Shrinking the Cat: Genetic Engineering Before We Knew About Genes [Paperback]

Sue Hubbell (Author), Liddy Hubbell (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 12, 2002

In this timely and controversial work, Sue Hubbell contends that the concept of genetic engineering is anything but new, for humans have been tinkering with genetics for centuries. Focusing on four specific examples — corn, silkworms, domestic cats, and apples — she traces the histories of species that have been fundamentally altered over the centuries by the whims and needs of people.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Some genetic engineering projects can take millennia to accomplish. In Shrinking the Cat: Genetic Engineering Before We Knew About Genes, Sue Hubbell describes how we've evolved four valuable species: corn, apples, silkworms, and domestic cats; and, along the way, furthered some less-desired species, such as apple maggots and gypsy moths. Hubbell mingles recent biological knowledge with archaeological research and glimpses into her private life (as a child, she studied a lion that was kept at a Chevrolet dealership) to produce a multifaceted and positive look at science and history. Hubbell says,

This is an interesting and hopeful time in which to live.... Genes, it turns out, are simple. But the processes of life ... do not yet seem to be. Until we can develop a deep, broad, and sensitive understanding of those processes ... we'll continue to suffer the unintended consequences of alterations.

Hubbell's brief, appealing book provides a pleasant way for anyone to learn more about genetic modification as conducted by the pre-Mayans, along the Silk Road, and in laboratories today. --Blaise Selby --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In this fresh and personalized take on genetics, Hubbell (Waiting for Aphrodite, etc.) argues that "we have been 'genetic engineers' in the past, and we will continue to do so in the future." There is currently a spate of books weighing in on both sides of the controversial genetic engineering debate, and this one stands out for its memoir feel as well as its straightforward thesis, which aims to put the debate firmly in the context of past genetic tinkerings. Hubbell shows how farmers 7,500 years ago engineered what came to be known as corn from a botanical anomaly of a kind of "naturally occurring" grass (though when finished with this book, readers may find themselves second-guessing what constitutes "natural"). The result was a dependable and essential man-made foodstuff, which, because of its genetic enhancement, cannot reproduce itself each planting season today without human help. A similar case of mutual dependence resulting from our ancestors' genetic tinkering, Hubbell shows, is the silkworm, a species "minted by human ingenuity" to spin its costly trade commodity, but at the expense of its protective coloring and ability to fly. Today, the silkworm depends on its human keepers for its food and shelter, as does Hubbell's next case study, the house cat. Like the silkworm, the modern-day cat lost its edge in the wild through domestication, in the cat's case through diminished size, sight and reflex ability. Finally, Hubbell shows how apple growing in America was perhaps "the greatest genetic experiment ever performed by human beings," yielding as many as 7,000 genetic varieties by the 1800s, a number that has since been narrowed by market demand to about a dozen. Throughout, Hubbell delves into the history behind her case studies, interspersing her narrative with her accounts of living in Washington and Maine. (Oct. 15)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 175 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (December 12, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618257489
• ISBN-13: 978-0618257485
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 7.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #232,881 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lots of fun facts seen in a new light, April 8, 2002

By 

Mfitz... "Mfitz..." (Cincinnati, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shrinking the Cat: Genetic Engineering Before We Knew About Genes (Hardcover)

I have to admitt that I first picked up this book because the title jumped out at me, but I'm glad I did. Shrinking the Cat is a wonderful little book crammed full of the sort of lucious tidbits of scientific knowlege that I love. As I read the book I just couldn't wait to work the ideas I was picking up into conversations with my friends. This is one of those books that can make you look at things you already know in a whole new light, and that is a rare thing. I already knew a lot of the facts that Hubbell covered in this book, but I had not looked at them the way Hubbell does. I really enjoyed the way she wove the history of Man's creation of Silkworms, Domestic Cats, and Apples in to a single story tied together the Silk Road linking Asia and Europe.

I'm not sure that Hubble really lays to rest the fears that people have about transgenic plant and animals, but she does a very good job of showing how in many ways we have always lived in a world created by human hands, and that shaping the world is the basic and defining thing that make us human.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating Read, May 11, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Shrinking the Cat: Genetic Engineering Before We Knew About Genes (Hardcover)

This is a wonderful book. I was fascinated from cover to cover. I have never read this author before and went right out and got more of her books. Many of my friends responded to my enthusiasm by telling me that had known and loved her writing for years. How could I have missed it?
The book is very well written and clearly very well researched. It captures your attention and holds it.
The author has very cleverly chosen to illustrate her subject with three species that have changed because of their connection with humans. By limiting her scope, she is able to cover her subject thoroughly. I was fascinated from start to finish.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Once over very lightly, December 12, 2002

By 

Royce E. Buehler "figvine" (Cambridge, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Shrinking the Cat: Genetic Engineering Before We Knew About Genes (Paperback)

(2 1/2 stars) This is a quick, pleasant, light read that turns out to have very little substance. Hubbell's central thesis appears to be that genetic engineering is nothing to be worried about, since we've been doing genetic engineering - better known as breeding and horticulture - for thousands of years.

There's a good deal to be said for that thesis (as well as a good deal to be said against it), but "Shrinking the Cat" doesn't get around to saying very much of it, since the bulk of the book consists of leisurely digressions. There are a few brief, half-hearted, very elementary science lessons, for those who have forgotten everything they might have heard in high school biology class. They scarcely convey enough information to convey why people ought not be alarmed over "frankenfoods", and certainly not enough information to understand the reasons why (as Hubbell acknowledges) some scientists are nevertheless worried about the implications of genetic engineering. Not a word about the sort of gene-jumping encouraged by certain G.E. techniques (like plasmids), nor about the increasing dangers of monocultures, nor about the potential damage to wild stocks by inadvertent interbreeding with engineered organisms, nor the long term danger posed to food supplies when Monsanto engineers crops to be sterile, so that farmers must return to the corporation for each and every year's supply of seeds. Though she is correct about many of the public's fears being groundless, her book will not be of any appreciable use in helping anyone understand the real technical or policy issues in any depth.

If you aren't expecting to learn anything serious, though, her randomly chosen facts about the history of domestication, concentrating on the beneficial development of corn, silkworms, cats, and apples, are sufficiently diverting to justify the short time it will take to browse through them. It's nice to get a two-page spread showing just where the Silk Roads ran; to be told just when and where Golden Delicious and Macintosh apples first turned up; to learn that the Egyptian word for cat was "miaw", and that Johnny Appleseed was a devout Swedenborgian, with a knapsack full of other such agreable trivia.