Customer Reviews

Beyond Genetics: The User's Guide to DNA

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

McGee does an excellent job of sorting through the hype about genes and genetic engineering putting to bed some issues that seem to be frightening large amounts of people (like genetically modified food) and raising issues that do not appear to be on anyone's radar screen (patents issued to large, money-making corporations for YOUR genes). He explains in terms understandable by almost everyone why it matters that we look harder at what is being done and by whom. Too many articles on this topic today seem to concentrate on genetic manipulation that will pass on to future generations of plants or animals and thus be a major factor in evolution. But this book focuses on what can or can't be done with genes in the current generation, a much more clear and present danger (or benefit).

The only fault I could find with the book is that the subtitle might lead a person to believe he had more control over where, when and by whom genetic engineering will impact his life. Unless more of us get together to help craft policies and laws about the use of genetics, the answers will all come from those who stand to profit moneywise from your genes.

McGee's predictions, while some may seem infeasible, are thought provoking and founded on ample research in today's biotechnology market.
As a student taking AP Biology, I found this book to be wholly readable; it touched on topics I've had to study, but no where did it become tedious or perplexing.

McGee's discourse is somewhat dry, uneven, vague (particularly the first three chapters which generally stuck me as being too abstract and grandiose), the editing should have been better, and for these reasons the text is often discouraging. But if you can stay with McGee, you will eventually find that the issues being examined are important and complex. McGee addresses the broad misunderstandings that many people fasten to the now frequent reports of the identification of "genes for" this or that condition or disease or shenanigans (I write this amid titillating headlines that "science" has identified a "gene for" sexual infidelity--so there you have it, I'm sure!). He highlights the difficulties and injustices that have arisen, and continue to develop, as regards "genetic discrimination". The abuse of genomic information (and likely other incomplete science, although McGee's focus is strictly genomics) by industry, employers, and particularly the for-profit private health insurance system enshrined by the American political Right, is now intractable, for the simple reason that the entire discipline of bioinformatics is enormously incomplete, at best. On points, current understandings of data (whether extant or absent) will certainly prove to be wrong (or perhaps too complex to foreseeably become scientifically "right"), but in many cases this incomplete and/or wrong science is wielded by for-profit "health care" insurers to isolate and [virtually eugenically] punish innocent but exploitable individuals, in hopes of producing a more attractive spreadsheet for investors. A putative "health care system" (that is, the American for-profit system) that is inherently fastened to the abuse and the selective misuse of science, and to place the necessity for profitability above mere scientific caution (apparently `science' must be malleable, or even dispensable, if, when, and where science might conflict with financial strategies!), is a health care system seriously in need of dispassionate scrutiny, repair, and/or replacement.

The issues surrounding `genetic discrimination', the `scientific' aspects of which are often dubious, is not McGee's only topic here, but in that it highlights our culture's misunderstanding of the fundamental nature of what science is and what science actually does (including what its appropriate uses, inherent uncertainties, and constraints are), and in that it highlights the inherent problems of doing healthcare for maximally large black or green numbers, it's an important topic.