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The Gene: An Intimate History |  |
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网友对The Gene: An Intimate History的评论
质量很好，内容没仔细看，但是很厚也很大的一本书，重量还好，纸张不错。内容看了下目录，有一定的专业性，不知道外行人能不能看的懂。
Gene is a must-read history book on genetics. Many accounts have been penned on Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, for instance, to make their importance known to the non-professionals. Gene fills the void for the equally important science of Genetics.
The author's biggest success is in weaving a beautiful narrative. Starting with the emotionally-charged personal links to the field to the frequent detailing of personalities of or anecdotes involving famous scientists, the subject is kept 'human'. There are abundant scientific notions to satisfy any reader picking up the book to understand the real subject matter, but not in the general bland fashion of studies-and-conclusions that tend to lose many a lay people.
The book also excels because of the simplicity with which countless exotic concepts are explained. From the notions of introns and exons to the polygenic nature of most phenotypes, the feedback from environment to gene mutation and the massive role played by non-gene factors in most our traits, the author uncovers a staggering number of interesting findings in a highly understandable manner.
Amid all this, the author keeps the focus on various moral and ethical issues. The narrative is laced with historic episodes of all kinds to emphasise the criticality of the questions confronting us as we make more scientific progress. For example, the book beautifully explains the dangers of genetic modification - which tantamounts to replacing natural selection with human selection. As professionals or parents seek to weed out certain deformities, there are genuine risks of us eliminating some important evolutionary traits mainly out of ignorance of how genes really work at this stage but also out of their possible other utilities in long future.
The biggest flaw of the book is insufficient focus on latest developments and near absence of what this science is capable of solving in coming decades. The optimists out there expect congenitally blind people to see and cancers all cured. Some expect us to be able to grow a third arm if we so choose or re-create a dinosaur in a century or so. Genetics is combined with nanotechnology, cryonics, robotics etc by many fantasizers to come up with even more fanciful theories. The author could have added a chapter or two to discuss gene therapy and other recent experiments to complete the excellent work further.
That said, a remarkable book in all aspects.
This should be considered a must-read book for anyone who wants a good understanding of biology, evolution, medicine, and many important aspects of the human condition. Mukherjee is very accessible, but also rigorous. I think if I had been able to read this book when I was still a young woman in high school, it would have motivated me to persevere and overcome the obstacles of crappy teachers and to stick with "real" science (as opposed to switching to the pseudo-science of economics).
Perhaps more importantly, it helped me process a recent revelation - that my beloved Dad (deceased years ago) was not my biological father. He managed to conceive my oldest sister before enlisting in the navy for WWII and being sent to New Guinea. Between the tropical diseases and cures possibly worse than the diseases, he was rendered sterile. He and my mom (as we eventually learned) were lucky to be enrolled in some of the first, very low-key experimental efforts in artificial insemination at the University of Michigan. After that, my middle sister and I were born. They never breathed a word of it. They laughed and shrugged when people commented about the lack of similarity in our family and the jokes about the milk-man and post-man. We didn't figure it out until years after they had both died, when my insatiable curiosity impelled me to try DNA testing. So we only recently learned that my sisters were only half-sisters, that my middle-sister and I were not related to any of our cousins on our Dad's side, and that far from being a total WASP (which I had viewed with chagrin at best and revolt at worst my whole adult life) my biological father is/was Ashkenazi.
Most of my Jewish friends (and my own husband, whose father was Jewish) were tickled and said they always thought I "must be" so. Indeed, it felt a vindication of all my impulses to disassociate myself from WASP culture, my tendencies toward being argumentative and sarcastic and restless and fidgety (all at odds with the rest of my family).
So this book helped me understand the strength (but also the limits) of genetic influences, and the complex interactions between genes and environment. I felt enriched after I had finished it.
I just finished reading this book. This is the first book recommendation I have ever made but I highly recommend this one. It covers what we know about genes from the time they were discovered till now. It is very well researched and written. Easy to understand. It covers how our understanding of the gene influences our policies regarding evolution, abortion, eugenics, health, gene therapy, and many other things. I think it presents the information fairly. The only time Siddhartha preaches a bit is on the subject of evolution. But he makes a fair case for his position.
Within just the last few years, gene therapy, has developed to the point that it will have a major impact on how our health care system works. While this book doesn't address the recent announcement by Microsoft saying that Microsoft will participate in activities that will allow for the cure of some kinds of cancers within the next 10 to 15 years, it does explain how that is possible and what the challenges will be. Many of my friends care a lot about abortion. This book does a good job of describing how and why some of the current policies such as the 14 day rule came into existence. It talks about how to eliminate certain diseases without abortion. It explains how gene therapy works and how we now have the ability to change the genetics of humanity and why we maybe shouldn't do that and what self-imposed safeguards are in place now to prevent that from happening and how it may happen anyway. Anyway, an excellent book. Highly recommended.
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