Genome editing: That's the way the CRISPR crumbles

The prospect of a memoir from Jennifer Doudna, a key player in the CRISPR story, quickens the pulse. And A Crack in Creation does indeed deliver a welcome perspective on the revolutionary genome-editing technique that puts the power of evolution into human hands, with many anecdotes and details that only those close to her may have known. Yet it does not provide the probing introspection, the nuanced ethical analysis, the moral counterpoint that we CRISPR junkies crave.

After the race for discovery comes the battle for control of the discovery narrative. The stakes for the CRISPR–Cas system are extraordinarily high. In February, the US Patent and Trademark Office ruled against Doudna and the University of California, Berkeley. It found that a patent on the application of CRISPR to eukaryotic cells — filed by Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts — did not interfere with Berkeley's more sweeping patent on genetic engineering with CRISPR.

Although that battle is over, the war rages on. Berkeley has already appealed against the decision; meanwhile, the European Patent...