Harvard Science Book Talk: Walter Isaacson, in conversation with David Liu, "The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race"

Date: 

Friday, March 19, 2021, 7:00pm

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS EVENT IS TICKETED: REGISTER

Where Online: https://www.harvard.com/event/virtual_event_walter_isaacson/
Organization/Sponsor Harvard Division of Science, Cabot Science Library, and Harvard Book Store
Speaker(s) Walter Isaacson and David Liu
Cost $41.25 (book included), or pay what you can ($5.00 suggested) - see registration link, above
Contact Info science_lectures@fas.harvard.edu

 

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 co-discovery 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 a thrilling detective tale that involves the most profound wonders of nature, from the origins of life to the future of our species.

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Walter Isaacson, a professor of history at Tulane, has been CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair of CNN, and editor of Time. He is the author of Leonardo da VinciThe InnovatorsSteve JobsEinstein: His Life and UniverseBenjamin Franklin: An American Life; and Kissinger: A Biography, and the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made.

David R. Liu is the Richard Merkin Professor, Director of the Merkin Institute of Transformative Technologies in Healthcare, and Vice-Chair of the Faculty at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT; Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences and Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University; and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. His researched is focused on the development and application of genome-editing proteins to study biology and to treat genetic diseases.

Photos of Isaacson and Liu, and book cover

For more information and videos of Harvard Science Book Talks, see https://science.fas.harvard.edu/book-talks.