Jacob's Ladder : The History of the Human Genome - Hardcover

Henry Gee

3.61

38 ratings by Goodreads

9781841157344: Jacob's Ladder : The History of the Human Genome

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1841157341 ISBN 13: 9781841157344

Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd, 2004

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In DEEP TIME Henry Gee told us why the chicken came before the egg. In his new book, JACOB'S LADDER, he tells us the comprehensive answer to the simple question: How did I get here?When the human genome was unveiled on 12 February 2001 headlines were filled with announcements that we had found the genes which cause schizophrenia, homosexuality and more. The assumption was that the genome offered a blueprint for what made human beings: the reality is far more complex and significant. The true importance of our discovery of the engine of life is that it offers us the possibility of altering our evolutionary destiny. Biology, once a passive science of observation, now possesses the tools to create form from the formless. For the first time we have the opportunity to shape life; like the angels on Jacob's Ladder, we are poised on the brink of godlike powers. But as Gee powerfully argues, we must exercise these powers with caution and learn from the mistakes of the past. He traces the entertaining history of man's search for what brings form from the formless, revealing the extraordinary thinkers and often bizarre experiments that led to this epochal moment: from Aristotle's musings and zany experiments with frogs and taffeta trousers which proved sperm fertilized eggs, through the insights of poet scientists such as Goethe, to Darwin and the eventual discovery of the genome. Not only does the genome show us how each individual is created, but it reveals the evolutionary history of all species, telling the story of mankind's survival against the odds. This provocative and accessible book investigates the latest and most radical discoveries about what makes us human. In so doing, it uncovers processes that have only recently been suspected, and never before understood.

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Review:

Although sequencing the human genome has brought speculation about all kinds of results--from curing to cloning--another sort of scientific payoff is in the works. In Jacob's Ladder, former UCLA professor Henry Gee shifts focus from the applied science of genomics to the basic research questions that can be addressed with this new information. "To describe the sequencing of the genome as a technical feat," he writes, "is to miss the point." Gee is most excited about the possibilities of understanding what makes us all human, rather than the individual genetic variances that make us individuals. He examines the genome as a motif representing the "pinnacle of human self-knowledge." Further, he claims that the philosophical shadow of Darwin has made us forget that one of the central questions of our being is how all of us are made from nothing, or rather from everything. To redirect thought, he closely describes how genes control the development of every human, both within and before each individual lifetime. While Gee's ideas are large enough to support a book on this by now well-covered subject, general readers will likely be put off by his somewhat dry and academic style. --Therese Littleton

About the Author:

Henry Gee is the chief science writer and assistant editor of Nature. He holds a PhD from Cambridge in Zoology and has previously been Regent's Professor at UCLA. He also contributes to Le Monde, El Pais, Die Zeit and has previously written Before the Backbone: Views on the Origin of the Vertebrates (1996) and Deep Time, which is also published by Fourth Estate.

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