Make People Better (2022)

Directed by

Cody Sheehy

Genre

documentary film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 23m

Rated

14A

Rating

5.5 of 10 from 4 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This documentary looks at the real-life case of a scientist who used CRISPR gene editing to make two babies immune to HIV. It explains the secret experiment and the questions it raised about science and ethics.

informativesobermeasuredsuspensefulthought-provokingclinical

What happens

Make People Better is a 2022 documentary film about the use of genetic engineering (called CRISPR gene editing) to enhance two twins girls to be immune to HIV. Directed by Cody Sheehy of Rhumbline Media, it was originated by Samira Kiani, a biotechnologist then at Arizona State University. It focuses on the circumstances involving Chinese biologist He Jiankui who created the first genetically modified humans in 2018. Featured experts included Antonio Regalado, senior editor for biomedicine of MIT Technology Review, who first discovered and revealed the secret experiment, and Benjamin Hurlbut, a bioethicist at the Arizona State University. The film was released on 13 December 2022 by Gravitas Films and Internationally by Cats & Docs. It premiered at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, and was simultaneously launched on the iTunes Store and Amazon Prime Video. The title was taken from James Watson's reply as He asked him, "Do you think that that's [genetically modifying babies is] a good thing to do?" (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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