Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body

Rating:
Summary: Thorough, but not quite thorough enough.
Review: This witty and humane book has managed to avoid the pitfalls so commonly associated with work in this area. Dr Armand Marie Leroi does not seem to have an axe to grind. The reader is spared political lectures on genetic diversity. This is a book that can be read by those on either side of the genetics debate without being dismissed as overly prejudicial. Dr Leroi's particular achievement is that he has managed this feat without loss of seriousness or respect for his subject. The book revolves around the case histories of individuals with genetic abnormalities. Dr Leroi does not pretend that these individual's lives were enhanced by their deformities, rather he uses their lives as an illustration of genetics in action, warts and all, and usually much more than warts. While one may marvel at the courage of some of those people depicted, one is nevertheless left with a keen sense of sadness for them and for the uncomprehending world in which they lived. Theirs were unusual lives. They were unusual in having been both hidden and recorded, repellent and absorbing, freakish and yet in many ways profoundly ordinary. Dr Leroi handles these dichotomies dispassionately, respectfully and above all, expertly. This is a warm, endearing book on a topic which might easily have been neither.

Rating:
Summary: Mutants
Review: This witty and humane book has managed to avoid the pitfalls so commonly associated with work in this area. Dr Armand Marie Leroi does not seem to have an axe to grind. The reader is spared political lectures on genetic diversity. This is a book that can be read by those on either side of the genetics debate without being dismissed as overly prejudicial. Dr Leroi's particular achievement is that he has managed this feat without loss of seriousness or respect for his subject. The book revolves around the case histories of individuals with genetic abnormalities. Dr Leroi does not pretend that these individual's lives were enhanced by their deformities, rather he uses their lives as an illustration of genetics in action, warts and all, and usually much more than warts. While one may marvel at the courage of some of those people depicted, one is nevertheless left with a keen sense of sadness for them and for the uncomprehending world in which they lived. Theirs were unusual lives. They were unusual in having been both hidden and recorded, repellent and absorbing, freakish and yet in many ways profoundly ordinary. Dr Leroi handles these dichotomies dispassionately, respectfully and above all, expertly. This is a warm, endearing book on a topic which might easily have been neither.

Rating:
Summary: compelling
Review: Wow! This book is erudite AND compelling; it's a fascinating delve into history you haven't read before combined with an explanation of the lastest science. It's got enough up to date genetics for a bio-chem PhD yet accessible to someone who hasn't studied biology since high-shcool. Is it the subject a bit too much for the squeamish? Not at all: Dr. Leroi treats the subjects of his book with sufficient respect so that you will overcome any squeamishness you may initially feel as you learn more about the variety of shapes we humans come in.

Rating:
Summary: compelling
Review: Wow! This book is erudite AND compelling; it's a fascinating delve into history you haven't read before combined with an explanation of the lastest science. It's got enough up to date genetics for a bio-chem PhD yet accessible to someone who hasn't studied biology since high-shcool. Is it the subject a bit too much for the squeamish? Not at all: Dr. Leroi treats the subjects of his book with sufficient respect so that you will overcome any squeamishness you may initially feel as you learn more about the variety of shapes we humans come in.

Rating:
Summary: The Imperfections Show Us Who We Are
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The Imperfections Show Us Who We Are
Review: 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.