The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee

I became intrigued with the author and his new book after watching an interview of him on Charlie Rose.  The Indian-born oncologist is best known for his book The Emperor of Maladies, a bestselling book on cancer that was published about five years ago.

Mukherjee teaches his readers about genes through history, taking us through the scientific discoveries (and failures) starting several hundred years ago through to the present.  Using the device of story to teach a complicated subject worked really well in this case.

Genes and DNA make for a fascinating read.  Each strand of DNA, which exists complete in every cell of our body, would stretch three feet long if you pulled it apart.  It’s breathtakingly thin, yet somehow contains the information to build human beings from scratch.  How is that possible?

Similarly amazing, I always thought the images we see of double-helix-shaped DNA were a model meant to demonstrate how it might look to the human eye.  It turns out that’s exactly how DNA actually looks.  The shape of DNA was uncovered before microscopes could see such tiny things.  By holding DNA strands up close to X-rays, then projecting them on a large screen (like shadow puppets with a flashlight), then moving around in 360 degrees they were able to determine the shape.  One scientist in the book said it was like figuring out the shape of a piano by listening to the sound of it being played.  Wow.

Mukherjee explains genes from a scientific point of view, but also discusses the important ethical dilemmas and how genetics has been misused – often with macabre results – throughout history.  Nazi experiments were only one example.

He also writes about normalcy, how we talk about disease as a deviation from a normal state of being.  But he makes the salient point that normalcy is highly subjective.  As just one example, autism is typically described as an abnormal condition, one that is unfavorable.  But autism is known to dramatically increase certain mental functions and capacities – think Rain Man – in many cases.  In certain environments an autistic person would fare much better than a non-autistic.  Autism isn’t not the only example of such subjectivity.

Altogether this book was a fascinating read and I’m glad that I temporarily stepped away from my normal history reading to take it in.