Genes And Human Self-Knowledge: Reflections On Modern Genetics

Contemporary developments in human genetics are profoundly meaningful, both for the rapidity of scientific discoveries and for their person and social implications. The Human Genome Project, a worldwide effort to map the 50,000 to 100,000 genes making up the human blueprint, is creating new ways of understanding ourselves as individuals, as parents, as members of a family, an ethnic group, a species. Almost every day yet another medical detective finds a genetic clue to the long-running mystery of human identity. In 1992, the University of Iowa Humanities Symposium provided a public forum to examine the issues - moral, conceptual, legal, and practical - in modern genetics that are crucial to all of us. This strong, challenging volume is a collection the major essays presented by historians, philosophers, and other academic humanists to a multidisciplinary audience of molecular and clinical geneticist, genetic counselors, humanists, and members of the public. The essays explore the historical background, philosophical implications, and ethical issues related to the Human Genome Project as well as other developments in modern genetics. The questions raised in these essays are dramatic and troubling. What kind of knowledge is being produced by molecular geneticists? Do individual human genomes differ significantly from each other? How much do females and males differ from each other at the molecular level? Is there any genetic basis for distinguishing among racial or ethnic groups? Can current practices in genetics counseling be compared to the earlier eugenics movement? Will current research lead to updated views of genetic "normalcy" or even "superiority"?

Focusing on issues of individual identity and collective human behavior, the 24 essays in this volume derive from a symposium addressing the philosophical and social implications of modern genetics, especially the Human Genome Project (HGP). The book's strength is that it explores the HGP in the context of several areas of human intellectual and social concern: philosophy, history, education, law, media. A shortcoming is the absence of any contemporary molecular geneticists, those engaged in the grunt work of gene sequencing, who might provide valuable information on technology costs and outcome probabilities. Some chapters are easy to read and thought-provoking: one by Joseph D. McInerney clearly addresses the question: What is the function of science? Other chapters suffer from academic jargon and esoteric arguments. One academic contributor, Alan I. Marcus, expresses the frustration: ``For late twentieth century academics, public policy conferences play a crucial role for our self-esteem . . . but basically nothing is decided at gatherings of academics.'' Maybe nothing is decided, but nonetheless many important issues have been discussed.

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