Human Nature (2020)
dir. Adam Bolt
Rated: N/A
image: ©2020 News and Guts Films
You can take the title of the documentary Human Nature as a reference to a few different ideas the film raises. Probably the most apparent – especially after you’ve seen the movie – is the way a recent and revolutionary scientific discovery brings with it the ability for the human species to alter our very nature, what makes us human. I took it as a nod to our one unique trait, the thing that has caused all of our triumphs and pain. Our human nature is defined by our complex brains and our endless quest for discovery and knowledge about how the universe works. That knowledge, as one man puts it in archival footage of a scientific conference that opens the film, can be used either “for deliverance, or equally for disaster.”
Human Nature is a thought-provoking film that is by turns wondrous and terrifying. This is filmmaker Adam Bolt’s first directorial effort. Before now, Bolt has worked mostly as a writer and editor on documentaries. He co-wrote and edited Inside Job, the 2010 examination of the events that lead to the 2008 financial crisis, and he has worked as an editor on series like Independent Lens, Humans of New York, and Years of Living Dangerously. He’s also worked on the news program Dan Rather Reports. Human Nature was produced in part by Rather’s company, News and Guts Films.
It would be folly for me to try to describe in too much depth the science at the heart of Human Nature. Although I’m endlessly fascinated and in awe of human ingenuity and our understanding of the cosmos through the scientific method, I’m also out of my depth when it comes to science. I avoided those classes in college as best I could because I was intimidated by them.
So, it’s a great compliment to Human Nature and Bolt that I never felt overwhelmed by the – at times very technical – explanations of the science on which the movie focuses. The first half of the picture covers the discovery of CRISPR, which is an acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.
The discovery of this family of DNA sequences was relatively recent because they only occur in bacteria and other single-celled organisms. Biochemists and other biology-focused scientists discovered that an enzyme – which they named Cas9 – works with these CRISPR DNA sequences to copy and clip the DNA of invading viruses, effectively immunizing the bacteria from infection.
Bolt interviews Dr. Jennifer Doudna, a luminary in CRISPR research who made the groundbreaking discovery that the copying and editing properties of the CRISPR DNA sequences – think of it as cutting and pasting text in a Word document – can be used to edit human DNA. In other words, we are on the cusp of editing our genes, using gene therapy to treat disease, and possibly using the process to eliminate undesirable traits in the womb.
From here, Bolt launches Human Nature into the philosophical realm. The film debates the implications of the human species being able to edit our genetic makeup, while simultaneously staying very grounded in the science. Bolt includes personal stories that illustrate the promise that CRISPR holds for the eradication of genetic disorders. One of these is a little boy living with sickle cell disease. The kind of gene therapy that CRISPR may someday make readily available could make sickle cell disease, and the on-average 40-year life span that comes with it, a thing of the past.
There is also plenty of time devoted to the potential horrors that might come if this process falls into the wrong hands. Nazi views on eugenics, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World – in which worker humans are essentially grown, not born – and the movie Gattaca (an homage to and expansion of Brave New World) are all name-checked in Human Nature. There are plenty of interviewees who urge restraint at the prospect of getting too worked up over these doomsday scenarios. Bioethicist Alta Charo makes the distinction between bio-optimists and bio-pessimists, describing herself as the former. She also makes the case that it’s not the role of science (or scientists) to consider the political uses of human discovery. The role of science is merely to discover.
That comes as cold comfort when Bolt turns his attention to the possible application of CRISPR technology. He interviews one pair of biotech dude-bros who launched a startup which sells CRISPR genetic material that is precisely formulated to each client’s requirements. One of the guys is clearly so excited by what his company is doing that his partner has to jump in to assure us that they rigorously vet the scientific and ethical credentials of their customers. “We don’t just ship to anyone,” he tells us. Of course, the more excitable of the two partners is quick to concur.
We are also introduced to another company operating in the basement of a startup incubator. (That’s a building where a venture capitalist allows people to develop potentially money-making new ideas in exchange for a cut of future profits. If you’re a fan of the HBO series Silicon Valley, you know what I’m describing.) Their idea is to breed pigs with CRISPR modified organs that would be suitable for human transplant. Towards the end of the film we meet the first two pigs brought successfully to term with their process.
Knowing what I do about another base-level attribute of human nature – our insatiable need to accumulate wealth, often at the expense of others – I’m hard pressed to wholly buy into Charo’s bio-optimist argument. We haven’t yet figured out a way to structure a civilization that isn’t stratified into haves and have-nots. It’s easy to make the leap to the assumption that whatever promise the coming CRISPR revolution holds will end up benefiting the wealthy while leaving the rest of us behind – or worse, outright exploiting us.
Like the challenges that humanity faces with climate change, unsustainable consumption of resources, and overpopulation, the outcomes associated with our wielding of CRISPR might prove to be one more example of the dangers of gaining knowledge before we’ve attained the wisdom to use it responsibly.
Human Nature is a sobering look at both the promise and the peril we face as we enter an age of being able to alter who we are on a genetic level.
Why it got 4 stars:
- Human Nature covers a fascinating and highly technical topic in such a way that it’s accessible to everyone. Bolt’s clear-eyed take on both the possible advances in the treatment of diseases and the dangers that CRISPR holds for us just around the corner makes for a compelling documentary.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- There’s one not-so-subtle sequence juxtaposing the assembly-line-like CRISPR process and footage of automobile plant workers assembling cars. It’s a bit on the nose.
- One interviewee says, with no apparent sense of irony, that CRISPR represents the biggest leap forward for the human race since the invention of the internet. Because there have been no bad outcomes from the invention of the internet…
- The film includes footage of a speech given at a conference by Vladimir Putin about the promise of CRISPR. Where does his mind immediately go when thinking about the process? Creating super-soldiers who can be genetically modified to not feel pain, of course. Jesus.
- A more humane (and less bat-shit insane) use of the technology that the film also covers is being able to use CRISPR to mitigate the effects of pain from cancer and cancer treatments.
- I didn’t even get to the section of the movie that discusses the potential for disaster if we begin genetically modifying the human germline, meaning that changes we make in an individual will be forever passed down to future generations. It’s a harrowing debate.
- One interviewee observes that in the future, he hopes “governments will make [this technology] free.” I guffawed at the idea that huge profits won’t be part of this process some day.
- There was a really clever idea used in the closing credits of Human Nature. Each interviewee was distinguished by pairing their name with a memorable quote they made during the film. I can’t recall ever seeing that in a movie, documentary or otherwise, before.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- This is coronavirus theater shut down review number three. I watched a screener link on the internet. I just realized that these reviews will act as a nice time-capsule to remind me how long this whole quarantine situation lasted.