Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "IT WAS MARCH 1512, and a Florentine apothecary named Lucca Landucci was writing up his diary..." (more)
Key Phrases: tam naturalem quam abnormem, natura caussis, illustrandam embryogenesin hominis, United States, South Africa, Willem Vrolik (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a book that's as disturbing as it is enlightening, as unsettling as it is compelling, Leroi examines all sorts of genetic variability in humans and explains how that variability helps scientists understand the processes associated with human growth and development. Leroi, recipient of a Scientist for the New Century medal from the Royal Institution of Great Britain, demonstrates, in both text and pictures, that an enormous amount can go wrong as humans develop from fertilized eggs and progress toward old age. The missteps can result from genetic or environmental causes, with the latter occasionally responsible for the former. Although the subjects Leroi presents conjoined twins, individuals with cyclopia (a single eye), deformed or missing limbs, abnormal height, supernumerary breasts, an overabundance of body hair, piebald coloring often appear grotesque, he approaches all of his topics and each of his human subjects with great respect. Leroi uses each example to demonstrate the developmental lessons they illustrate: e.g., the role of fibroblast growth factors in the formation of limbs, the pituitary's impact on body size. By explaining that each of us carries hundreds of mutations within us, he asserts that we are not all that different from those who, on first glance, appear very disparate. Similarly, he effectively dismisses the belief that human races are anything more than a convenient social construct, establishing that there is no biological basis for such categorization. While the graphic pictures might deter some, they add immeasurably to the text.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New England Journal of Medicine

This book is "about the making of the human body." Armand Leroi, a reader in evolutionary developmental biology at London's Imperial College, thus joins the multitude of writers who are attempting to gratify our narcissistic focus on "the body." His slant is genetic, and his approach is to employ the story of variation, hence the title and subtitle of his book. Leroi takes vignettes from famous historical cases of human "mutants" to provide interest and background for his discussions of the principles of developmental biology (what used to be called "embryology"). The nature of the subject leads him to emphasize genes and morphogenesis, certainly a fascinating area in recent years. Leroi starts his discussion with famous "monsters" in history -- some mythical, some well known, and some obscure, but all quite interesting. Famous examples include cases of conjoined twins, persons with hypertrichosis, and cyclops. The author is at his best in his lively writing regarding the historical context of these cases. He takes up examples of limb malformations, disorders of stature, and cases of intersex (more commonly known as hermaphroditism). The mysteries and medical theorizing of the past are presented in a sensitive voice and are followed by explanations of the current biologic thinking about the processes that appear to underlie these disorders. Leroi's accounts of the human lives touched by these variations are revealing of our historical biases. For example, he illuminates the curious association between ectrodactyly (the lobster-claw syndrome) and the cruel punishment of two religious dissenters in 1685 and shows how the connection reflects the pervasive belief that malformed children are born as retribution for parental transgression. These stories exhibit the wide range of human variation as well as the sometimes astonishing ways in which the affected human beings have managed to fit within their culture and society. In trying to craft scientific explanations that fit the tone and detail of the historical account, the author runs into a few problems. It is always difficult to convey complex ideas about, say, transcription factors and their role in sex determination to a readership that presumably does not have a detailed knowledge of the entire process of transcription. As the biologist Lewis Wolpert has noted, much of modern science is counterintuitive, so Leroi's task is especially daunting. He has attempted much, but it seems to me that his explanations are apt to be more mystifying than edifying to many readers. To the student of current biology, these passages will be a useful summary, but for the hypothetical "general, well-informed" reader, discussions of morphogens, cell receptors, and aromatase are likely to be underappreciated. Although Leroi simplifies and streamlines as best he can, there are some places where this approach can seem to be misleading -- for example, when he asserts early in the book that mutations are "deficiencies in particular genes." To be fair, toward the end of the book, he tries to reverse this rather flat-footed definition of mutation. Sometimes, too, the distinction between genetic causes and nongenetic developmental accidents (e.g., virus infections) is not made sufficiently clear. Read this book for the fascinating tales of human variation and the lives of those affected; the clinical genetics may also be of interest. William C. Summers, M.D., Ph.D.
Copyright © 2004 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (November 6, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670031100
• ISBN-13: 978-0670031108
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #796,028 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Imperfections Show Us Who We Are, April 6, 2004

By	R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

You are a mutant, and you have been since before you were born. You probably have three hundred mutations in your genes that impair your health in some way. Of course, that leaves a huge number of genes to correct any problems, and most of us don't look as if we stepped out of the X-Men comic books. "We are all mutants. But some of us are more mutant than others," says the evolutionary biologist Armand Marie Leroi in _Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body_ (Viking). Leroi takes a review of human mutations based on the wonderful principle that we get to understand how nature normally works by carefully examining abnormalities; when things go wrong, we know that there must be some important process going right most of the time. So there is extensive evaluation here of strange-looking humans, often with nightmarish defects. Amply illustrated, the book has engravings from centuries past to show that humans have always had a curiosity about such beings. Leroi's intellectual interest is far from morbid, however, and his lessons drawn from the monsters here are humane and increase our admiration for how often things go right, and how often those who were dealt a bad genetic hand can still play it well.

For example, Carl Herman Unthan was a violin virtuoso by age twenty, although he had no arms. Of course, not all such mutants are so successful. Harry Eastlack had a defect that told his body to make bone whenever it made any repair, so that bruises and tears would turn into bone, not healed flesh. The stillborn babies here are strange indeed. One has a second developed mouth in its forehead. Another child was born with over twenty half-developed fetuses in his brain. The book, however, is far from a chamber of horrors. Even the most bizarre of the mutants do show us things about the process of becoming and being a human creature. Conjoined twins, for instance, are closely examined here in many ways for many lessons, like how our developing bodies can know left from right. The deformities in limbs show the importance of embryonic limb-buds, a signaling protein called "sonic hedgehog," and "hox" genes that are the same ones that help keep our vertebral segments orderly. The same hox genes work to make the segments in worms. Leroi writes of the "breathtaking similarity" living creatures have in such arrangements, as evolution has built variations on the same basic plan. "We are, in many ways, merely worms writ large."

There are pygmies and dwarfs here, and giants, and men / women of intermediate sex, albinos, piebalds, cyclopes, and families covered all over in hair. There is natural curiosity about such "monsters," but Leroi shows there needs to be more. They are all products of molecules gone wrong, molecules we can now detect and understand, to better appreciate how molecules go right in the unimaginably complicated dance that creates organisms. There is a fascinating chapter near the end to show that perhaps ageing and death are caused by specific mutations (we are mutants all, remember). The final chapter is about the importance of human diversity, and the importance of beauty as a general evolutionary force (as Darwin knew it to be). A beautiful face has appeal at least in part because imperfections, the myriad types of imperfections as illustrated here, are not apparent, indicating health and fitness. With a declaration for biological beauty, this is a well-informed, life-affirming book by a scientist who has used molecular errors to ponder deeply the human condition.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A clever approach to genetics, January 2, 2004

By	Atheen M. Wilson "Atheen" (Mpls, MN United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I have to admit to a little voyeurism when it comes to the odd, and Armand Marie LeRoi's book Mutants does have a bit of a side show aspect to it. What it really intends is to show how science discovers how things work--or in this case fail to work--in human anatomy-physiology.

Now that the human genome project has crunched out the raw data on what our DNA code is, it has become the far more daunting task of biologists to figure out what it says and how it works. The best way to do that would be to screw up specific sites on the gene and see what happens. This is how they learn what the DNA of lower orders does, but humans aren't like fruit flies; we don't live our lives in a matter of days. Nor are we like amoeba or worms; our genetics are much more complicated and the interactions among them probably orders of magnitude greater than those for the "simpler" animals. Most important, screwing up the genetics of a human subject is not exactly, ethically or morally speaking, a good place to go! That leaves us with natural genetic failures, those individuals who have suffered genetic misprints that can lead to clues about what normal DNA does. This is what chapter one explains in some detail.

The remaining chapters illustrate what is learned from specific mutations: twinning, how and from what parts of the body arise, how things grow, how gender develops, how skin differences occurs, and why aging happens.

Since many of the mutant individuals discussed are historic figures, some of the bibliographic entries are quite old. While there are some books, most of the entries are those of modern scientific journals: American Journal of Medicine, Annals of Human Biology, Developmental Biology, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science, etc. Most of these are very current, many from the late 1990s. For the interested follower of the subject, some of these might be difficult to find unless there is a university library at your disposal.

FOR THOSE WRITING PAPERS: IN SCIENCE OR IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE: The book might illustrate how scientists can approach a problem without offending the ethics of the society of which it is a part. One might also check some of the old texts to find material that would illustrate other types of genetic problems and describe how this might be of help to geneticists. One might describe the current issues regarding cloning using this book as a reference. One might write a paper that showed how the efforts of scientists and medical doctors of the past to publish new information in their times have helped scientists decades, even centuries later. IN THE ARTS, HISTORY, ANTHROPOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY: One might show how art has captured information that is pertinent to scientific work today, or discuss how the mutant individual fit into his/her particular society. (Please note that James Merrick is one of those discussed and that there are several biographies and a play based on his life.)

An interesting book on a clever approach to genetics.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Are Redheads Mutants?, June 26, 2004

By	Bruce Crocker "agnostictrickster" (Whittier, California United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Despite being the repository of many of my family's variant genes, I can't complain - I am a fully functional human being. That said, the fact that I am the first known case of inherited intermittent vertical nystagmus [at least that's what the doctors said at the time of my birth] has given me an above average interest in the genetics of human beings. Armand Marie Leroi's Mutants is an excellent introduction to genetic variety in human beings. Mutants could have been turned into a freak show by a lesser writer or one with the desire to titillate, but Leroi handles the subject directly and with the right level of sensitivity. In the introduction, Leroi demystifies the word mutant and concludes the chapter by saying

We are all mutants. But some of us are more mutant than others.

I especially enjoyed the fact that I was finally able to understand the genetics of my aunt's 6th toe and the fact that Leroi uses redheads to explore the boundary between mutation and polymorphism [I'm okay with the fact that being a redhead makes me a mutant].

Despite the way Leroi handles the material, this is not a book for the squeamish. The black and white illustrations may be disturbing to some readers. I think the perfect reader for this book would be a person with the background from a 9th grade biology class and an interest in learning more about human genetics. People with an interest in history and the process of doing science should also find much of interest in Mutants.