A scene from “Unnatural Selection”
featuring David Ishee, a biohacker who, among other things, is seeking
to bring bioilluminescence to dogs. Netflix
Mankind’s ability to edit the fabric of human life has led to scientific upheaval, global debate, and at least one
international incident. Now, it’s coming to Netflix.
“
Unnatural Selection,”
a four-part docuseries debuting Friday, dissects the stories, science,
and ethics behind genome editing, following academics, biohackers, and
patients as they move through a brave new world made possible by
technologies like CRISPR.
We recently spoke with co-directors Joe Egender and Leeor Kaufman
about how the series came to be and how it frames the sprawling story of
human genetic engineering. This transcript has been lightly edited for
clarity.
So what is the show about and what can viewers expect if they watch it?
Kaufman: I think the show is about this new world in
which we can alter DNA in any organism, including humans. We’ve entered
this world gradually and over the past decades, but significantly with
the discovery of CRISPR.
Egender: When we first jumped into this project, one
thing we really wanted to do was not make a show about science, but
make a show about the people either researching and doing the science,
people benefiting from the science, people fighting against the science,
and really tell the story of these incredible new technologies through
the people, through their experiences, through their eyes, rather than a
science show with a host or a narrator — which can be very effective,
but also can create a little bit of a distance between the viewer and
what is actually going on in this world.
We wanted the viewer to feel like they were and are a part of this
world, because we all are now that we can edit the DNA of any living
organism.
Kaufman: A lot of this technology is done in the
labs, or within very initial applications. And the people who are
experiencing this technology today are very few. They are the pioneers
and they are already experiencing the dilemmas, the ethics, the
financial struggles of dealing with tomorrow’s technology.
What first sparked your interest in genome editing?
Egender: I come from the fiction side, and I was
actually in the thick of developing a sci-fi story and was reading a lot
of older sci-fi books and was doing some research and trying to update
some of the science. And — I won’t ever forget — I was sitting on the
subway reading an article when I first read that CRISPR existed and that
we actually can edit the essence of life. And around that time — you
know, it’s one of those moments where you kind of stop in your tracks
and wonder if this is real — around that time, Leeor and I had met and
we were talking about collaborating. Leeor comes from the doc side. And
when I was telling him about CRISPR, he thought initially I was talking
about the sci-fi project that I was working on. When he understood that,
no, this is real science and it’s happening now, he said, “I think this
might be a documentary rather than a science fiction film.”
Kaufman: The moment that I understood that actually
this is real and there are real people that are already dealing with
this technology in their lives, in their labs, and in their homes, their
work, thinking about how the world would be tomorrow, I said
immediately, “OK, let’s just start calling these people and
understanding what it looks like and what kind of dilemmas that they’re
facing.” And I think that the moment that we started calling people, we
were amazed by how much these people are thinking about the future and
how many things that most people are not aware of. They’re already
thinking about what the world of tomorrow is going to look like and the
risks and the benefits and so forth. It started this unbelievable
journey that we’re still in today.
It seems like you got pretty sweeping access
to the major scientific figures who are driving the genome editing
story, but also regular folks who may benefit or just may have strong
opinions about this and how it affects their lives. Was it difficult to
convince anyone to open up their labs or their homes to you and your
cameras?
Kaufman: Obviously people are … sometimes wary in
the first conversation. And, I mean, I understand it. But I think that
people also want to tell this story, because all of our characters think
that everybody should be involved in this discussion.
A lot of the conversations in science nowadays are not about
can we do this, but should we do this. How far should we push genome
editing? What are the philosophical battlegrounds that people are
arguing over?
Kaufman: This is why it was so important for us to
feature all aspects — or a lot of the aspects — in the show. The
technology touches many different things in our world, from the
environment to gene therapies to fertility. So there are a lot of very
specific ethical dilemmas that arise from different sub-applications of
such technology.
The environmental question is a big one. I mean we have the ability
to maybe eradicate a horrible disease like malaria in Africa that
science has yet to find a solution for. And here comes a technology that
theoretically has the promise to do so. And people agreed that
theoretically it has the promise to do so, but it comes with the risk of
eradicating an entire species in a big area. And it can spread through
countries. So there is immediately this unbelievable hope and benefit
that can come out of applying this technology, but also a great risk or
at least a great unknown. And everybody agrees that it’s a great
unknown.
Another question [involves] fertility. We have the ability to alter
genes and embryos. Obviously, people suffer from horrible diseases. We
can fix genes. We can make people suffer less, or not at all. We can
allow people who couldn’t be pregnant before to have children. This is a
great promise for a lot of people who are suffering. On the other hand,
there’s a really big philosophical debate about how far we go in
designing our next generation. There are also financial implications.
Not everybody has access to new technologies.
Egender: What we wanted to do, especially by making
it a series and opening it up to four episodes, is to really get into
these discussions, because there are a lot of things going on in the
world of genetics. There is gene editing, there are gene therapies,
there are gene drives. It covers fertility environment, designer babies,
self-experimentation. In the end, people still might be afraid of some
of these technologies. People might be excited about some of these
technologies. But what we hope is that they have a better understanding
so their fear or their excitement comes from a place of understanding
and not a place of fear of the unknown.
“Unnatural Selection” takes a really wide view of how this
science is done, whether that’s at a lab at the Salk Institute in San
Diego or in a garage in Oakland. Even though we perceive those worlds as
being very far apart, in practice, it’s kind of just people using
pipettes in different clothes, perhaps. When you were filming it, did
you find that these maybe seemingly opposing worlds had more in common
than not?
Kaufman: Sometimes, yes. Many times when we were in
some of the more rogue labs and the garages, I was seeing more and more
that some of the equipment was very similar. And what people are doing
in practice is very similar. Obviously, there are things that are
different. There are machines that are expensive and only available to
big corporations and big institutions. You know, I don’t think we know
enough. I think we learned a lot. But we don’t know enough exactly about
how everything is made.
I was intrigued by the storyline in the show that involved
the Mississippi dog breeder who was attempting to use CRISPR-Cas9 to
alter the genomes of his dogs so that they would glow in the dark. Now,
honestly, when I first saw this, it kind of got me mad because it seemed
to put the dog’s health at risk possibly, and kind of also underscored
maybe the way genome editing could be used for exploitative or
superfluous reasons. Is that why he was included in the show?
Kaufman: First and foremost, David [Ishee] is
included in the show because I think he has a lot of very important
ideas and things to say, and he also represents the fact that we are now
entering a world where there is an ability of people — in their homes,
in their garages — to do DIY genetic engineering.
A lot of these ideas are at first scary and perhaps even disgusting
to some people. And yet … a lot of what we do is breaking nature, moving
away from nature. And I think the characters in the show, including
David, are people who are facing that and are willing to face that every
day and are thinking about it.
How do we want to see a world that is more designed? Perhaps we can’t
go back anymore to a world that is not designed. … The future of a wild
nature — that we like to romanticize — perhaps is not sustainable
anymore. Perhaps we need to design it. Perhaps we want to design it for
our own needs. And if we are going that way, what does that mean?
The broader story of genome editing is one that has been
continuously evolving. Just this summer, there was news about a Russian
scientist who might be considering another CRISPR baby experiment. So
how do you approach making a documentary that you want to stand on its
own as a film while news seems to keep breaking in genome editing?
Egender: When we first started the project and we
were dipping our toes into it, if you’d have said to us during the
process of filming there would be a CRISPR baby born, there would be a
bio-hacker injecting himself with CRISPR, there would be a cure for
genetic blindness … we wouldn’t we wouldn’t have believed you because,
you know, in many ways, science moves very slow. Right? But then
sometimes science moves very fast.
And we are in a moment right now where CRISPR was only discovered
six, seven years ago and things are moving very fast. On the one hand,
we did have to be ready for anything. On the other hand, we had such
great relationships with our characters that when things did happen, we
would see them happening through the eyes of our characters. So what was
their response to the CRISPR baby being born? What is their response to
these drug prices being $1 million, $2 million for one shot? How does
that affect their work? And so the audience gets to experience these
fast-moving events with our characters. So it makes for quite a journey.
And it let us relax a little bit to say, “OK, we’re in this world now.
We are with the people, with the pioneers. So when things come up, we’ll
be there and we’ll experience that with them.”
After working on this project, we want to know, would either
of you undergo genome editing to augment or enhance a part of your body?
Now, please keep your answer clean. This is not exactly a
family-oriented podcast, but we do have limits.
Kaufman: With a lot of these technologies there,
it’s easy to say, “Oh, I would never do that,” or, “I wouldn’t want
anybody to do something like that,” until you faced a dire need. Now, I
know you’re asking about cosmetics and stuff like that, but I think it’s
hard sometimes to define a line between what is purely medical and what
is purely cosmetic or enhancement. It’s not black and white.
I think things have to be judged by a specific case and a specific need and a reason.
Egender: There’s a moment in episode one with Carlos
Belmonte at the Salk Institute, and he’s talking about this issue and
about enhancement. And he gets into inequality and what Leeor mentioned
before, some of these technologies will be very expensive. So is it fair
if only the rich are allowed to enhance themselves and the poor are not
able to? And what will that do to further class divisions?
But if everyone can have access to these technologies, as Carlos said, what’s wrong with everyone having the vision of an eagle?
Kaufman: We like to think of ourselves as pure and
natural. But the reality is, we all want to be birds and we go on
planes. Our basic DNA is not enabling. We can’t fly. We can’t swim long,
long distances. And yet build these devices to enable us. And now we’re
entering this world where not only can we build a device to enable us,
we can change and alter our own DNA. And of course, it’s scary. And, of
course, it immediately brings these unbelievable philosophical
questions. But I think it’s too easy to discard it all as something that
is just a crazy idea.
The ‘unbelievable journey’ of CRISPR, now on Netflix
