The Gene: An Intimate History

by Siddhartha Mukherjee

The Nazis had embraced genetics as a tool for racial cleansing. In the Soviet Union in the 1930s, left-wing scientists and intellectuals proposed that nothing about heredity was inherent at all. In nature, everything—everyone—was changeable. Genes were a mirage invented by the bourgeoisie to emphasize the fixity of individual differences, whereas, in fact, nothing about features, identities, choices, or destinies was indelible. If the state needed cleansing, it would not be achieved through genetic selection, but through the reeducation of all individuals and the erasure of former selves. Brains—not genes—had to be washed clean. As with the Nazis, the Soviet doctrine was also bolstered and reinforced by ersatz science. In

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