Curved Air: A Biography of Sickle Cell Anemia and the Quest to Cure the First Molecular Disease

How sickle cell anemia led the quest to edit the human genome while patients endured decades of racial discrimination and medical neglect.

In December 1904, Walter Clement Noel, a dental student from Grenada, was admitted to a Chicago hospital with fever, jaundiced eyes, and leg ulcers. When doctors examined his blood under a microscope, they were puzzled by his sickle-shaped cells. His case became enshrined in the annals of medicine as the first report of sickle cell anemia, a life-threaten...