The Code Breaker

Walter Isaacson

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781398518605
• eBook ISBN: 9781398502321

The best-selling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns.

In 2012, Nobel Prize winning scientist Jennifer Doudna hit upon an invention that will transform the future of 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. It has already been deployed to cure deadly diseases, fight the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, and make inheritable changes in the genes of babies. 

But what does that mean for humanity? Should we be hacking our own DNA to make us less susceptible to disease? Should we democratise the technology that would allow parents to enhance their kids?

After discovering this CRISPR, Doudna is now wrestling these even bigger issues.

THE CODE BREAKERS is an examination of how life as we know it is about to change – and a brilliant portrayal of the woman leading the way.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Introduction: Into the Breach
• Part One: The Origins of Life
• Part Two: CRISPR
• Part Three: Gene Editing
• Part Four: CRISPR in Action
• Part Five: Public Scientist
• Part Six: CRISPR Babies
• Part Seven: The Moral Questions
• Part Eight: Dispatches from the Front
• Part Nine: Coronavirus
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Notes
• Index
• Image Credits
• Copyright