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kblincoln 's review for:
The Gene: An Intimate History
by Siddhartha Mukherjee
I had my mind blown by Mukherjee's deft use of personal history, cultural history, and ability to explain technical scientific details to laypeople without boring us senseless in his oncology masterpiece, The Emperor of All Maladies.
He does it again, here, with The Gene. Embedding the history-- both scientific and cultural-- of human involvement with genetics within his own familial history of mental disease, Mukherjee portrays a powerful, troubling, thought-provoking strain of human science-- our quest to understand why we are who we are as well as the ethical/moral pitfalls of any attempt to control that.
Through Mendel and Darwin, traveling on to Eugenics both in the US and Nazi, then the moral trajectory of stem cell research and the politically influenced Human Genome Project, and also touching on the highly publicized death of a first recipient of gene therapy, Mukherjee ends with implications about our current technological ability to use human embryonic cells and insert genetic changes via CRISPR technology that can affect the germ line (ability to pass on changes via egg and sperm cells to the next generation).
By the end of reading this book, I had so many sticky notes on the "good parts" that it was ridiculous, and all of those were a personal lens focused on the how this book framed the development of genetics in a way that either made lots of sense to me or made me rethink certain assumptions.
First, the way that "mutants" are defined. He reminds us that the opposite of "mutant" isn't "normal", but 'wild strain.' This has implications on our definitions of normal and how evolution is perceived. In talking about how gross-beaked variants of Galapagos finches survived famine and then "..a new species of finch began to appear. The freak became the norm. As new Malthusian limits were imposed-- diseases, famines, parasites-- new breeds gained a stronghold, and the population shifted again. Freaks became norms, and norms became extinct. Monster by monster, evolution advanced."
This theme that what to our current sensibilities might seem monstrous, is truly just a biased perception that may not fully appreciate how a mutant might better fit an environment is a theme throughout the book, culminating in implications for genetic therapy treatments for mental and physical diseases. He constantly underlines that "It is not mutation that ultimately causes disease, but mismatch" where the mismatch is in specific disabilities caused by an incongruity between an individual's specific genetic makeup and his or her current environment. Some poignant implications for parents who can envision themselves deciding on abortion of a genetic survey of their fetus resulted in a diagnosis for risk of schizophrenia, autism, hemophilia, and Down's syndrome.
And Mukherjee does all this with a tender, compassionate touch. He references King Lear, Sanskrit poetry, and other literary/cultural images to help us humanize the science. And while there was a bit of needless repetition of scientific concepts at times, I forgave that in the face of the excellent way he can take complex, lengthy history and distill it into fundamental questions and personal anecdotes of what it means to be human. Bravo.
He does it again, here, with The Gene. Embedding the history-- both scientific and cultural-- of human involvement with genetics within his own familial history of mental disease, Mukherjee portrays a powerful, troubling, thought-provoking strain of human science-- our quest to understand why we are who we are as well as the ethical/moral pitfalls of any attempt to control that.
Through Mendel and Darwin, traveling on to Eugenics both in the US and Nazi, then the moral trajectory of stem cell research and the politically influenced Human Genome Project, and also touching on the highly publicized death of a first recipient of gene therapy, Mukherjee ends with implications about our current technological ability to use human embryonic cells and insert genetic changes via CRISPR technology that can affect the germ line (ability to pass on changes via egg and sperm cells to the next generation).
By the end of reading this book, I had so many sticky notes on the "good parts" that it was ridiculous, and all of those were a personal lens focused on the how this book framed the development of genetics in a way that either made lots of sense to me or made me rethink certain assumptions.
First, the way that "mutants" are defined. He reminds us that the opposite of "mutant" isn't "normal", but 'wild strain.' This has implications on our definitions of normal and how evolution is perceived. In talking about how gross-beaked variants of Galapagos finches survived famine and then "..a new species of finch began to appear. The freak became the norm. As new Malthusian limits were imposed-- diseases, famines, parasites-- new breeds gained a stronghold, and the population shifted again. Freaks became norms, and norms became extinct. Monster by monster, evolution advanced."
This theme that what to our current sensibilities might seem monstrous, is truly just a biased perception that may not fully appreciate how a mutant might better fit an environment is a theme throughout the book, culminating in implications for genetic therapy treatments for mental and physical diseases. He constantly underlines that "It is not mutation that ultimately causes disease, but mismatch" where the mismatch is in specific disabilities caused by an incongruity between an individual's specific genetic makeup and his or her current environment. Some poignant implications for parents who can envision themselves deciding on abortion of a genetic survey of their fetus resulted in a diagnosis for risk of schizophrenia, autism, hemophilia, and Down's syndrome.
And Mukherjee does all this with a tender, compassionate touch. He references King Lear, Sanskrit poetry, and other literary/cultural images to help us humanize the science. And while there was a bit of needless repetition of scientific concepts at times, I forgave that in the face of the excellent way he can take complex, lengthy history and distill it into fundamental questions and personal anecdotes of what it means to be human. Bravo.