Genome

Rating:
Summary: A very effective format for Ridley
Review: Matt Ridley proves here once again that he is a terrific writer. He has the facile style of a confident journalist and the wide knowledge of a budding scholar. He is learned without being stuffy. He proves too that he is a master of analogy and metaphor, understanding that we learn through comparison. I have the sense that he spent a fair amount of his free time looking for apt comparisons to illuminate the ideas of genetics for the general reader. Some examples: On page 276 where he describes the idea that there is a living thing with no DNA as "about as welcome in biology as Luther's principles in Rome." Or on page 241 talking about apoptosis, in which our cells are programmed to commit suicide: "the body is a totalitarian place." He even asserts on page 174 that we cannot hope to understand the process of embryotic development without "the handrail of analogy." My favorite is this from pages 247-248 where he is talking about gene therapy and an engineered retrovirus that doesn't work: "it lands at random...and often fails to get switched on; and the body's immune system, primed by the crack troops of infectious disease, does not miss a clumsy, home-made retrovirus."

Add a sharp wit and an infectious enthusiasm for understanding human behavior and one can see the reasons for his success as an interpreter of the biological sciences. In Genome, Ridley has found a structure and an approach that allows him to wax speculative and philosophical about matters of particular interest to him and to most people. The result is that the reader is treated to a lively mind at work trying to understand ourselves and this world we live in. He uses the 23 chapters, each emphasizing one aspect or our genetic makeup and each dedicated to one of our 23 pairs of chromosomes, to explore such matters as intelligence, instinct, the nature of disease, the effect of stress, the development of personality, memory, death and immortality, etc., and of course sex and--always an important question for Ridley--free will.

Some highlights:

The chapter on stress includes two startling assertions: One, that low status in the pecking order (instead of high cholesterol), lowers our resistence to microbes in our systems, and is the prime mover in making some of us more susceptible to heart attacks (p. 155); and two, that aggression is not caused by high testosterone levels but the other way around (p. 157). On page 171 he makes a similar assertion, namely that serotonin levels (as found in monkeys) are the result of dominate behavior, not the other way around, as has always been thought. These are exciting ideas since they suggest that we can improve our condition through our behavior (akin to "method acting," I suppose). Ridley's arguments strike me as convincing, but see for yourself.

In Chapter 21, he gives us a brief history of eugenics, noting, by the way, that during its heyday the name "Eugene" became popular in England. He spares eugenics practitioners and true believers not at all. He rips them up in true (and uncharacteristic) PC style, and then gets to his point. He likes eugenics but not the way it was practiced with the state coercing the individual. Instead Ridley would like (quoting James Watson on page 299) "to see genetic decisions put in the hands of users" instead of governments. He calls this "genetic screening" and cites the virtual elimination of cystic fibrosis from the Jewish population in the United States as a positive employment of screening from the private sector.

In Chapter 22 he tackles free will, beginning with a joke about there being a gene for free will. Clearly Ridley is in favor of free will, but reading between the lines one see that he knows he is on shaky scientific ground. He quotes the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy on (David) "Hume's Fork: Either our actions are determined, in which case we are not responsible for them, or they are the result of random events, in which case we are not responsible for them." Ridley believes it is better to imagine the we are guided in our actions by our genes than by our conditioning. He sees nurture as being a more tyrannical dictator, if dictators we have, than our genes. This is not surprising since politically speaking Ridley hates the collective. He would love to have proof of the existence of free will since that is where his heart lies, but I hope that someday he will be comfortable with the understanding that whether we have free will or not (or whether "free will" is even a meaningful concept), one thing is clear: we have the ILLUSION of free will, and that illusion is all compelling. Also, as Ridley notes, society must treat its members as having the ability to make free choices or the whole system of law collapses.

Perhaps the most amazing feat of our genome is the one Ridley writes about in Chapter 12, that of "Self-Assembly." To me that is the really stupefying trick of our genes, to assemble themselves from the code. The twists and turns of such an enormously complex undertaking is, to me, as remote from our understanding and experience as the eleven dimensions of super string theory.

Other popular writers on science looking for the secret of Matt Ridley's success should note that he gives the reader value both in terms of knowledge and entertainment. He works hard at meaningful communication. He wants the reader above all to understand what he is saying. Even though I sometimes disagree with him, I always learn something new and interesting from reading his books.

Rating:
Summary: Glaring Scientific Inaccuracy
Review: Great read, but I'm not sure about the scientific accuracy. Mr Ridley states in the first chapter(chromosome 1) that the most transcribed piece of human DNA is near the centromere. WRONG! It is about as far from the centromere as any piece of DNA could possibly be. In fact it is at locus 1q42.11 way below the centromere. Sorry Mr Ridley....do some more research before publishing such tosh.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting format for a book on a controversial subject.
Review: Since I am Deaf and reading up on this stuff for a paper on eugenics and the deaf community, I was fully prepared to dislike this book (which doesn't make for a very scientific attitude!) So many of these science writers do not bother to get full information about the subject they are talking about, and I was concerned that in promoting genetics, Matt Ridley would not tell the whole story, including the black chapter (and ongoing one at that) concerning eugenics. He waits until the very end, but he does get to it. He more than tells the story, he paints it out for the reader and gives smart and irreverent asides while doing it.

Ridley is right. Those who come at this book from a layperson's point of view need to know that genes are more then the diseases which are so prominently displayed in the media. Each of the chapters/chromosomes are loaded with information, and sometimes the gene for certain traits and specific diseases or disorders are too close in relationship to that gene. If we go clipping out those genes which offend us willy-nilly, such as manic depression/bipolar disorder, will we also clip the gene for creativity or artistic talent? Knowing that many artists have been known to be bipolar, do we even want to attempt to remove manic depression from the germ cell line when it may mean the loss of a spectacular artist? What a boring world ours would be if diversity was lost because of the decision of society to totally irradicate disease, usually for the "good of society" rather than for the benefit of the individual.

Ridley did a phenomenol job in writing this easily read book. If anything it is too short, too compact. Squashing the amount of information out there on the prion controversy into one chapter is great for alerting the general public, but in the process a lot of interesting information is left out and what information is available in the chapter may be too superficial to make an impact on the minds' of the readers. However, as always it is great to see science being made accessible to everyone, and this book certainly makes the genome accessible. I am a scientist, but I had forgotten about all the junk DNA and was wondering how they could have finished mapping the human genome so quickly. Ridley's book gave vital information that I had missed. Karen Sadler, Science Education, University of Pittsburgh

Rating:
Summary: You don't even have to like science to love this book
Review: As a non-scientist, what did I know about genetics...or care...This book opened my eyes to the story of creation, which is so much like real life - a bunch of junk dna, plus a few peak experiences...Matt Ridley is a genius...without a doubt, the best science writer of the year...and this book just shines. Buy several to give to friends.

Rating:
Summary: Good read, bad science
Review: My main objection to this book it that it is presented as a objective interpretation of scientific data. In the book, Ridley presents the all of his infomation within the very controversial theory of Evolutionary Biology. Whether you agree with this perspective or not, it is clear that there is considerable debate about it in the scientific community. His interpretation of these selective facts isn't really an attempt to bring the genetics to the reader, but rather to advance his point of view to the lay-public. It is very well written and you should read the book if you are interested. But you would be wise to balance his very slanted view with an equally compelling arguments from the otherside, courtesy of Richard Lewontin or Stephen Jay Gould.

Rating:
Summary: review
Review: great book...had to read it for a biology class and ended up not being able to put it down. It's interesting and easy to understand for all of us scientifically challenged

Rating:
Summary: Wondering what the genetic engineering furor is all about ?
Review: You won't find all or maybe any of the answers here, but you'll come away with a good enough comprehension of how genes work (or how some folks think they work); and be able to appreciate the questions and issues that are being raised so that you can formulate answers or more questions of your own.

Easy to read without being simplistic.

To follow-up have a look at "Brave New Worlds" by Bryan Appleyard.

Rating:
Summary: Best popular guide to the human genome
Review: Ridley's book is a good non-technical guide to the latest thinking on genes and scientists' thinking about nature and nurture. Experts may nitpick about generalisations or inaccuracies but for a one-volume treatment of a complex subject it is hard to think of a better book. Ridley has a gift for making a difficult subject interesting and relevant to the non-professional reader. It is one of the best and most fascinating popular science books I have ever read, with the exception of Simon Singh's Fermat's Last Theorem.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting addition to the literature on the genome
Review: The explosion in knowledge in the past decade in the area of the genetic code has, for the most part, been lost on the general public. Scientific advances are difficult to communicate to the masses, and aside from the occasional newspaper article on "the dyslexia gene" for example, not much is known of what scientists have learned as they have plumbed the depths of the human genome. Ridley attempts to bring us up to date in this respect, and mostly, I think he succeeds. His book is laid out in 23 chapters, one for each chromosome pair present in humans. Far from being an attempt to present a thorough description of every gene (which would take hundreds of thousands of books this size), Ridley selects one or two genes on each chromosome and tells a story. From diseases which are a simple result of the presence of a gene, to such complicated factors such as personality and instinct, Ridley dispels myths and educates the reader about the wonderful simplicity and complexity that is genetics and biological evolution.

I was conflicted by this book. On the one hand, Ridley is an excellent communicator and obviously well versed in genetics and biology, but on the other, I found some of his examples difficult to believe because of apparent contradictions. For example, in the chapter on chromosome 10, Ridley targets the genetic predisposition for heart disease (though the chapter is entitled "Stress"). He states and accepts the conclusion (his notes cite the prestigious journal Lancet) that people get heart disease in inverse proportion to their lowliness on the bureaucratic totem pole. In other words, jobs of low stature - janitors - are under more stress than people in jobs of high stature - presidents or CEOs. I'm not familiar with the research he quotes, but common sense would seem to indicate that the more elevated your position, the more decisions you are responsible, the higher the stress associated with the job. This chapter left me scratching my head and wondering about some of the other conclusions the reader was asked to accept at face value.

Overall, I do recommend this book. It is recent and provides an excellent guide to further reading for those interested in pursuing the human genome.

Rating:
Summary: MUST READ!!!
Review: I'm a recent graduate with a Bachelors degree in biochemistry, and I can't deny some of the nitpickers about places where Matt Ridley might make an error or overstate the accepted status of a theory...but this is certainly one of the best pop-science books to come out! It's 1) INTERESTING, 2) ACCURATE, 3) AS non-IDEOLOGICAL as you can be writing a book that doesn't villify genetic science, 4) BEAUTIFULLY-WRITTEN. This is a book you should buy or lend your friends. I have :)