This book is crazy good. Walter Isaacson is an amazing author and really captures the spirit of his subjects. This book was great for understanding the current technology with vaccines but also a very good biography of exceptional people.

Isaacson is a history professor at Tulane University in New Orleans and the author of many bestselling books, including "Steve Jobs" "Einstein: His Life and Universe" and "Leonardo Da Vinci". This book is mostly about Jennifer Doudna, who with her collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020 for their work in developing CRISPR. CRISPR is an easy to use tool that can be used to edit genes. The discovery came about when is it was discovered that bacteria had a method using RNA to destroy viruses that attacked them. The book details the long process of the development and the competition among rival labs. It delves deeply into the moral issues raised by the development and where it should be used. While it is considered appropriate to use to cure someone of sickle cell disease, should it be used to change genes in such a way that that change is passed on to future generations. What about creating designer babies? The book ends with a discussion of Covid 19 and how the RNA technology was used to create both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. This is a fabulous recommendation for readers interested in science.