Unlimited Potential Or Uncertain Peril? Genomes, "Genes for," and Gmos (The GOOD Book) (Books on Genomes and Genetics) (Book Review‪)‬

NOTHING HAS ADVANCED so swiftly in recent decades as the collection of scientific disciplines and practices commonly referred to as "genetics." But after reading Genomes and What to Make of Them (University of Chicago Press, 2008), I'm forced to question the meaning and merit of this comfortably familiar term. Although authors Barry Barnes and John Dupre--co-directors of the Economic and Social Research Council Centre for Genomics in Society at the University of Exeter--insist that their new book is primarily scientific, its overwhelming intellectual effect is clearly metaphysical. Much like The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins' 1976 literary marvel, Genomes completely renovates our conception of both molecular biology and, hence, reality itself. How ironic, then, that the latter text should serve in part to supersede the former. According to Barnes and Dupre, "systems of interacting macromolecules," or genomes, have replaced "sets of discrete particles" or genes, as the underlying objects of DNA research. Similarly, "the life cycle" has supplanted the Mendelian themes of "inheritance and inherited differences" as the dominant framework within which to build our knowledge of living things.