The Gene
Author- Siddhartha Mukherjee
Publisher- Penguin, Rs595
Pulitzer winner Siddhartha Mukherjee has taken science writing a notch higher, writes Rajesh Singh
Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates believes that in five years, mosquitoes which have been genetically modified to be resistant to malaria and dengue, can become part of our environment system. In a related though unconnected development, scientists have used gene-editing technology to alter the patterns on the wings of a butterfly. In the first case, an engineered segment of the gene is introduced into the mosquito’s DNA that causes nearly 100 per cent of its offspring to inherit the changed gene.
Gates is hopeful that the breakthrough will drastically reduce malaria and dengue deaths across the world. There is no danger from the butterfly with any wing pattern, but the success in tweaking the design of its wings demonstrates the tremendous progress genetic science has made over the last many decades since ‘gene’, as it is understood today, came to be known to humankind. In comparison to the ‘miracles’ unleashed by genetic scientists today, the cloning of the first mammal — Dolly the sheep — just 20 years ago, now sounds like a walk in the park.
The story of the gene is, therefore, fascinating. But a story can be only as good as its telling. The best written plots can sink if they are rendered in an insipid fashion. This danger is all the more real when the story-teller comes with a baggage of impressive knowledge that can overwhelm not just the reader and leave him befuddled but also the story-teller himself, who has to constantly shuttle between his expertise and the ignorance of the lay recipient.
One would, thus, expect Siddhartha Mukherjee, cancer physician, researcher and geneticist, stem cell biologist and an assistant professor of medicine (at Columbia University), to be struck down as a writer by the very advantage that has taken him this far in his medical profession. He proved the expectation wrong five years ago with his The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. That it fetched him a Pulitzer prize is beside the point; with this book, Mukherjee created a new style — a new genre wouldn’t be an exaggeration — in non-fiction science writing, much in the way that Isaac Asimov did in science fiction. Imagine, a ‘biography’ of cancer! Here, then, was an author who could rock, even when dealing with a grim and specialised subject such as cancer. He has lived up to that reputation with his latest book, The Gene: An Intimate History, and taken it a notch higher.
There is a hint in the title of what must have prompted Mukherjee to broach the story of the gene, besides the fact that since he has expertise in the area — and it is an ‘in thing’ too — the subject will have suggested itself. ‘An intimate history’ is not merely a reference to the depth of the subject that the author traverses; it’s to do with his family as well. He begins, indeed, with a personal story which is painful and traumatic. Two of his father’s brothers and a cousin suffered from mental illness. It was clearly a genetic disorder. Mukherjee wondered if the wayward gene, which must have found place in his DNA too, would rear its head someday. He tells the reader in the book, “When I met Sarah, now my wife, for the fourth or fifth time, I told her about the splintered minds of my cousin and two uncles. It was only fair for a future partner that I should come with a letter of warning.” It was a difficult time for his family too. He writes, “By then, heredity, illness, normalcy, family and identity had become recurrent themes of conversation in my family. like most Bengalis, my parents had elevated repression and denial to a high art form… It was hard not to imagine that a heredity component lurked behind this family history.” He refers to it as the “same scar of history”.
It is important to centralise the author’s ‘personal’ issue because it not just triggered in him a burning desire to explore as deeply and for as long as he could, the world of genes and their behaviour, but also surely prompted him to write the book, intrinsically linking his family’s tragedy to what appears as an impersonal subject of science. It troubled him always, and he admits as much when he acknowledges, “While my family’s history of mental illness was cutting through my consciousness like a red line, my scientific work as a cancer biologist was also converging on the normalcy and abnormalcy of genes.”
But then, fresh question began troubling him: What if we learned to change our genetic code intentionallyIJ If such technologies were available, who would control themIJ Who would be the masters, and who the victims, of this technologyIJ The ethical part was, and remains, the most tricky; scientific advances are, after all, a matter of knowledge, technology, perseverance and some luck. So, at the outset, Mukherjee offers that the book “is the story of the birth, growth and future of one of the most powerful and dangerous ideas in the history of science: The ‘gene’, the fundamental unit of heredity, and the basic unit of all biological information.” He expands on the use of the term ‘dangerous’ by pointing out that the ‘manipulation’ of matter led to the invention of the atomic bomb.
The manipulation of organisms through gene-altering, could similarly lead to worrisome fallouts. He says that fiddling with genes in test tubes is one thing; doing it in the context of human cells is another, with unknown consequences: “It is one thing to try to understand how genes influence human identity or human sexuality or temperament. It is quite another another thing to imagine altering identity or sexuality or behaviour by altering genes.” It is the latter thought, he maintains, “inflected with both promise and peril”, that must concern humankind. Mukherjee will take heart from the fact that there is a strong lobby across the world, not just in theology or humanity, but also within the scientific community, which shares the concern and is maintaining a vigil to ensure that science does not take on more than it can handle.
Meanwhile, driven by personal quest and professional understanding, Mukherjee has shaped The Gene into an eminently readable account. He traces the progress of genetic science from the time of Charles Darwin (whose theory of the survival of fittest in the 19th century ignited new thinking, though many of his contentions later proved to be flawed) and the priest, Gregor Mendel (who is credited as being the father of modern genetics, though many of his theories too, like those of Darwin, later failed to stand stringent tests). Incidentally, while both these greats worked around the same time, neither seemed to be aware of the other’s path-breaking studies. The author introduces interesting trivia to seize the readers’ attention. He informs, for instance, that Mendel had repeatedly failed in the natural sciences test as part of his initiation into the teaching profession; the priest also had enormous problems with biology (he found it, in Mukherjee’s words, a “wild, overgrown garden of discipline, lacking any systematic raising principles”). There is also the case of a geneticist who went on to win a Nobel prize, having ranked 250th in his class of 250 students in a college exam.
In the course of the journey the author takes the readers on, mapping the discovery of the genes, to their individual identification, isolation, understanding of the human characteristics they determine and seeking to weed out the bad ones, and to their alternations, he sort of takes a break to delve on some extremely traumatic episodes where the pretext of genetic behaviour was used to exterminate populations based on their race (the Nazi Holocaust, for instance) or to prejudice against people based on the colour of their skin (in the United States). It reminds us of the dangers of science falling into the wrong hands.
Towards the end, he returns to where he began from: His family problem. He wonders, “Can we imagine a genetic test for schizophreniaIJ The first step would involve creating a compendium of all the genes involved — a gargantuan problem for human genomics. But even such a compendium would be insufficient. Genetic studies clearly indicate that some mutations only act in concert with other mutations to cause the disease. We need to identify the combination of genes that predict the actual risk.”
This would just be the beginning. For all the huge strides that genetic science has taken, and is taking, there is a great deal out there which is beyond human understanding. There’s no doubt it will be cracked someday, but the thin line that divides the application of scientific discoveries, and ethics, mustn’t get erased.