Siddhartha Mukherjee Talks to David Remnick About Genetics

If you could identify a piece of genetic code in a living embryo—one that could affect anything from gender and sexual orientation to a predisposition to mental illness—would you do anything to change that embryo’s development? Should you have the option? Siddhartha Mukherjee, the physician, Pulitzer Prize winner, and author of the new book “The Gene: An Intimate History,” spoke with David Remnick about his family’s personal history with mental illness, and about the moral and political implications of recent discoveries in the field of genetic science.