Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters. By Matt Ridley. New York: Harper Collins, 2000. 334 pp. $14.00 (paper).

Recently, scientists announced that they had completed the identification of every gene in the human body. Matt Ridley takes the reader on a pageturning introduction to the new genetics, highlighting the magical possibilities of genetic research and delving into some significant medical, social, and ethical issues that it raises. Each of his chapters tours one of our twenty-three chromosome pairs, the structures inside the nuclei of our cells on which our genes are located. As he focuses on a particular gene at a time, Ridley takes a brisk run through everything from fate and immortality to sex, memory, and death. On the way, he illustrates how genes cause disease, direct the production of proteins, and influence intelligence, among other matters. Gene therapy remains tentative and results are inconclusive. Yet progress in genetic science has been exponential. Ridley explores how genomic research eventually will help physicians treat heart disease, cancer, dementia, arthritis, diabetes, and other diseases.

For those who believe that mapping the human genome now gives us full instructions for making human beings of whatever sort we choose, Ridley's book comes as a corrective. We are more than our genes, he maintains (for the most part), and what we have learned about them will not enable us to create new Frankensteins. Genes need to be switched on, he explains, and external events and free-willed behavior can do that. Thus, genes are not the key to the meaning of life. "You inherit not your IQ, but your ability to develop a high IQ under certain environmental circumstances," he observes. Humans have free will that transcends both genes and environment, Ridley acknowledges. Where does this free will come from? From chaos, he replies. Chaos is the deus ex machina that turns us into creatures and that turns an otherwise materialist Ridley into a Cartesian dualist who recognizes mind and choice. There is no room for purposeful human development guided by the hand of a loving God in his philosophy. It is difficult to discern what role morality and religion play in such a world.

Ridley is a libertarian who dislikes state intervention. He believes the caution of bioethics committees is foolish. He favors personal but not social eugenic choice, inveighing against "the spectre of government telling me what I may do with my genes." In his eyes, the state is to blame for most of the evils perpetrated with the help of science. He believes the history of eugenics is the history of government out of control, not geneticists. As long as decisions about how to apply genetic knowledge are left to doctors and patients, he is confident that this new genetic knowledge will not be systematically perverted. His analysis of the public and science policy is simplistic to the point of caricature in the chapter on "Politics." It is more an ill-natured rant than a measured analysis.

Even so, Ridley writes in an engaging and lucid style that provides an exciting and even thrilling story. His book, when read with a grain of caution, provides an intriguing introduction to the new genetics and to some of the policy questions that it raises.

CYNTHIA B. COHEN

Kennedy Institute of Ethics Georgetown University Washington, D.C.

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Winter 2002
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