The Gene: an Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee ★★★1/2

[Kate]

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies gives the same exhaustive treatment to the gene. Save for one rather dry stretch about two-thirds of the way through I found it education reading. The last quarter was particularly interesting as it dealt with the developments in genomics and human gene therapy over very recent history.

My main pet peeve was the author’s seeming infatuation with James Watson, famous as one of the discoverers of the structure of DNA. Watson is also infamous for his misogyny, racism, and homophobia but you wouldn’t know that from the glowing way Mukherjee refers to him. Every time Watson’s name came up I would inwardly say “not this creep again.” Even though Mukherjee seems to admire him so much a couple of quotes do illustrate the difference between Watson and the man who replaced him when he was fired as the head of the Human Genome Project. While discussing genetic engineering;

’”That’s what we will do,” he said. (Watson) He looked at his interviewer and laughed suddenly, emitting that distinctive, high-pitched chortle that had become familiar to the scientific world as a prelude to a storm. “That’s what we will do. We’ll make ourselves a little better.”’

’”This reality means that germline manipulation would largely be justified by attempts to ‘improve ourselves,’” Francis Collins wrote to me. “That means that someone is empowered to decide what an ‘improvement’ is. Anyone contemplating such action should be aware of their hubris.”’