Dangerous Misprints

M.F. Perutz

• Genome by Jerry Bishop and Michael Waldholz
  Touchstone, 352 pp, £8.99, September 1991, ISBN 0 671 74032 6

We are now within reach of being able to map all the genes on the human chromosomes, some hundred thousand of them maybe, and to decipher all the genetic information that defines a human being. This will include its sex, the chemistry of its body and its predisposition to a variety of diseases, but not, at least not yet, its personality. All this information is laid down in the human germ cells. Each of them contains 46 chromosomes, worm-like objects only just visible under a good light microscope. Each chromosome is made up of two chains of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA for short, combined with protein. Along these chains, the genes are spread out in a linear order. A complete genetic map might tell us, for example, that the gene for little Johnny’s brown eyes is number 1349 on chromosome 23, but it would not explain why Johnny tells so many lies. So what use would that map be to you and me? Not much, as long as we keep in good health, but many serious scientists believe that such a map would be of signal benefit to medicine. On the other hand, it would also face us with formidable new moral, social, financial and legal problems. This book recounts some of the scientific adventures that brought the Genome Project into being and presents the cases for and against it, but without attempting any judgment about their relative merits.