The Code Breaker

I wanted this to be great and it was... fine. There's a lot of politics and competitiveness, which is interesting. I also liked the parts about how different scientists enjoy the business side of things and, especially, how Stanford does a great job of helping their faculty and doctorate students make money. Berkeley, where Doudna is, is doing its best to keep up. Isaacson's discussion on the moral aspects of using CRISPR on humans, how different cultures may view this, and the practice in humans to date – only in China – was excellent.

– originally written 2021-06-30

This is an area of research with huge potential impacts that I had little understanding of. The basic explanations are pretty good, though I still have plenty of questions. Why are CRISPR RNA sequences palindromic? Etc. Mostly this is the stories of the people, though. Somehow I hadn't heard that there are genetically modified humans walking the earth, and how that happened is pretty interesting. Also these researchers managed to agree on some guard rails to safeguard our species, which has parallels with what is happening with artificial intelligence now.