The code breaker, p.48
The Code Breaker, page 48
12. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Basic Books, 1974).
13. See Erik Parens and Josephine Johnston, eds., Human Flourishing in an Age of Gene Editing (Oxford, 2019).
14. Jinping Liu… Yan Wu, et al., “The Role of NMDA Receptors in Alzheimer’s Disease,” Frontiers in Neuroscience, Feb. 8, 2019.
Chapter 42: Who Should Decide?
1. National Academy of Sciences, “How Does Human Gene Editing Work?” 2019, https://thesciencebehindit.org/how-does-human-gene-editing-work/, page removed; Marilynn Marchione, “Group Pulls Video That Stirred Talk of Designer Babies,” AP, Oct. 2, 2019.
2. Twitter thread, @FrancoiseBaylis, @pknoepfler, @UrnovFyodor, @theNASAcademies, and others, Oct. 1, 2019.
3. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Harvard, 1971), 266, 92.
4. Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, 315n.
5. Colin Gavaghan, Defending the Genetic Supermarket (Routledge-Cavendish, 2007); Peter Singer, “Shopping at the Genetic Supermarket,” in John Rasko, ed., The Ethics of Inheritable Genetic Modification (Cambridge, 2006); Chris Gyngell and Thomas Douglas, “Stocking the Genetic Supermarket,” Bioethics, May 2015.
6. Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future, chapter 1; George Orwell, 1984 (Harcourt, 1949); Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (Harper, 1932).
7. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (Harper, 1958), 120.
8. Aldous Huxley, Island (Harper, 1962), 232; Derek So, “The Use and Misuse of Brave New World in the CRISPR Debate,” CRISPR Journal, Oct. 2019.
9. Nathaniel Comfort, “Can We Cure Genetic Diseases without Slipping into Eugenics?,” The Nation, Aug. 3, 2015; Nathaniel Comfort, The Science of Human Perfection (Yale, 2012); Mark Frankel, “Inheritable Genetic Modification and a Brave New World,” Hastings Center Report, Mar. 6, 2012; Arthur Caplan, “What Should the Rules Be?,” Time, Jan. 14, 2001; Françoise Baylis and Jason Scott Robert, “The Inevitability of Genetic Enhancement Technologies,” Bioethics, Feb. 2004; Daniel Kevles, “If You Could Design Your Baby’s Genes, Would You?,” Politico, Dec. 9, 2015; Lee M. Silver, “How Reprogenetics Will Transform the American Family,” Hofstra Law Review, Fall 1999; Jürgen Habermas, The Future of Human Nature (Polity, 2003).
10. Author’s interview with George Church, and similarly quoted in Rachel Cocker, “We Should Not Fear ‘Editing’ Embryos to Enhance Human Intelligence,” The Telegraph, Mar. 16, 2019; Lee Silver, Remaking Eden (Morrow, 1997); John Harris, Enhancing Evolution (Princeton, 2011); Ronald Green, Babies by Design (Yale, 2008).
11. Julian Savulescu, “Procreative Beneficence: Why We Should Select the Best Children,” Bioethics, Nov. 2001.
12. Antonio Regalado, “The World’s First Gattaca Baby Tests Are Finally Here,” MIT Technology Review, Nov. 8, 2019; Genomic Prediction company website, “Frequently Asked Questions,” retrieved July 6, 2020; Hannah Devlin, “IVF Couples Could Be Able to Choose the ‘Smartest’ Embryo,” Guardian, May 24, 2019; Nathan Treff… and Laurent Tellier, “Preimplantation Genetic Testing for Polygenic Disease Relative Risk Reduction,” Genes, June 12, 2020; Louis Lello… and Stephen Hsu, “Genomic Prediction of 16 Complex Disease Risks,” Nature, Oct. 25, 2019. In November 2019, Nature issued a conflict-of-interest correction saying that some of the authors did not disclose that they were affiliated with the company Genomic Prediction.
13. In addition to the sources cited above, see Laura Hercher, “Designer Babies Aren’t Futuristic. They’re Already Here,” MIT Technology Review, Oct. 22, 2018; Ilya Somin, “In Defense of Designer Babies,” Reason, Nov. 11, 2018.
14. Francis Fukuyama, “Gene Regime,” Foreign Policy, Mar. 2002.
15. Francis Collins in Patrick Skerrett, “Experts Debate: Are We Playing with Fire When We Edit Human Genes?,” Stat, Nov. 17, 2016.
16. Russell Powell and Allen Buchanan, “Breaking Evolution’s Chains,” Journal of Medical Philosophy, Feb. 2011; Allen Buchanan, Better Than Human (Oxford, 2011); Charles Darwin to J. D. Hooker, July 13, 1856.
17. Sandel, The Case against Perfection; Leon Kass, “Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls,” The New Atlantis, Jan. 2003; Michael Hauskeller, “Human Enhancement and the Giftedness of Life,” Philosophical Papers, Feb. 26, 2011.
Chapter 43: Doudna’s Ethical Journey
1. Author’s interviews with Jennifer Doudna; Doudna and Sternberg, A Crack in Creation, 222–40; Hannah Devlin, “Jennifer Doudna: ‘I Have to Be True to Who I Am as a Scientist,’ ” The Observer, July 2, 2017.
Chapter 44: Quebec
1. Sanne Klompe… Samuel Sternberg, et al., “Transposon-Encoded CRISPR-Cas Systems Direct RNA-Guided DNA Integration,” Nature, July 11, 2019 (received Mar. 15, 2019; accepted June 4; published online June 12); Jonathan Strecker… Eugene Koonin, Feng Zhang, et al., “RNA-Guided DNA Insertion with CRISPR-Associated Transposases,” Science, July 5, 2019 (received May 4, 2019; accepted May 29; published online June 6).
2. Author’s interviews with Sam Sternberg, Martin Jinek, Jennifer Doudna, Joe Bondy-Denomy.
3. Author’s interviews with Feng Zhang.
Chapter 45: I Learn to Edit
1. Author’s interviews with Gavin Knott.
2. “Alt-R CRISPR-Cas9 System: Delivery of Ribonucleoprotein Complexes into HEK-293 Cells Using the Amaxa Nucleofector System,” IDTDNA.com; “CRISPR Gene-Editing Tools,” GeneCopoeia.com.
3. Author’s interviews with Jennifer Hamilton.
Chapter 46: Watson Revisited
1. Author’s interviews with James Watson, Jennifer Doudna; “The CRISPR/Cas Revolution,” Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory meeting, Sept. 24–27, 2015.
2. David Dugan, producer, DNA, documentary, Windfall Films for WNET/PBS and BBC4, 2003; Shaoni Bhattacharya, “Stupidity Should Be Cured, Says DNA Discoverer,” The New Scientist, Feb. 28, 2003. See also Tom Abate, “Nobel Winner’s Theories Raise Uproar in Berkeley,” San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 13, 2000.
3. Michael Sandel, “The Case against Perfection,” The Atlantic, Apr. 2004.
4. Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe, “The Elementary DNA of Dr Watson,” Sunday Times (London), Oct. 14, 2007; author’s interviews with James Watson.
5. Author’s interviews with James Watson; Roxanne Khamsi, “James Watson Retires amidst Race Controversy,” The New Scientist, Oct. 25, 2007.
6. Author’s interview with Eric Lander; Sharon Begley, “As Twitter Explodes, Eric Lander Apologizes for Toasting James Watson,” Stat, May 14, 2018.
7. Author’s interviews with James Watson.
8. “Decoding Watson.”
9. Amy Harmon, “James Watson Had a Chance to Salvage His Reputation on Race. He Made Things Worse,” New York Times, Jan. 1, 2019.
10. Harmon, “James Watson Had a Chance to Salvage His Reputation on Race.”
11. “Decoding Watson”; Harmon, “James Watson Had a Chance to Salvage His Reputation on Race”; author’s interviews with James Watson.
12. James Watson, “An Appreciation of Linus Pauling,” Time magazine seventy-fifth anniversary dinner, Mar. 3, 1998.
13. Author’s interviews with James Watson. I used some of these quotes, as well as other passages, in a piece I wrote, “Should the Rich Be Allowed to Buy the Best Genes?”
14. “Decoding Watson.”
15. Author’s meetings with James Watson, Rufus Watson, Elizabeth Watson.
16. Malcolm Ritter, “Lab Revokes Honors for Controversial DNA Scientist Watson,” AP, Jan. 11, 2019.
Chapter 47: Doudna Pays a Visit
1. Author’s visit with James Watson and Jennifer Doudna. The conference book was designed by Megan Hochstrasser, who works in Doudna’s lab.
2. Author’s interviews with Jennifer Doudna.
Chapter 48: Call to Arms
1. Robert Sanders, “New DNA-Editing Technology Spawns Bold UC Initiative,” Berkeley News, Mar. 18, 2014; “About Us,” Innovative Genomics Institute website, https://innovativegenomics.org/about-us/. It was relaunched in January 2017 as the Innovative Genomics Institute.
2. Author’s interview with Dave Savage; Benjamin Oakes… Jennifer Doudna, David Savage, et al., “CRISPR-Cas9 Circular Permutants as Programmable Scaffolds for Genome Modification,” Cell, Jan 10, 2019.
3. Author’s interviews with Dave Savage, Gavin Knott, and Jennifer Doudna.
4. Jonathan Corum and Carl Zimmer, “Bad News Wrapped in Protein: Inside the Coronavirus Genome,” New York Times, Apr. 3, 2020; GenBank, National Institutes of Health, SARS-CoV-2 Sequences, updated Apr. 14, 2020.
5. Alexander Walls… David Veesler, et al., “Structure, Function, and Antigenicity of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Glycoprotein,” Cell, Mar. 9, 2020; Qihui Wang… and Jianxun Qi, “Structural and Functional Basis of SARS-CoV-2 Entry by Using Human ACE2,” Cell, May 14, 2020; Francis Collins, “Antibody Points to Possible Weak Spot on Novel Coronavirus,” NIH, Apr. 14, 2020; Bonnie Berkowitz, Aaron Steckelberg, and John Muyskens, “What the Structure of the Coronavirus Can Tell Us,” Washington Post, Mar. 23, 2020.
6. Author’s interviews with Megan Hochstrasser, Jennifer Doudna, Dave Savage, and Fyodor Urnov.
Chapter 49: Testing
1. Shawn Boburg, Robert O’Harrow Jr., Neena Satija, and Amy Goldstein, “Inside the Coronavirus Testing Failure,” Washington Post, Apr. 3, 2020; Robert Baird, “What Went Wrong with Coronavirus Testing in the U.S.,” New Yorker, Mar. 16, 2020; Michael Shear, Abby Goodnough, Sheila Kaplan, Sheri Fink, Katie Thomas, and Noah Weiland, “The Lost Month: How a Failure to Test Blinded the U.S. to COVID-19,” New York Times, Mar. 28, 2020.
2. Kary Mullis, “The Unusual Origin of the Polymerase Chain Reaction,” Scientific American, Apr. 1990.
3. Boburg et al., “Inside the Coronavirus Testing Failure”; David Willman, “Contamination at CDC Lab Delayed Rollout of Coronavirus Tests,” Washington Post, Apr. 18, 2020.
4. JoNel Aleccia, “How Intrepid Lab Sleuths Ramped Up Tests as Coronavirus Closed In,” Kaiser Health News, Mar. 16, 2020.
5. Julia Ioffe, “The Infuriating Story of How the Government Stalled Coronavirus Testing,” GQ, Mar. 16, 2020; Boburg et al., “Inside the Coronavirus Testing Failure.” Greninger’s email to a friend is in the excellent Washington Post reconstruction.
6. Boburg et al., “Inside the Coronavirus Testing Failure”; Patrick Boyle, “Coronavirus Testing: How Academic Medical Labs Are Stepping Up to Fill a Void,” AAMC, Mar. 12, 2020.
7. Author’s interview with Eric Lander; Leah Eisenstadt, “How Broad Institute Converted a Clinical Processing Lab into a Large-Scale COVID-19 Testing Facility in a Matter of Days,” Broad Communications, Mar. 27, 2020.
Chapter 50: The Berkeley Lab
1. IGI COVID-19 Rapid Response Research meeting, Mar. 13, 2020. I was allowed to attend the meetings of the rapid-response team and its working groups, most of which took place on Zoom with discussion in Slack channels.
2. Author’s interviews with Fyodor Urnov. Dmitry Urnov became a professor at Adelphi University in New York. He is an accomplished horseman who once accompanied three horses on a sea voyage when Nikita Khrushchev wanted to give them as a gift to the American industrialist Cyrus Eaton. He and his wife, Julia Palievsky, wrote A Kindred Writer: Dickens in Russia. They are also scholars of William Faulkner.
3. Author’s interviews with Jennifer Hamilton; Jennifer Hamilton, “Building a COVID-19 Pop-Up Testing Lab,” CRISPR Journal, June 2020.
4. Author’s interviews with Enrique Lin Shiao.
5. Author’s interviews with Fyodor Urnov, Jennifer Doudna, Jennifer Hamilton, Enrique Lin Shiao; Hope Henderson, “IGI Launches Major Automated COVID-19 Diagnostic Testing Initiative,” IGI News, Mar. 30, 2020; Megan Molteni and Gregory Barber, “How a Crispr Lab Became a Pop-Up COVID Testing Center,” Wired, Apr. 2, 2020.
6. Innovative Genomics Institute SARS-CoV-2 Testing Consortium, Dirk Hockemeyer, Fyodor Urnov, and Jennifer A. Doudna, “Blueprint for a Pop-up SARS-CoV-2 Testing Lab,” medRxiv, Apr. 12, 2020.
7. Author’s interviews with Fyodor Urnov, Jennifer Hamilton, and Enrique Lin Shiao.
Chapter 51: Mammoth and Sherlock
1. Author’s interview with Lucas Harrington and Janice Chen.
2. Janice Chen… Lucas B. Harrington… Jennifer A. Doudna, et al., “CRISPR-Cas12a Target Binding Unleashes Indiscriminate Single-Stranded DNase Activity,” Science, Apr. 27, 2018 (received Nov. 29, 2017; accepted Feb. 5, 2018; published online Feb. 15); John Carroll, “CRISPR Legend Jennifer Doudna Helps Some Recent College Grads Launch a Diagnostics Up-start,” Endpoints, Apr. 26, 2018.
3. Sergey Shmakov, Omar Abudayyeh, Kira S. Makarova… Konstantin Severinov, Feng Zhang, and Eugene V. Koonin, “Discovery and Functional Characterization of Diverse Class 2 CRISPR-Cas Systems,” Molecular Cell, Nov. 5, 2015 (published online Oct. 22, 2015); Omar Abudayyeh, Jonathan Gootenberg… Eric Lander, Eugene Koonin, and Feng Zhang, “C2c2 Is a Single-Component Programmable RNA-Guided RNA-Targeting CRISPR Effector,” Science, Aug. 5, 2016 (published online June 2, 2016).
4. Author’s interviews with Feng Zhang.
5. Alexandra East-Seletsky… Jamie Cate, Robert Tjian, and Jennifer Doudna, “Two Distinct RNase Activities of CRISPR-C2c2 Enable Guide-RNA Processing and RNA Detection,” Nature, Oct. 13, 2016. CRISPR-C2c2 was renamed CRISPER-Cas13a.
6. Jonathan Gootenberg, Omar Abudayyeh… Cameron Myhrvold… Eugene Koonin… Feng Zhang et al., “Nucleic Acid Detection with CRISPR-Cas13a/C2c2,” Science, Apr. 28, 2017.
7. Jonathan Gootenberg, Omar Abudayyeh… Feng Zhang, et al., “Multiplexed and Portable Nucleic Acid Detection Platform with Cas13, Cas12a, and Csm6,” Science, Apr. 27, 2018. See also Abudayyeh et al., “C2c2 Is a Single Component Programmable RNA-Guided RNA-Targeting CRISPR Effector.”
8. Author’s interview with Feng Zhang; Carey Goldberg, “CRISPR Comes to COVID,” WBUR, July 10, 2020.
9. Emily Mullin, “CRISPR Could Be the Future of Disease Diagnosis,” OneZero, July 25, 2019; Emily Mullin, “CRISPR Pioneer Jennifer Doudna on the Future of Disease Detection,” OneZero, July 30, 2019; Daniel Chertow, “Next-Generation Diagnostics with CRISPR,” Science, Apr. 27, 2018; Ann Gronowski “Who or What Is SHERLOCK?,” EJIFCC, Nov. 2018.
Chapter 52: Coronavirus Tests
1. Author’s interviews with Feng Zhang.
2. Feng Zhang, Omar Abudayyeh, and Jonathan Gootenberg, “A Protocol for Detection of COVID-19 Using CRISPR Diagnostics,” Broad Institute website, posted Feb. 14, 2020; Carl Zimmer, “With Crispr, a Possible Quick Test for the Coronavirus,” New York Times, May 5, 2020.
3. Goldberg, “CRISPR Comes to COVID”; “Sherlock Biosciences and Binx Health Announce Global Partnership to Develop First CRISPR-Based Point-of-Care Test for COVID-19,” PR Newswire, July 1, 2020.
4. Author’s interviews with Janice Chen and Lucas Harrington; Jim Daley, “CRISPR Gene Editing May Help Scale Up Coronavirus Testing,” Scientific American, Apr. 23, 2020; John Cumbers, “With Its Coronavirus Rapid Paper Test Strip, This CRISPR Startup Wants to Help Halt a Pandemic,” Forbes, Mar. 14, 2020; Lauren Martz, “CRISPR-Based Diagnostics Are Poised to Make an Early Debut amid COVID-19 Outbreak,” Biocentury, Feb. 28, 2020.
5. James Broughton… Charles Chiu, Janice Chen, et al., “A Protocol for Rapid Detection of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 Using CRISPR Diagnostics: SARS-CoV-2 DETECTR,” Mammoth Biosciences website, posted Feb. 15, 2020. The full Mammoth paper with patient data and other details is James Broughton… Janice Chen, and Charles Chiu, “CRISPR–Cas12-Based Detection of SARS-CoV-2,” Nature Biotechnology, Apr. 16, 2020 (received Mar. 5, 2020). See also Eelke Brandsma… and Emile van den Akker, “Rapid, Sensitive and Specific SARS Coronavirus-2 Detection: A Multi-center Comparison between Standard qRT-PCR and CRISPR Based DETECTR,” medRxiv, July 27, 2020.
6. Julia Joung… Jonathan S. Gootenberg, Omar O. Abudayyeh, and Feng Zhang, “Point-of-Care Testing for COVID-19 Using SHERLOCK Diagnostics,” medRxiv, May 5, 2020.
7. Author’s interview with Feng Zhang.
8. Author’s interview with Janice Chen.
Chapter 53: Vaccines
1. Ochsner Health System, phase 2/3 study by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE of investigational vaccine, BNT162b2, against SARS-CoV-2, beginning July 2020.
2. Author’s interview with Jennifer Doudna.
3. Simantini Dey, “Meet Sarah Gilbert,” News18, July 21, 2020; Stephanie Baker, “Covid Vaccine Front-Runner Is Months Ahead of Her Competition,” Bloomberg BusinessWeek, July 14, 2020; Clive Cookson, “Sarah Gilbert, the Researcher Leading the Race to a Covid-19 Vaccine,” Financial Times, July 24, 2020.
4. Author’s interviews with Ross Wilson, Alex Marson; IGI white paper seeking funding for DNA vaccine delivery systems, Mar. 2020; Ross Wilson report at IGI COVID-response meeting, June 11, 2020.
5. “A Trial Investigating the Safety and Effects of Four BNT162 Vaccines against COVID-2019 in Healthy Adults,” ClinicalTrials.gov, May 2020, identifier: NCT04380701; “BNT162 SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine,” Precision Vaccinations, Aug. 14, 2020; Mark J. Mulligan… Uğur Şahin, Kathrin Jansen, et. al., “Phase 1/2 Study of COVID-19 RNA Vaccine BNT162b1 in Adults,” Nature, Aug. 12, 2020.
6. Joe Miller, “The Immunologist Racing to Find a Vaccine,” Financial Times, Mar. 20, 2020.
7. Author’s interview with Phil Dormitzer; Matthew Herper, “In the Race for a COVID-19 Vaccine, Pfizer Turns to a Scientist with a History of Defying Skeptics,” Stat, Aug. 24, 2020.
8. Author’s interviews with Noubar Afeyan, Christine Heenan.
9. Author’s interview and emails with Josiah Zayner; Kristen Brown, “One Biohacker’s Improbable Bid to Make a DIY Covid-19 Vaccine,” Bloomberg Business Week, June 25, 2020; Josiah Zayner videos, www.youtube.com/josiahzayner.
