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The Gene: An Intimate History
5/5. This book is a doorstop, but worth every page. It covers a huge amount of ground – from Mendel and his pea plants to Carrie Buck to Rosalind Franklin to the ethics of recombinant DNA to the just-last-year reality of actual live genetic therapies approved for use in the U.S. With several pauses along the way to discuss the author's family and the strain of hereditary illness criss-crossing it.
It's no mystery why I'm reading this now. I believe that our genes make us who we are far more strongly than many people are comfortable admitting. This has been becoming even clearer to me as the baby who owes her existence to an egg I donated grows up and, without having interacted with me more than once a year or so for her entire life, continues to be eerily like me, down to the pathologically strong terror of strangers developed at the exact same age and fading at the exact same age. (She looks like me too, but that's way less interesting). I dearly wish a lot of straight, fertile couples would have the strange experience of having to go to a sperm bank or an egg bank and pick someone out. It sharpens the mind in a way that I think is salutary, if uncomfortable. Makes you articulate what you want in a child in a cold-blooded way. Makes you state your values in people as commodities.
And, well, the other thing. I mentioned up there the newly-approved – as in less than a year ago – genetic therapy. Yeah. The first genetic therapy approved in the U.S. is for my primary disability. It may not work on me – actually, the odds are strong it will not. And the fact I haven't done much about it until now probably tells you a lot about my feelings on the matter. But I do need to know, eventually. Will I get an injection that rewrites the protein-encoding DNA in my optic nerve and improve my acuity up to 1000%? Probably not this shot, the mutation prevalence breakdowns tell me. But another shot ten years from now? Yeah, that is a real thing I'm going to have to really deal with, it seems like.
So naturally I read a book about it. One of many to come, I suspect.
5/5. This book is a doorstop, but worth every page. It covers a huge amount of ground – from Mendel and his pea plants to Carrie Buck to Rosalind Franklin to the ethics of recombinant DNA to the just-last-year reality of actual live genetic therapies approved for use in the U.S. With several pauses along the way to discuss the author's family and the strain of hereditary illness criss-crossing it.
It's no mystery why I'm reading this now. I believe that our genes make us who we are far more strongly than many people are comfortable admitting. This has been becoming even clearer to me as the baby who owes her existence to an egg I donated grows up and, without having interacted with me more than once a year or so for her entire life, continues to be eerily like me, down to the pathologically strong terror of strangers developed at the exact same age and fading at the exact same age. (She looks like me too, but that's way less interesting). I dearly wish a lot of straight, fertile couples would have the strange experience of having to go to a sperm bank or an egg bank and pick someone out. It sharpens the mind in a way that I think is salutary, if uncomfortable. Makes you articulate what you want in a child in a cold-blooded way. Makes you state your values in people as commodities.
And, well, the other thing. I mentioned up there the newly-approved – as in less than a year ago – genetic therapy. Yeah. The first genetic therapy approved in the U.S. is for my primary disability. It may not work on me – actually, the odds are strong it will not. And the fact I haven't done much about it until now probably tells you a lot about my feelings on the matter. But I do need to know, eventually. Will I get an injection that rewrites the protein-encoding DNA in my optic nerve and improve my acuity up to 1000%? Probably not this shot, the mutation prevalence breakdowns tell me. But another shot ten years from now? Yeah, that is a real thing I'm going to have to really deal with, it seems like.
So naturally I read a book about it. One of many to come, I suspect.