Gene genie

>> Matt Ridley magically deciphers the human genome

by JULIET WATERS

Sometime this year the first rough draft of the Human Genome Project will be released. The goal of this project, expected to be finished in 2003, is to map the approximately 100,000 genes packaged in the 23 sets of chromosomes in human DNA.

It will tell us which species begat which in the evolution of Homo sapiens. Its impact on this millennium is expected to be roughly equivalent to what the first publication of the Bible was to the last.

For every chromosome there will probably be a few thousand issues to debate, with various power struggles evolving. Ethical conundrums abound, such as how much right insurance companies, governments and parents will have to genetic information about their clients, citizens and children. Not to mention how responsible a person will be held for innate differences in personality, sexuality or even criminality.

A race to patent information about certain genes already threatens to become something like the dot.com copyright race, only more sinister. The importance of this knowledge is such that in about five years anyone who isn't functionally literate in "genetish"--the language, ideas and most important issues raised by the mapping of the genome--may soon start to feel as out of the loop as someone who's never been on-line.

Matt Ridley's Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters is a good place to start learning the language, for many reasons. Ridley's an experienced science journalist who has a tremendous gift for picking out what's interesting and understandable to the common reader. Genome, relative to the scope of the information that's been condensed, is remarkably concise at just over 300 pages, with each of the 23 chapters about 10 pages long.

Much of the joy of Ridley's book is its structure. He doesn't attempt to discuss all the genes on each chromosome (this would be impossible, given that there are about 8,000) or even the top 10. For each chromosome he limits himself to one gene and an aspect of the debate that relates to that gene. Like someone who knows that writing a good autobiography has nothing to do with covering every event in a life, but rather to flash on the most interesting stories and crucial turning points, Ridley knows that his responsibility in Genome is only to keep our attention.

He navigates confidently through complicated territory touching on evolution, disease, the war between the sexes (at the chromosomal level, since apparently X and Y chromosomes compete for genetic dominance when building DNA), the "gay gene," intelligence testing, how history will be interpreted through genetic mapping, to name only a few of the issues covered.

Of course, like most defenders of sociobiology, Ridley has his agenda, and some of his appeals to "common sense" should be read with healthy skepticism. His talent for simplification is great when applied to his own material. However, when he starts making sweeping generalizations that casually dismiss the contribution of social science in the last century, he loses credibility.

For example: "Freudian theory fell the moment lithium first cured a manic depressive, where 20 years of psychoanalysis had failed. Marxism fell when the Berlin wall was built, though it took until the wall came down before some people realized that subservience to an all-powerful state could not be made enjoyable however much propaganda accompanied it. Cultural determinism fell when Margaret Mead's conclusions... were discovered... to be based on a combination of wishful prejudice, poor data collection and adolescent prank-laying by her informants."

Statements like these beg an argument. But whether one agrees or disagrees with Ridley's defense of evolutionary psychology, it is increasingly becoming the argument to beat. It will be hard to find a more interesting and readable presentation of it than Genome.

Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters by Matt Ridley, Harper Collins, hc, 344 pp, $39.50