna against Feng Zhang, but there are dozens of earnest and brilliant scientists who opened the door to the ability to edit our own genes.

There are a few things that are striking about this new world we now occupy. Firstly, things are moving fast. Like exceptionally fast. CRISPR was discovered around 2012, and here we are on the outset of 2022 and it has already begun to realize its amazing potential. 10 years from theory to practice is quantum speed in science. Secondly, the cast of characters who came together to contribute to this brave new world are globally diverse. We live in a world where science recognizes no bounds, no national lines or creed. It strikes me as a real danger to America’s scientific supremacy that we are so willing to close our doors to immigration. We are very likely closing the door on the next Feng Zhang.

Isaacson writes like a reporter: simple sentences, no verbal stunt pilotry. He wants his prose to be as invisible as possible, his characters shining through. And Doudna is a compelling one. Prompted into scientific pursuit by a reading of Watson’s Double Helix as a 14 year old child (Isaacson shares the same origin story, albeit one that didn’t end him up as a Nobel prize winning chemist, or a chemist at all), Doudna combines competitiveness, scientific brilliance, and worldliness to create a potent combination.

Isaacson’s contention that the next frontier is the marriage of biology and technology, much like computer science was at the outset of this century, feels true if not a bit fanatical. Surely we live on the cusp of a revolution in what it means to be human (I had thought this might be a tad overblown until reading this novel and seeing that the tech is already here), but tech companies still run the world. That being said, the interesting work might be happening in biotech, and I’m excited to see where we will be in the very near future.