Human Nature (2019) on Netflix

Plot summary

A 2013 breakthrough in biology, CRISPR allows scientists to control the genetic processes that shape living things. The documentary explains how the tool works and gathers the researchers who invented it together with the genetic engineers who are applying it. It asks how gene editing may change the human relationship with nature and what it could mean for human evolution, weighing the distant past against an informed view of what may come. One thread follows David Sanchez, who has sickle cell disease and receives red blood cell transfusions in a hospital, a treatment that helps him through painful crises. Geneticists Tshaka Cunningham and Matt Porteus discuss treating the disease at its genetic source, and Porteus is preparing a clinical trial at Stanford University.