Ken Burns Presents The Gene: An Intimate History

The Gene: An Intimate History interweaves the story of the thrilling revolution in modern genetic science with powerful stories from the frontlines of medicine, featuring patients suffering from rare genetic diseases and the leading researchers racing to identify and treat, even cure, the errors in their DNA that afflict them.

The second part of the four-hour series The Gene: An Intimate History begins with the story of the signature scientific achievement of our time: the mapping of the human genome. As scientists learn to read the genetic code, they grapple with the dangers inherent in increasingly sophisticated and easily available methods of intervening in the very essence of what makes us human, our DNA.