Curved Air

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-threatenin