Beyond Genetics: The User's Guide to DNA - Softcover

McGee, Glenn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060008016 ISBN 13: 9780060008017

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2004

Synopsis

Genetic science is about to radically alter our lives. Sooner than you can imagine, human beings will be capable of diagnosing their own illnesses, designating the sex of their children, even designing the food they eat - all as easily as using a cell phone. Now is the time for every one of us to take control of our DNA, and one man is uniquely qualified to show us how: Glenn McGee, bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, pioneer in the study of "home genetics," and the acknowledged wunderkind of the exciting world found at the nexus of life science and computer technology.

One of the most respected authorities in the field of genomics - the study of the genetic "software" inside plants, animals, and us - McGee takes us on an eye-opening journey behind the headlines and into the heart of this formidable cutting-edge science. Probing the far-ranging ethical and legal implications of genomic research, McGee tackles its most controversial and hotly debated aspects - from patenting your DNA to genetic engineering at the supermarket - and explodes unnecessary fears about this wondrous new knowledge.

We live in a brave new world. Beyond Genetics provides us with the knowledge we need to take the right steps forward into tomorrow . . . and beyond.

About this title

About the Author

Glenn McGee, Ph.D., is the founding editor of the American Journal of Bioethics and an associate director for education at the renowned Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. The author of three previous books on bioethics and the founder of the nation's largest research program on the political, ethical, and economic implications of stem-cell research, he has published more than one hundred articles in the most prestigious journals of the life sciences. He has worked with sheiks, kings, and presidents, federal and state governments, corporations, law and business schools, and foundations on every aspect of the future of life sciences, and is in constant demand as a lecturer around the globe. McGee is married, has three children, and lives in Philadelphia.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Beyond Genetics

The User's Guide to DNABy McGee, Glenn

Perennial Currents

ISBN: 0060008016

Chapter One

Bits and Genes

Humans have been thinking about heredity foras long as they have had to eat. The domestication ofanimals involved both the elimination of weaker cattleand the use of selective breeding. Herds in Africa werebuilt, as early as recorded history, on what appearedto be the "better born" animals, whether they weresheep, goats, oxen, or camels.

Assyrian records indicate that as early as 5,000 B.C.crops were manipulated one by one through a processthat would today be called artificial fertilization: thedeliberate replacement of the typical activities of sexual reproduction with other activities, often odd intheir execution, with the goal of making reproductionmore efficient or improving its outcome. For example, the date palm never really had a chance to have normalreproduction, because date palm trees didn't produce delicious dates; people wanted dates that tasted better andcame to fruition more quickly.

Before humans had any big theories about genetics, themanipulation of animals and plants became an importantpart of economic growth. Politicians made choices thatchanged the world of genetics perhaps as much as tens ofthousands of years of evolution did. Some species suddenlygot a wide berth -- became sacred, or became fashionableas something that humans liked to eat, have as pets, orwear -- while other species didn't fit into someone's long-term plans and were destroyed entirely, clear-cut fromeverything but the fossil records.

Heredity has also always been an "issue" throughouthuman history. Mostly, the issue has been that people -- typically entire cultures -- decided that some heritable trait was undesirable and have noticed that this trait might beinherited.

The people who do not inherit whatever it is that isundesirable define what it means to be born healthy in theview of the culture, and their health can qualify them forspecial treatment. The better the family tree, the better thesocial standing. Few cultures in Western or Eastern historyof the past four thousand years have failed to hold upsome group as biologically privileged. Only members ofthe tribe of Levi could inherit the Jewish priesthood. Hindu castes are built entirely around heredity. MostNative American tribes hold or have held that tribal integrity hangs on the restriction of intertribal marriages. To this day earnings and power in the United States can behighly correlated with inherited traits and the stigma or status associated with them. Most of the world now knows ofthe Raelian religion, which holds that cloning of humanbeings is the key to eternal life, and that Jesus, a UFOdenizen, was himself a clone.

But the power of genetics, from 1600-2000 A.D., hascome almost entirely from crude guesses about what will bedesirable, resulting in crude changes in human activity, from the transplanting offish, bushes, and trees (Kudzu, anyone?) to marriage customs and genocide.

The guesses that people make about how genes workcan be expressed as formal, even mathematical, propositions. But every guess comes laden with political and environmental implications, and so everyfight about how tothink about a gene is also afight about ethics. If a scientisthypothesizes that the inheritance of a gene could makesomeone smart or criminal or tall or beautiful, it is a safebet that the debate about how to use that gene will be hotlycontested.

Genes can be tools -- to make better medicine or torepress the impoverished. They can offer new options or(through DNA fingerprinting) exonerate those who havebeen falsely accused of wrongdoing. What gives genes theirpower, then, are the values or ethics used to apply them:the decision made by individuals and society about howgenes fit in to the desire to live a good life. Ethics involves making choices, and where genes are concerned, somechoices are better than others, depending on where youstand. The question is, who decides how to put value ongenes.

What Counts as Family?

Western theories of human heredity werefirst recorded inthe Greek doctrine that asserted that sperm carries hereditary information and "vital heat" from father to offspring. The sperm was thought to direct the form of the baby. Aristotle disputed the notion that females had the vital heatnecessary to contribute to the form of the offspring, andalso held that traits acquired by parents during their lifetime might be passed to offspring. These early ideas contributed to "big theories" about genetics.

The theory that experiences acquired during life couldbe passed to offspring helped Greeks account for strangedifferences in appearance among parents and children. Forexample, Aristotle postulated that a child whose eye colordiffered from that of both parents must have acquired thetrait from parental experiences. As a big theory of inheritance, Aristotle's was crude but politically effective for persuading parents to be careful before and during pregnancy. As a bonus, the achievements of the great could pass on totheir children. Aristotle's big theory did have the disadvantage, as did many others of that time, of being wrong.

The real explosion in the study of the biological family dates only to 1800. Advancing right alongside is the practical power to effect changes in families. Western populationsthink of themselves as in control over what a "family"means, and the family is thus the subject of almost all literature since 1850, according to such varied critics as JeanBethke Elshtain and Cecelia Tichi. We talk about a conceptcalled social and biological identity of offspring, a notionforged through years of habitual behaviors by families, courts, and physicians about what counts as a family, whatcounts as inheritance, and what parts of maturation anddevelopment are most important.

Continues...

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Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060008016
• ISBN 13: 9780060008017
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240