Later, he writes about the ethics discussions that took place at the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA (Asilomar II, California, 1975).
At the outset, he dedicates the book to Carrie Buck, who was sterilized by tubal ligation in October 1927 following a court order that deemed, “…The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.” He covers the eugenics movement in the United States, which predated the horrors of Nazi eugenics in the 1940s which then accelerated the atrocity from sterilization to mass murdering the “genetically sick,” and “racial cleansing.” Mukherjee doesn’t pull any punches tackling important ethical questions. Four things I liked or appreciated learning more about in The Gene:ġ. It’s a worry many of us can relate to - whether we will fall victim to health problems that have affected our relatives, or that we may pass on to our children. He intertwines his personal quest to find answers about the likelihood he may one day suffer from the mental illnesses that have burdened some of his family members. Mukherjee writes in the prologue: “This book is the story of the birth, growth, and future of one of the most powerful and dangerous ideas in science: the ‘gene,’ the fundamental unit of heredity, and the basic unit of all biological information.” The book begins with the story of Mendel’s discovery of heritable traits in pea plants in 1864 and traces the timeline through the hypotheses, horrors, and exciting advances over time to where we stand today in the era of genomics. The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee is a fascinating read about the journey scientists have traveled to unlock the mysteries of the gene, the master code that defines all forms of life. As with his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Mukherjee interweaves dramatic stories about scientific discoveries and patient journeys with approachable scientific explanations.
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