A deep dive into a Brave New World

David Bolt’s Human Nature - originally set for theatrical release last week but due to theatre closures is now available to rent or buy on Apple-iTunes, Amazon and other platforms (it screened at the Windsor International Film Festival last fall) – is a deep dive into science, in particular the realm of genetic engineering. But it’s hardly science fiction. In fact, it deals with the 2013 breakthrough of the very real genetic engineering tool known as CRISPR, which may have the power to  modify genes for an extraordinary number of purposes - from altering human deformities to curing diseases, reversing the aging process and even bringing back extinct species. At first the film seems quite technical and fit mainly for science nerds (the image of The Big Bang Theory did come to mind at one point). But if you hang in you’ll be part of a select audience that is learning about what may be the most cutting edge technology on Earth. As one researcher says, in terms of its impact on human civilization, “after two billion years this is, in a sense, the end of the beginning.” CRISPR is an acronym for the tool - molecular “scissors”- which can cut and paste DNA and therefore alter all life forms. What if we could bioengineer so that children aren’t stricken with diseases or eliminate patients' extreme pain from cancer? In a sense, the science, or science fiction, has been around 100 years, from the Eugenics movement of the 1930s to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. And, yes, as scientist Ryan Phelan sighs, there is Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg 1993). But while much of this was science fiction, now the tool exists; it just needs modification although Chinese scientists in 2018 for the first time edited the genetic code of twin girls. Some of the leading researchers in the field are interviewed – Jennifer Doudna of UC Berkeley, George Church of MIT, David Baltimore of Caltech. As are scientist-businesspeople who have created companies where geneticists can purchase the proper gene-splicing tools for the alterations they want to make. The film intersplices (sorry) a look at the real science and how it works – it’s technical but hang in there – with the ethical debate, even and largely within the scientific community. Do we want to “play God?” But it seems this “Brave New World” will eventually win out, especially within the next decade or two, as geneticists perform increasing gene editing so that, babies, for example, will grow up to be free of Down syndrome. As one mom tearfully implores a scientific committee: “If you have the skills and the technology to fix these diseases then frickin’ do it!” One obviously can’t help wondering if CRISPR could be the answer to a breakthrough against the ravaging COVID-19 disease. Ironically, the film opened on Friday March 13 in New York and San Francisco, one day before theatres began closing everywhere because of the outbreak.