The Gene: An Intimate History in CMU Alumni Association Faculty Bookshelf

Jan 03, 2017 Cindy Leighton rated it it was amazing

Shelves: social-justice, favorites, microhistory-sweeping-social-hist, medical-science, science-history, general-science

"Normalcy is the antithesis of evolution"

"Illness might progressively vanish, but so might identity. . . Mutants would be eliminated but so would human variation."

I won't pretend I understood EVERY line of this book, but Mukherjee, is such a brilliant writer I understood and was astounded by almost every sentence. Part history of how humans have understood their reproduction and development, part ethical and philosophical reflection on the future of genetic study, part scientific explanation of "Normalcy is the antithesis of evolution"

"Illness might progressively vanish, but so might identity. . . Mutants would be eliminated but so would human variation."

I won't pretend I understood EVERY line of this book, but Mukherjee, is such a brilliant writer I understood and was astounded by almost every sentence. Part history of how humans have understood their reproduction and development, part ethical and philosophical reflection on the future of genetic study, part scientific explanation of current genetic understanding - with lots of illustrating stories thrown in to make everything clear to the non scientist. I am amazed by his talent in making what seems to me incredibly complicated concepts, accessible and understandable.

Beginning with Aristotle, Mukharjee traces fascinating developments in human theories of reproduction. I believe all scientists should be familiar with the history of thought in their field- as it is often hard to see things other than they are; and for people to invent and discover, being able to see things in a new way is crucial. When I was explaining to my brilliant biochemist daughter Aristotle's theory that the "recipe" for babies came from Sperm, but the actual material came from women in the form of menstrual blood (before this most westerners believed men provided all of the material and women merely vessels/ovens - Aristotle observed that children also received characteristics from their mothers- yet eggs were not yet known, but observation shows menstrual blood stops being released after conception- a very logical idea) she was dumbfounded. How could anyone believe that? She said she guessed since she knew so much about genetics she had a hard time imagining any other understanding of reproduction. Or maybe this is just because I am an historian , not a scientist, and thus am drawn to the historical evolution of the ideas of evolution ;) and reproduction.

This book made me think and think and question. Mukherjee does not just present a dry history or current science - he constantly adds illustrating examples and reflects on the potential impact okey doke our growing genetic understanding and ability to manipulate genes. I love his focus on the fact that mutation and variety are crucial to evolution- it is how we change and adapt. And I love his emphasis on genetic mutation being "abnormal only in a statistical sense: it is the less common variant. Not all of these "mutants" need to be fixed or normalized. "Every genetic 'illness' is a mismatch between an organism's genome and its environment. In some cases, the appropriate medical intervention to mitigate a disease might be to alter the environment to make it "fit" an organismal form (building alternative architectural realms for those with dwarfism; imagining alternative educational landscapes for children with autism). In other cases, conversely, it might mean changing genes to fit environments.

Mukherjee's own family is riddled with bipolar disease and schizophrenia. And his mother is an identical twin. He has much personal reason to be interested in genetics and in being cautious about "selecting out" "undesirable" genes. He makes a strong case that our identity and behaviors are more genetically driven than we may previously believe- but also even the most genetically influenced attributes can be impacted by our environment and by chance. And that there are value judgments we are not prepared to make about what kind of life is valuable or good.

This is a book that will stay with me for a long time and that I will return to from time to time. Read it. You won't be sorry.

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Oct 08, 2017 Srihari Shankar rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science, non-fiction

Another brilliant book from Mukherjee. Personally I liked the emperor of maladies more than this one though . He has a knack of presenting science as an interesting readable story . The book goes through the timeline of our discovery and theories about heredity and genes . He adds a personal touch to the story line by talking about his family history of mental disorders . I was really fascinated about how a single gene performs the same function in all life forms , right from a bacteria, all the ...more

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