A well-argued, approachable challenge to society’s preoccupation with the potential of genetic science.
Myles questions contemporary society’s preoccupation with population genetics.
Since scientists first sequenced the human genome two decades ago, there has been an “obsessive search for genetic explanation” for diseases, traits, and innate behavioral abilities, writes the author. A medical doctor and clinical researcher with The National Institutes of Health, Myles notes that, despite the revolutionary promises of genetic research, Americans today are even more unhealthy than they were before the completion of the genome project, citing record-high rates of food allergies, asthma, and diseases involving the immune system. Challenging the work of Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene, 1976) and Kathryn Paige Harden (The Genetic Lottery, 2021), this book argues that far too much weight has been placed on “genetic determinism.” While offering clear rebuttals to right-wing attempts to utilize debunked IQ science for racist purposes, the book focuses on the author’s own research on eczema, positing that an emphasis on genetic determinism among those researching allergies and rheumatology is “doing active harm to medicine and society.” Population genetics also distracts from what Myles believes are far more pressing issues, such as disease prevention and environmental concerns. “Genetic fanfare stole our collective focus,” he writes, as we have “stripped the key nutrients from our food” and “swaddled our children in baby blankets made from the chemicals found in car exhaust.” Acknowledging that his colleagues at the NIH may not agree with his skepticism regarding genetics, the author offers a nuanced, convincingly substantiated counternarrative from the vantage of an expert in his field. While the book’s almost 500 pages offer fellow researchers ample material for scholarly discussion, Myles balances its academic methodology with an engaging, jargon-free writing style. Bolstering this accessibility is the inclusion of multiple full-color images, charts, and diagrams. While appealing to lay readers with pop culture references generally works for the book’s narrative, it perhaps gives the 1997 SF thriller Gattaca an undue amount of attention (including referencing the film in its title).
A well-argued, approachable challenge to society’s preoccupation with the potential of genetic science.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2023
ISBN: 9798989230914
Page Count: 474
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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