THE GENE: AN INTIMATE HISTORY by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Narrated by Dennis Boutsikaris

     You don’t understand. Its turtles all the way.

My first impression when listening to The Gene is that Siddhartha Mukherjee is a fine writer able to make a difficult academic subject interesting. He does this with well-placed human interest stories interspersed throughout the text. Thus we learn of Gregor Mendel and his inheritance studies on cross-pollination of common peas. Watson and Crick, and their competitors, are featured explaining the impact of their discovery of the structure of DNA. Many other lesser known researchers are featured to help explain how genetic studies have advanced our understanding of the complex biological world we live in. This book is as much scientific history as it is an explanation of scientific theory. The author ably recounts the various genetic discoveries that led up to the present state of genetic understanding.

You don’t understand. Its turtles all the way.

Most amazing to me is the clear disconnect between (a) the acknowledgment that Natural Selection cannot possibly work in the absence of a working, and diverse, genetic system with which to work and (b) the impossibility of this same system of inheritance originating on its own. Seemingly in recognition of this contradiction in thinking, Siddhartha Mukherjee recounts the famous anecdote of the Middle Ages cosmologist who, when asked what holds the Earth in place replies, “Turtles.” What holds up those turtles? “More turtles.” And what holds up those turtles? “You don’t understand. Its turtles all the way.” We can laugh at the simple-mindedness of that cosmologist. But the modern evolutionist falls prey to the same error in logic when he thinks natural Selection can explain evolution when an established system of heredity must first be in place before Natural Selection can function. It is not “DNA all the way down.”

Ethics

Like nuclear scientists, in the name of science, creating the atomic bomb, geneticists, in the name of science, create genetically modified organisms; even GMO humans. There seems to be no restraint in the persuit of knowledge. The absence of an ethical line in the sand makes us all vulnerable to potential disaster. I have said before that humans snipping and gene-splicing just to find out how genetics works is akin to children playing with Legos dissembling and reassembling to blocks to make different toys. The problem is that we are not playing with brightly colored blocks; we are playing with a finely-tuned system affecting every organism in the biosphere; a biosphere in which we must continue to live. While the potential benefits are high so is the danger of disaster.

I enjoyed this book and learned many things about the way God’s creation works. It saddens me that the author does not share this same understanding, preferring, instead, to think that our irreducibly complex biology came about on its own, purely by random chance.

Dennis Boutsikaris narrates this book in a clear, pleasant and precise manner. Somehow, I think his American accent is not the accent of the writer, but it does suit the material well.

Quote

"In human cells the activation of BCL2 results in a cell in which the death cascade is blocked; creating a cell that is pathologically unable to die—cancer."

My list of recommended books for aspiring geneticists and ethicists:

INHERITANCE by Sharon Moalem

THE EDGE OF EVOLUTION by Michael Behe

UNDERSTANDING GENETICS by David Sadava

THE SPORTS GENE by David Epstein

THE VIRAL STORM by Nathan Wolfe

THE GENE: AN INTIMATE HISTORY by Siddhartha Mukherjee

THE DOUBLE HELIX by James D. Watson