Genetic explanations : sense and nonsense / edited by Sheldon Krimsky, Jeremy Gruber.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Krimsky, Sheldon, Author.

Contributor:

Krimsky, Sheldon.

Gruber, Jeremy.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Genetics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 368 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Can genes determine which fifty-year-old will succumb to Alzheimer's, which citizen will turn out on voting day, and which child will be marked for a life of crime? Yes, according to the Internet, a few scientific studies, and some in the biotechnology industry who should know better. Sheldon Krimsky and Jeremy Gruber gather a team of genetic experts to argue that treating genes as the holy grail of our physical being is a patently unscientific endeavor. Genetic Explanations urges us to replace our faith in genetic determinism with scientific knowledge about how DNA actually contributes to human development. The concept of the gene has been steadily revised since Watson and Crick discovered the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953. No longer viewed by scientists as the cell's fixed set of master molecules, genes and DNA are seen as a dynamic script that is ad-libbed at each stage of development. Rather than an autonomous predictor of disease, the DNA we inherit interacts continuously with the environment and functions differently as we age. What our parents hand down to us is just the beginning. Emphasizing relatively new understandings of genetic plasticity and epigenetic inheritance, the authors put into a broad developmental context the role genes are known to play in disease, behavior, evolution, and cognition. Rather than dismissing genetic reductionism out of hand, Krimsky and Gruber ask why it persists despite opposing scientific evidence, how it influences attitudes about human behavior, and how it figures in the politics of research funding.

Contents:

The mismeasure of the gene / Ruth Hubbard

Evolution is not mainly a matter of genes / Stuart Newman

Genes as difference makers / Evelyn Fox Keller

Big B, little b : myth #1 is that Mendelian genes actually exist / David S. Moore

The myth of the machine organism / Stephen L. Talbott

Some problems with genetic horoscopes / Eva Jablonka

Cancer genes : the vestigial remains of a fallen theory / Carlos Sonnenschein and Ana M. Soto

The fruitless search for genes in psychiatry and psychology : time to reexamine a paradigm / Jay Joseph and Carl Ratner

Assessing genes as causes of human disease in a multi-causal world / Carl Cranor

Help for autistics : the shifting roles of genetics, complexity, and judgment / Martha Herbert

The prospects of personalized medicine / David Jones

The persistent influence of failed scientific ideas / Jon Beckwith

Map your own genes! the DNA experience / Susan Lindee

The myth of the perfect baby / Shirley Shalev

The potential fallibility of forensic DNA evidence / William Thompson

Nurturing nature : how parental care changes genes / Mae-Wan Ho.

Notes:

Formerly CIP.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

0-674-07109-3

0-674-06776-2

OCLC:

827947198