My publicist is excited that you're doing this.
She was raving about your Rihanna biopic.
I won't be nearly as exciting.
Are you kidding me? You're almost as famous as Einstein.
I'm Kate Randall, I'm a geneticist.
I hold professorships at various universities
and I'm the winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize for Physiology and medicine.
And your company is?
Well, there's … it'll take a while to say them all …
There's about ten now.
I'll just say something generic.
I'm the co-founder of a number of companies developing CRISPR technology in numerous fields,
from health to agriculture to fertility.
So, now can you read the opening paragraph from your new book?
'For four billion years, nothing fundamental changed in the basic rules of the game of life.'
'Whether you were Tyrannosaurus Rex, tomato or a Texan, you were subject
to the laws of natural selection.'
'But about 15 years ago all that changed.'
'And now we're replacing evolution by natural selection with evolution by design.'
'Today we can literally rewrite the book of life.'
That's great!
Now can you give us a CRISPR 101?
Really? I mean, kids are learning this in elementary school.
CRISPR is like a chemical cut and paste tool.
It enables us to snip out a certain piece of DNA and remove it or replace it.
It works in a few ways.
You can use CRISPR to snip out the part of DNA that's coded for say muscular dystrophy
or Alzheimer's thus eliminating that disease from your future child.
But CRISPR is not only a pair of scissors, it also allows us to insert the DNA
so you can insert say the genes for green eyes or height or for strength
and if that wasn't revolutionary enough, CRISPR also enables us to make these
genetic changes heritable.
CRISPR can override natural selection.
Most forms of cancer are now treatable.
Drought-resistant rice now ensures food security for millions of the poorest.
Gene drives have been used to wipe out malaria by sterilising female mosquitoes.
Now, using pigs we've modified for human organ harvesting.
There is no transplant waitlist in countries like the USA or the UK.
That's just a fraction of the numerous benefits we're experiencing conclusive.
Are you still using Cassandra?
I'm so, so sorry, I was sure I turned my phone off.
So, I wanted to ask you about regrets.
What about the way it's exacerbating inequality?
The recode babies which only the rich can afford, the fact that we're engineering
a new human race for the wealthy.
You can't blame that on us, on scientists.
That's capitalism not CRISPR.
We did everything we could to mitigate the risks.
In 2019, we called for a global moratorium but we were ignored.
I sat on global ethics committees, I wrote three books to inform the public, I did everything I could.
A diary that is?
Not quite.
Morning pages.
It's free writing, helped me writing that first book.
And all those nightmares back in 2019.
This was mum's.
I've forgotten about that.
She was a scientist too, right?
Yeah, biology teacher.
This was her place.
It was badly damaged in that tornado in 21, I had it rebuilt.
What are those?
Drawings of the organisms whose genomes had been edited using CRISPR year by year.
It's a bit of a project.
It all happened so fast. – Too fast?
Yeah.
You could say that.
Once we've mastered the ability to recode human life, everybody wanted in.
Science progressed at an insane speed.
The race to play God.
Russia, China, the US … nobody wanted to be left behind.
Remember they became obsessional?
Abusing CRISPR that was the height of human arrogance over the rest of the web of life.
More and more whenever she looked at me she had this mix of pride and disappointment.
I couldn't bear it, I stopped visiting.
Put the bloody camera down, have a drink. – I'm good thanks.
I'd like to ask you about CRISPR and …
Oh, just have a sundowner.
– I'm not drinking.
When's your harvesting date?
– I'm sorry?
Oh well, that was your hormone measurements,
on your phone, right?
IVF.
Actually this isn't about me.
Well, that's not fair.
You get to pick me apart but I don't get to find out anything about you?
Well, at least tell me what you're recoding?
I'm doing this because I'm having a a child alone
not because I'm recoding anything.
I want my child to be born in natural.
Don't tell me you're a luddite.
Anyway, I could never afford it. It's four times my income.
The prices will come down. They always do.
Well, pharmaceutical companies have been shafting us with patents for ages
so forgive me if I don't share your conviction
that eventually everyone will be able to afford recoding.
Stop with the pro natural blah blah.
They're deluded. Pandora's Box is well and truly open.
At least get the climate recode, then your child can live at higher temperatures.
I'll sort it out at my clinic. A gift. I just need some DNA.
I just wanted to help.
If temperatures soar by recoding you're ensured of the future of your child.
When I was little I used to spend hours prodding the sea anemones.
I love to watch them contract.
Let me touch it.
No. Don't.
Leave them. Let them be.
If you want to film where really all began,
it's probably here.
It was the first time that we came down here.
My mum had just got the place.
Well, it was in a state.
But there was no running water.
We had to wash our plates in the sea that first night.
I wanted to impress her with star jumps on the rocks.
I wanted to keep her happy so I kept doing bigger and bigger jumps and then
of course I fell, badly, broke my leg. I was horizontal for two weeks.
She tried to entertain me by teaching me a jazzed up version of her syllabus from Darwin to DNA.
That's what led to me diving into genetics.
Toward the end of her life, she told me how she sometimes wished that
that period had never happened.
You should accept my recode offer.
What choice have you got?