The Code Breaker

Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

By: Walter Isaacson

Narrated by: Kathe Mazur, Walter Isaacson

Length: 16 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

A 2022 Audie Award Finalist

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.

©2021 Walter Isaacson. All rights reserved. (P)2021 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

Brave New World. 13 A.D. ((After Doudna)

Let us suppose that you have never heard of Jennifer Doudna. This is not a major leap since few will remember that she and a French colleague won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Your grandchildren will know her with the same familiarity as you know of James Watson and Francis Crick or Marie Curie. For the record Doudna and her colleague are two of only five women to win Nobels in the sciences. They accomplished this only eight years after pioneering research that led to the ability to break the bonds of genetic codes enabling, among many other things, the vaccine against COVID-19 millions of Americans received in the last few days.

Walter Isaacson is a rather preachy author. He plaintive a portrait of Steve Jobs that was like Schrödinger's cat both a puff piece and a scathing critique. He doesn’t go as much into the ad hominem in the Code Breaker, reserving his sharpest focus on a variation on the meaning of live which can be inexpertly described a as the meaning of life when you have learned how to manipulate the codes nature intended. These are important, if not ponderous, questions which medical, legal, religious and academic ethicists will be engaged in for the rest of humankind’s existence.

But philosophy aside, what the heck did Doudna and numerous other scientists actually do? Basically they learned how to edit the genome. They learned how to use RNA to alter genetic traits not just in lab rats and fruit flies but in human. The technology (CRISPER CAS9) they developed has already has already become so user friendly as to spawn home kits at reasonable prices so you too can become a gene editor.

In short, the genie is out of the bottle. One Chinese researcher is serving a prison term for modifying a genetic code in an embryo to turn off the segments of code that AIDS depends to infect the body. Why he ended up in jail is twofold. First he did all of this without the permission of a rather authoritarian state and second there were other means of protecting against AIDS that did not involve genetic modification. Isaacson has either coined or repeats a new term-“biohackers” to describe the undisciplined modification of genetic code.

Does this make Doudna’s contribution dangerous? Maybe it does. But it also hold the promise of the cure of deadly diseases which are genetic accidents like Huntington’s, Tay Sach’s, and sickle cell anemia.

My suggestion is that you discover for yourself the Brave New World you have entered so that you will be able to talk intelligently about CRISPR at cocktail parties or do save home brew code editing.

Superb history of CRISPR

Isaacson has written a great history of the development of the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing system which earned Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry. The book rightfully focuses on Doudna and has a pair of villains, of sorts: Eric Lander and Fang Zhang of the Harvard/MIT Broad Institute. In terms of history of molecular biology, I would place this book next to Horace Freeland Judson's "The Eighth Day of Creation," which did a superb job describing the real events behind the discovery of the structure of DNA and the elucidation of the genetic code by the outsider Marshall Nirenberg, Nobel prize winner in 1968 for 'breaking the genetic code.' Judson's book includes one of my favorite quotes about Watson & Crick by the bitter Erwin Chargoff, briefly mentioned by Isaacson, " "That...such giant shadows are cast by such pygmies only shows how late in the day it has become." There are no pygmies in Isaacson's book. Doudna and Charpentier earned their Nobels through incredible hard work and insight into complex probelms. The Broad's Fang Zhang and Harvard's George Church may also earn Nobels for their work in applying the CRISPR/Cas9 editing system to editing human DNA.

Facinatingly Inspiring - Great 📚!

This book is wonderfully written and the narrarator did well in reading in a way that was more insightful. It tells the real story of innovation, sparks curiosity and outlines the pursuit of knowledge and discovery. It has been a pleasure exploring this journey, and many will become more enlightening because of it.

Deep history/ cutting edge science/ mixed feelings

Mixed feelings about this book. The science history and the development of CRISPR is so important and Isaacson does a fabulous job documenting both. But the book dragged for me and I found it disjointed. It starts out with the young Jennifer Doudna and how she was inspired by Watson’s “Double Helix”. Doudna then goes on to achieve great things as a professional, gravitating to the RNA space, which was not the popular path at the time. Turns out, RNA leads Doudna to CRISPR and becomes key to addressing the SARS-COV 2 pandemic. In between, we hear about the battles of the scientists on CRISPR, the ethical issues of CRISPR, the controversy around an ageing Watson, and other things. I also got the sense that Isaacson tended to favor the perspective and account of Doudna, his central character. In the end, I gave the book high marks, due to the extraordinary subject matter and Isaacson’s commitment to producing a thorough account. .

Wow, this was definitely thought-provoking and informative!

I am 64 with an inherited retinal disease. This book has helped me better understand the path of DNA and mRNA discoveries. My eye disease has two gene therapies underway. I helped start Foundation to find a cure… Which was completely based upon arching mutation being found early in 1990. Isaacson helped Me better understand do you evolution of this genetic science field. Discoveries CRISPR and mRNA are already being studied now as treatments for future generations with my eye disease.
As a fellow New Orleanian, I applaud this writing as we say “for da locals“ To understand. To all the amazing researchers in this book, I say thank you so much from the rear Disease community!

Inspirational

The words in my title sums this book and the principal characters of this book. They are the real heroes of our times. Walter's account of the events and interwoven historical account makes this a great read.

a great read

as a follower os CRSPR Tech development its nice to see the story of the discovery and development of the technique and the politics behind it. loved it

Extraordinary look at the scientific process

As a chemist, I enjoyed the writer description of scientific discoveries and collaboration. Written in a very pleasant and enjoyable prose.

Another Isaacson masterpiece

Fabulous history of the science, along with the rivalries, legal battles and ethical challenges, that shows humanity learning to use a tool invented by bacteria a billion years ago. Read it!

Loved the book even though I have no science background!

I found the book fascinating and written well for a lay person! My criticism is something that really bothered me - the reader should have been a man!!!