Book description
Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2021
An anthropologist visits the frontiers of genetics, medicine, and technology to ask: whose values are guiding gene-editing experiments, and what are the implications for humanity?
At a conference in Hong Kong in November 2018, Dr. Jiankui He announced that he had created the…
Why read it?
1 author picked The Mutant Project as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This book starts and ends with the story of Dr. Jiankui He, the infamous Chinese researcher responsible for the first CRISPR experiment resulting in genetically modified children.
It chronicles Dr. He’s “meteoric rise to fame” followed by his “dramatic fall from grace.”
In telling this story Kirksey, a cultural anthropologist, entertains the reader with details about interesting characters he meets and places he visits in his quest to both situate this debacle in relation to earlier efforts at genetic engineering and cell therapy in the United States and to confirm some of the contested details about what did or did…
From Françoise's list on The best books on genetic engineering (including CRISPR) and designer babies.
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December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
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