“I love the miracles of science, and I think it’s more dangerous to fear science than to embrace it. The basic theme of my book is ‘nature is beautiful.' And the other theme? ‘Nature is useful.’ Once you realize how beautiful it is, you can use our human ingenuity to turn the beauty of nature into things than can help us.”
Walter Isaacson is back on the show, this time with a new book in hand titled The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race. As Isaacson explains in the opening pages of the book, the first half of the 20th century was driven by a revolution centered around physics — Einstein, relativity and quantum theory. The second half of the 20th century was an information technology era: the computer, the microchip, and the internet, which lead to the digital revolution. Now, Isaacson posits, we are entering the most momentous era of all— a life-science revolution, driven by the cutting-edge gene editing technology called CRISPR that changes lives and changes people— literally. In the first part of this conversation, Walter and Daniel go into the development of CRISPR and its extraordinary possibilities in curing diseases and stopping viruses, as well as how it has already been abused. In the second part, they discuss the broad moral implications the use of gene editing raises, from the basic questions “Should I be able to make my son a little taller, a little more muscular?” to more profound questions such as "What is a disability?" Should deafness in children, for example, be a trait preserved by deaf parents? What is objectively a hindrance to living a full and rich life that CRISPR can easily solve? Who decides? This is our future, whether we like it or not. It is up to us as a society— not scientists and not politicians — to decide our fate and the limits we will set for ourselves.
Walter Isaacson is a Professor of History at Tulane. He has been the editor of Time Magazine, the CEO and Chairman of CNN, and the CEO of the Aspen Institute. He is an advisory partner at Perella Weinberg, a financial services firm based in New York City, a cohost of the PBS show Amanpour & Co., a contributor to CNBC, and host of the podcast “Trailblazers, from Dell Technologies.”
He is the author of Leonardo da Vinci (2017), The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (2014), Steve Jobs (2011), Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007), Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003), and Kissinger: A Biography (1992), and coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986).
He joined TIME in 1978 and served as a political correspondent, national editor, and editor of digital media before becoming the magazine’s 14th editor in 1996. He became chairman and CEO of CNN in 2001, and then president and CEO of the Aspen Institute in 2003. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of the Arts, and the American Philosophical Society. He serves on the board of United Airlines, Halliburton Labs, the New Orleans City Planning Commission, the New Orleans Tricentennial Commission, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Society of American Historians, and My Brother’s Keeper Alliance.
