The Human Blueprint: The Race to Unlock the Secrets of Our Genetic Script

A look at the Human Genome Project--the effort to map the human genetic structure--traces the development of genetic theory, describes the geneticists involved in the project, and discusses the project's potentials for the future of science

In a dramatic, personal narrative, popular science writer Shapiro ( Life Beyond Earth ) presents the fullest, clearest account to date of the Human Genome Project, the ongoing research effort to decode the entire DNA text. Besides bringing anticipated relief from hereditary diseases, the Project, if successful, will make feasible new techniques, like mass genetic screening and embryo selection, that will raise novel ethical and legal issues, discussed here with calm detachment. Shapiro engagingly illuminates the Project's working methods, the key scientific personalities involved and the momentous implications for the future. Using a genetic profile of the British royal family as a case example and working backwards and forwards, he speculates on the degree of detailed knowledge each of us may one day possess about our own heredity. Photos. BOMC selection.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An encyclopedic yet personal and imaginative account of human genetics by someone who has ``ridden briefly over the ground'' he wishes to cover. Shapiro (Chemistry/NYU) divides his discussion into ``Yesterday,'' ``Today,'' ``Tomorrow,'' and ``After Tomorrow,'' providing historical chronology as well as future speculations. ``Yesterday'' begins with Mendel and moves on to Morgan and the fruit-fly group at Columbia at the turn of the century, revisits the Eagle Pub in Cambridge in 1953 (site of notable Watson-Crick conversations), and moves apace to the mid-70's and the birth of biotechnology with the work of Walter Gilbert at Harvard and Fred Sanger at Cambridge. ``Today'' begins with the launching of the project to map and sequence the entire human genome: the promises, the problems, and the politics. Shapiro chooses the metaphor of DNA as literary script to be decoded and describes genetic diseases as various typos and misreadings. He spends considerable time explaining techniques in current use, such as DNA fingerprinting and chromosome walking. This is tough stuff, but Shapiro does well by his language analogies. And the two sections on the future reveal that he is no novice at speculation. Indeed, he raises the specter of people gaining intimate knowledge of one's personal genome by obtaining a hair or other easily shed body sample--for all the world a 21st-century analogue of black magic, in this case enabling the future ``magician'' to know just what ills one is heir to. Shapiro concludes with the optimistic view that humans may someday dip into the germline to create subspecies with different traits. That, plus interesting asides on the English royal family, Jefferson's descendants, the origins of the Jewish ``race,'' and other examples of DNA sleuthing, add spice and potential controversy to a first-rate study. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Public fascination with the Human Genome Project--the government-funded "big science" project to read the entire human genetic code--has been so great that now, with this new title, four popular books on the subject have been published. Unlike the others (Lois Wingerson's Mapping Our Genes , LJ 6/1/90; Joel Davis's Mapping the Code , LJ 9/15/90; and Jerry Bishop and Michael Waldholz's excellent Genome , LJ 7/90), this book is by a scientist and covers not just the project, but the entire past, present, and future of the science of genetics. Shapiro presents the technical material at a careful pace, separating more difficult passages with illustrative anecdotes and analogies, and using common terms instead of jargon. What emerges is a very comprehensible elucidation of the project in its broadest social, historical, and scientific context. While Bishop and Waldholz's account might be more engaging reading for a general audience, Shapiro's work answers more questions and engenders a broader appreciation of the whole science. For any library.
- Gregg Sapp, Montana State Univ. Libs., Bozeman
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.