The History Lurking Behind “Orphan Black”

April 17, 2015

(The New Yorker) – Genetic research has lately progressed so far that, this year, a group of scientists and practitioners gathered in Napa, California, to urge a ban on modifying the genetic material of human sperm, eggs, and embryos, a process known as germline editing. I talked to Jennifer Doudna, a prominent genetic scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was the lead author of an article in Science, calling for the ban. She’s never watched “Orphan Black” and says human cloning wasn’t possible in 1985, and it’s not possible today, either.