DNA Is Not Destiny: The Remarkable, Completely Misunderstood Relationship Between You and Your Genes
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars | 30 ratings
Price: 22.57
Last update: 08-26-2024
About this item
Around 250,000 people have had their genomes sequenced, and scientists expect that number to rise to one billion by 2025. Professor Steven J. Heine argues that the first thing we will do on receiving our DNA test results is to misinterpret them completely. Despite breathless (often lightly researched) media coverage about newly discovered "cancer" or "divorce" or "IQ" genes, the prospect of a DNA test forecasting how your life is going to turn out is vanishingly small.
In DNA Is Not Destiny, Heine shares his research - and his own genome sequencing results - to not only show what your genes can actually tell you about your health, intelligence, ethnic identity, and family, but also highlight the psychological biases that make us so vulnerable to the media hype. Heine's fresh, surprising conclusions about the promise, and limits, of genetic engineering and DNA testing upend conventional thinking and reveal a simple, profound truth: your genes create life - but they do not control it.
Top reviews from the United States
The one criticism I would give of the book is that Steve seems to spend too much time injecting his own personal and rather PC opinions into the book. Couple of examples:
1. He rightly indicates that Lawrence Summer's contention that their could be a genetic component of gender aptitude is a question perhaps worthy of scholarship. However he then goes into the idea that internalization of stereotypes could lead women knowing of such an idea to under-perform. While I think that is a legitimate point and certainly interesting to be cognizant of the affects on performance that stereotypes may cause, that alone is not sufficient reason to impede scholarship. Of course Steven is a social scientist of a rather politically correct bent so he believes that it is sufficient reason to not even ask a question.
2. I thought the Eugenics chapter could have been more fun if it asked bolder questions and I think contains a serious logic flaw. Steven goes into a very long explanation of the affect of environment on IQ. I think it is a valid point, though I would put it more in the realm of an "external enabling condition," that is to say environment is necessary for one to live up to their full genetic IQ potential. It is a necessary, but not sufficient condition. However Steve's real interest in the heritability of IQ is really to establish that it is polygenomic, similar to height and so many other characteristics, and therefore we can't hope to change it through Eugenics. This is clearly an incorrect premise. One need only look to what he himself refers to later in the book, the breeding of dogs for all manner of characteristics, to see that breeding for characteristics that are polygenomic is not only possible, it has already been done. He probably could have examined this in a fun manner or if he just wanted to say he finds the whole premise distasteful because it would require governments to incentivize the procreation of some over others, than he should just say that not try to couch it in a rather illogical attempt to disprove the possibility that such an effort would be successful. In fact we have no idea if it would be successful or not, because due to societies aversion to the premise it was never undertaken for long enough to prove or disprove the possibility. Human generations are a lot longer than dog generations.
Aside from my occasional annoyance at the politically correct nature of the arguments, I did find the book generally enjoyable. I found the chapter on the genetics of homosexuality to be particularly interesting, though I would think that the sexual fluidity of females which he mentions but doesn't explore in any depth warrants further investigation. Anyhow... the book is a pretty quick read and I don't feel that I wasted my time in reading it. I would probably like to read something from a hard scientist written in a manner approachable to a general audience as a followup.