Book Review: The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee
I recently read The Gene: An Intimate History written by Pulitzer-winning researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee and published by Simon & Schuster in 2016. Now celebrating its tenth anniversary, I decided to read this ambitious book to better understand the history of genetics research and how far science has advanced in that short amount of time.
What immediately impressed me about Mukherjee’s writing style was his ability to blend multiple complex topics into a cohesive narrative. He began the book by explaining the history of mental illness in his family and used this personal connection as the foundation upon which the twin pillars of historic research and scientific explanation were built. Mukherjee is widely read, easily referencing Faust, Augustine, the biblical book of Job, G.K. Chesterton, and Br'er Rabbit in the opening pages. Other fun references scattered throughout the book included Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel, writers George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells, the original Tarzan books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Renaissance shipbuilding, actress Audrey Hepburn, the Delphic boat (elsewhere called the Ship of Theseus Paradox), and a disagreement between Snoop Dogg and Charles Barkley. These references made the reading experience even more enjoyable for me.
Mukherjee clearly explained the background, research, and personalities of famous scientists, preventing the reader from becoming lost or confused even with the complexity of the material. Additionally, chapters were grouped into parts based on time, which limited the amount of hopping around the timeline. In the earliest period from the Renaissance through the 19th century, top scientific contributors were Gregor Mendel and his pea plants, Christian Doppler and the effect of movement on sound perception, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and his incorrect evolutionary theories versus Charles Darwin and his scientifically supported ones. For early 20th century scientists, physicists like Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger received mentions, while the explanation on the contentious research situation involving James Watson, Francis Crick, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins was handled with care. At this point, the book’s timeline slowed dramatically as the rate at which scientific innovations were made greatly sped up. Famous names from this period included both people such as geneticist Barbara McClintock and companies like biotech giants Genentech and Eli Lilly.
Outside of sharing the history and explaining complex phenomena, Mukherjee navigates ethics, politics, and religion. He made a clear argument that the study of genetics when applied to humans inevitably becomes eugenics, no matter how pure the intentions of the original researchers. He begins the argument referencing “‘defective’ geniuses” including sickly Sir Isaac Newton, asthmatic John Calvin, and depressed Charles Darwin. He later moves along to people who were famously ill, such as Prince Alexei of Russia who had hemophilia and American teenager Jesse Gelsinger who died during experimental treatment for a rare enzyme disorder. Mukherjee also references everyday people with any myriad of illnesses from heavily studied diseases like Down syndrome, Marfan syndrome, dwarfism, and autism to rare conditions that have been diagnosed in no more than a few hundred individuals throughout history. All these people, he argues, had the “right to be born”, along with “a reasonable chance of a happy and useful life”; in other words, “the goal was not to restore ‘normalcy’—but vitality, joy, and function”. Medical and judicial opinions frequently add “free of [genetic] anomalies” to the statement, apparently missing the point.
The lists of eugenics practices seemed nearly as long as the list of scientists and included a proposal for a “human studbook” created by Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton, racial cleansing in Germany that culminated in the Holocaust, racial segregation in the United States, and the widespread use of “therapeutic abortion” to remove potentially disabled people from the gene pool before they are born. Some modern scientists even support “positive eugenics” or modern selective reproduction, with Francis Crick declaring, “No newborn should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment” and an unnamed Chinese bioethicist explaining, “Confucian thinking says someone becomes a person after they are born”, meaning that experimenting on human embryos was not an ethical issue. Mukherjee indicates that line of thought will cause the same atrocities as past genocides.
Even with this dark concept permeating the book, I still found many lighter moments and interesting facts that relate to my specific interests. Mukherjee describes the views of misguided anthropologist Louis Agassiz who invented polygenism, the theory that human races had evolved independently, which did happen to the fictional races of The Lord of the Rings but not to anyone in real life. The current theory is the Recent Out of Africa Model (ROAM), which used mitochondrial DNA testing to trace most modern humans to a female ancestor playfully named Mitochondrial Eve who lived about 130,000 years ago and looks most like modern San people from southern Africa. Genetic databases now allow people diagnosed with heavily studied health conditions such as autism and schizophrenia to anticipate how likely their children will inherit their illness.
This book is packed with information and would be a great reference book for those entering the field of genetic research. I took nearly twelve hours to read and digitally highlight, as I used the eBook version on the Libby app. I will refer to my notes in future reading project and would not mind reading parts of this book again. Doubtlessly the most comprehensive and engaging book on the topic, readers should note that there is no discussion of mRNA, as this was among the many scientific advances to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic. I would be interested reading a chapter on the last decade should Mukherjee ever release an updated edition. As for this book, it is not for the faint of heart, but it is rewarding for anyone willing to put in the time.
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The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha MukherjeeMy rating: 4 of 5 stars