lisalark's review against another edition
4.0
I liked this but not nearly as much as The Emperor of All Maladies. I think this is because I already know a LOT about genes but knew less about the history of cancer. So this book was very yeah yeah I know, you're about to say this, and then you'll tell that story, time for that anecdote . . . i.e. I'm not the right audience. But YOU should totally read it!
kemendraugh's review against another edition
4.0
A fascinating read. I learned so many things. I thought the science would go over my head because I am WELL unscientifically minded, but Mukherjee has an amazing capability to not talk down to me, yet in a way I can understand.
The past stuff was terrible, the future stuff is potentially even more terrible. We humans are capable of so much good, and so much awful.
The past stuff was terrible, the future stuff is potentially even more terrible. We humans are capable of so much good, and so much awful.
curatedsymposium's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
slow-paced
5.0
jonathanlibrarian's review against another edition
4.0
Great. Got me thinking about humans place in the coming decades as AI and now genetic modification presses to create the next stage of intelligent beings that may be like us, a product of us, but not us. An arms race for creating genetically superior people seems inevitable to me, free of genetic disease and perhaps in time enhanced physically and intelectually.
thearbiter89's review against another edition
4.0
A lyrical, personal and scintillatingly-written book about the past, present and future of the field of genetics.
Is there anything that is more fundamental to the shape of our being than the genes that make us? The tale that Mukherjee weaves of the mental illness that plagues his family suggests that the stories that make up our lives are in large part written into our genetic code.
And yet, the study of genetics in earnest only picked up steam in the 1800s, when Gregor Mendel embarked on his wide-ranging study of the heredity of sprouts, and Charles Darwin sailed on the Beagle. Mukherjee tells spellbinding stories of these men and women that shaped the early days of genetics, as they slowly unfurled the mysteries of how genetic information is stored, replicated, and transmitted from generation to generation, over the course of decades.
Being so closely intertwined with biology, genetics was soon used as a justification for all manner of social policy - from eugenics programmes in the US that sterilised those deemed genetically unfit, to the Nazi death camps. Less horrific but equally pernicious were laws that prevented miscegenation and positive eugenics programmes that promoted certain types of pairings in order to create superior genetic stock. Mukherjee sheds much-needed light on the surprising extent to which such policies were promulgated, even in places like the United States, using spurious conclusions from the nascent science as a means to justify it.
As the nature of the gene came to be more widely understood by pioneers such as Crick, Watson and Franklin, so did our capabilities in sequencing, interpreting and manipulating the code that made up life - a subfield of genetics that is now known as genomics. Early attempts to obtain international scientific agreement on the limits of such research, such as the Asilomar Conference, recognised the risks that came with attempts to recombine DNA - not least in the creation of new pathogens. But the restorative potential of genetics was too powerful to resist the tide of progress. Gene therapies were developed, and, although set back by a number of tragic mishaps, continued to be used to address a growing variety of genetic disorders.
Following the monumental mapping of the entire human genome in the early 2000s, the next frontier is to gain the ability to precisely and accurately make targeted changes in the human genome - a process made much easier by the groundbreaking technology known as CRISPR. But, as Mukherjee cautions, even as our capabilities grow, the sheer importance of our genome to our sense of self bears thinking about when it is decided what should be done with these capabilities.
There are moral and ethical problems that need to be sorted out - whether on the ethics of germline genetic modification, the rise of designer babies, the use of genetic predispositions to differentiate the treatment of people. There is a cautionary note repeated throughout - to tread carefully even as our knowledge and powers grow, and not to let such capabilities divide society into genetic haves and have-nots, defined, differentiated, and discriminated against based on the simple makeup of their genomes.
It is a wide-ranging, comprehensive sweep of the history and future of genetics, weaved throughout with sensitivity and moral clarity, intimate in Mukherjee's honest and open account of the impact of genetics on the fortunes of his own family, and how he and his children must live under the same, probabilistic sword of Damocles. Highly recommended.
I give this: 4.5 out of 5 double helixes
Is there anything that is more fundamental to the shape of our being than the genes that make us? The tale that Mukherjee weaves of the mental illness that plagues his family suggests that the stories that make up our lives are in large part written into our genetic code.
And yet, the study of genetics in earnest only picked up steam in the 1800s, when Gregor Mendel embarked on his wide-ranging study of the heredity of sprouts, and Charles Darwin sailed on the Beagle. Mukherjee tells spellbinding stories of these men and women that shaped the early days of genetics, as they slowly unfurled the mysteries of how genetic information is stored, replicated, and transmitted from generation to generation, over the course of decades.
Being so closely intertwined with biology, genetics was soon used as a justification for all manner of social policy - from eugenics programmes in the US that sterilised those deemed genetically unfit, to the Nazi death camps. Less horrific but equally pernicious were laws that prevented miscegenation and positive eugenics programmes that promoted certain types of pairings in order to create superior genetic stock. Mukherjee sheds much-needed light on the surprising extent to which such policies were promulgated, even in places like the United States, using spurious conclusions from the nascent science as a means to justify it.
As the nature of the gene came to be more widely understood by pioneers such as Crick, Watson and Franklin, so did our capabilities in sequencing, interpreting and manipulating the code that made up life - a subfield of genetics that is now known as genomics. Early attempts to obtain international scientific agreement on the limits of such research, such as the Asilomar Conference, recognised the risks that came with attempts to recombine DNA - not least in the creation of new pathogens. But the restorative potential of genetics was too powerful to resist the tide of progress. Gene therapies were developed, and, although set back by a number of tragic mishaps, continued to be used to address a growing variety of genetic disorders.
Following the monumental mapping of the entire human genome in the early 2000s, the next frontier is to gain the ability to precisely and accurately make targeted changes in the human genome - a process made much easier by the groundbreaking technology known as CRISPR. But, as Mukherjee cautions, even as our capabilities grow, the sheer importance of our genome to our sense of self bears thinking about when it is decided what should be done with these capabilities.
There are moral and ethical problems that need to be sorted out - whether on the ethics of germline genetic modification, the rise of designer babies, the use of genetic predispositions to differentiate the treatment of people. There is a cautionary note repeated throughout - to tread carefully even as our knowledge and powers grow, and not to let such capabilities divide society into genetic haves and have-nots, defined, differentiated, and discriminated against based on the simple makeup of their genomes.
It is a wide-ranging, comprehensive sweep of the history and future of genetics, weaved throughout with sensitivity and moral clarity, intimate in Mukherjee's honest and open account of the impact of genetics on the fortunes of his own family, and how he and his children must live under the same, probabilistic sword of Damocles. Highly recommended.
I give this: 4.5 out of 5 double helixes
roll_n_read's review against another edition
4.0
Thorough and thoughtful. Perhaps I biased myself because of the order I read them in, but of the three books I read this summer on genetics I enjoyed the other two more (Adam Rutherford's A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived was by far the most interesting, and Carl Zimmer's She Has Her Mother's Laugh was also well written).
There were details that Mukherjee brought in that the other two didn't, and Mukherjee addressed some of the ethical considerations in a bit more detail. Overall, a very good book on the history and current state of genetics.
There were details that Mukherjee brought in that the other two didn't, and Mukherjee addressed some of the ethical considerations in a bit more detail. Overall, a very good book on the history and current state of genetics.
jackwwang's review against another edition
3.0
Perhaps inevitably, after his debut epic on cancer, Emperor of Maladies, Mukherjee's sophmore book was bound to not quite measure up. This time he picks an even grander topic, that of the gene, the atomic (or not so atomic as it turns out) unit of hereditary information.
Mukherjee's skill to make grand complex ideas personal and relatable shines through again, he introduces the idea of DNA and genes through a deeply personal history of mental illness in his family. He accounts in painful but lucid detail a history of psychotic breaks and schizophrenia in his uncles and cousins, as well as his father's struggle to come to terms with this hereditary reality.
The early parts of the book that tell the story of the origin of the idea of the gene have strong narrative momentum. Mukherjee has a gift for telling these origin stories, he also traced the historical and cultural history of cancer through ancient Egypt and Greece with great skill. Here he traces the concept of the gene from Mendel and Darwin, drawing likeable personal portraits of each individual, through the darker chapters of Dalton and the Eugenicists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Europe and America. We follow this dark turn to it's end in Nazi Germany, before turning to the development of genetics as a proper science in the 20th century.
In this turn, Mukherjee loses some narrative momentum. As a former biologist myself, I was disappointed that the author who wrote such a compelling story about 20th century oncologists couldn't do the same with 20th century biologists. Perhaps biologists are less interesting people, but I think it's more likely that Mukherjee, himself an oncologists, just personally found other oncologists more riveting.
This section did offer up useful "for-dummies" primers on certain topics like gene therapy (something I didn't know much about before) and epigenetics (something I did know something about before). If nothing else, it is a good survey to the biggest scientific ideas in genetics for the layman or even practitioners looking for a broader perspective.
In breaking down complex subjects into a digestible lay format, the author inevitably has to make compromises. In return for clarity and brevity, nuances and absolute accuracy are exchanged for getting the overall picture right. In addition, Mukherjee predictably uses metaphors for abstract concepts - he returns again and again to comparing the genome as a work in English prose (words as genes, punctuation as regulatory elements, accents as epigenetic markers). These constructs are useful, but he often seems to fall in love with these metaphors and overextends their usefulness, ending up with strained and awkward comparisons between liver and brain cells and YA fiction and Victorian Romances.
Mukherjee's skill to make grand complex ideas personal and relatable shines through again, he introduces the idea of DNA and genes through a deeply personal history of mental illness in his family. He accounts in painful but lucid detail a history of psychotic breaks and schizophrenia in his uncles and cousins, as well as his father's struggle to come to terms with this hereditary reality.
The early parts of the book that tell the story of the origin of the idea of the gene have strong narrative momentum. Mukherjee has a gift for telling these origin stories, he also traced the historical and cultural history of cancer through ancient Egypt and Greece with great skill. Here he traces the concept of the gene from Mendel and Darwin, drawing likeable personal portraits of each individual, through the darker chapters of Dalton and the Eugenicists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Europe and America. We follow this dark turn to it's end in Nazi Germany, before turning to the development of genetics as a proper science in the 20th century.
In this turn, Mukherjee loses some narrative momentum. As a former biologist myself, I was disappointed that the author who wrote such a compelling story about 20th century oncologists couldn't do the same with 20th century biologists. Perhaps biologists are less interesting people, but I think it's more likely that Mukherjee, himself an oncologists, just personally found other oncologists more riveting.
This section did offer up useful "for-dummies" primers on certain topics like gene therapy (something I didn't know much about before) and epigenetics (something I did know something about before). If nothing else, it is a good survey to the biggest scientific ideas in genetics for the layman or even practitioners looking for a broader perspective.
In breaking down complex subjects into a digestible lay format, the author inevitably has to make compromises. In return for clarity and brevity, nuances and absolute accuracy are exchanged for getting the overall picture right. In addition, Mukherjee predictably uses metaphors for abstract concepts - he returns again and again to comparing the genome as a work in English prose (words as genes, punctuation as regulatory elements, accents as epigenetic markers). These constructs are useful, but he often seems to fall in love with these metaphors and overextends their usefulness, ending up with strained and awkward comparisons between liver and brain cells and YA fiction and Victorian Romances.
rpc415's review against another edition
5.0
"It is a testament to the unsettling beauty of the genome that it can make the real world ‘stick.’ Our genes do not keep spitting out stereotypical responses to idiosyncratic environments: if they did, we too would devolve into windup automatons. Hindu philosophers have long described the experience of ‘being’ as a web - jaal. Genes form the threads of the web; the detritus that sticks is what transforms every individual web into a being. There is an exquisite precision in that mad scheme."
Comprehensive, thoughtful, logical, detailed, empathetic - one of the better science books I've read
Comprehensive, thoughtful, logical, detailed, empathetic - one of the better science books I've read