Masterminds: Genius, DNA, and the Quest to Rewrite Life. David Duncan Ewing

      

      DAVID EWING DUNCAN

       Masterminds

      GENIUS, DNA, AND THE QUEST TO REWRITE LIFE

       DEDICATION

      To my mother and father.

       EPIGRAPH

      I’ve had to face up to the

      fact that most of our society

      thinks of scientists as people

      who are likely to do something

      bad. Either bad to make

      money for themselves, or

      to cause trouble in the

      Frankensteinian sense.

      And the fact is, scientists

      that I know are trying to do

      good for people.

      —Douglas Melton

      Harvard embryologist

      It is not possible to be a

      scientist unless you believe

      that the knowledge of

      the world, and the power

      that this gives, is a thing

      which is of intrinsic value

      to humanity, and that you

      are using it to help in the

      spread of knowledge, and

      are willing to take the

      consequences.

      —Robert Oppenheimer

      November 1945

      CONTENTS

       Cover

       Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Prelude: The Geneticist Who Played Hoops with My DNA

The Language of Biotech: A Genetic Primer

1. Prometheus • Douglas Melton

2. Eve • Cynthia Kenyon

       3. Paul • Francis Collins

       4. Faustus • Craig Venter

       5. Zeus • James Watson

       6. Puck • Sydney Brenner

       7. Moses • Paul Berg

       EPILOGUE: What If Frankenstein’s Monster Had Einstein’s Brain?

       Keep Reading

       P.S. Ideas, Interviews & Features …

       About the Author

       Q and A with David Ewing Duncan

       Top Ten Favourite Authors

       Life at a Glance

       A Writing Life

       About the Book

       The Greatest Story in Human History

       Read On

       If You Loved This, You Might Like …

       The Web Detective

       Index

       Acknowledgments

       About the Author

       Notes

       Praise

       Also by the Author

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       PRELUDE: The Geneticist who Played Hoops with my DNA

      There’s a high probability that for Homo

      sapiens, the process of evolution as we

      currently think about it, as natural selection,

       is for all intents and purposes over. It is

       going to be replaced by our desire and

      capability to tinker.

      —Stuart Schreiber, Harvard geneticist

      I’m playing hoops with Erik the Red on a half-court at the ends of the Earth, and he is toying with me. Also Iceland’s most famous geneticist, he’s dribbling a basketball in a Reykjavik gym on a typically damp, cold day in August near the Arctic Circle. Notorious for being rude, as well as brilliant and filled with an infectious passion, Kari Stefansson, a descendent of Erik—an early Viking explorer and marauder—insisted that I go one on one.

      Every day at 2:00 P.M., when he’s not wandering the globe rustling up cash or giving talks, Stefansson drives from his office downtown across this speck of a capital city, home to nearly all of Iceland’s 290,000 people,