Blood Matters
From BRCA1 to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
A National Book Award winner’s personal journey through the ethical dilemmas and unsettling choices raised by the new frontier of DNA testing.
Several years after Masha Gessen’s mother died of breast cancer, she discovered she too had the BRCA1 gene mutation, which predisposes women to high rates of ovarian and breast cancer. Her doctors gave her narrow options: surgical removal of her breasts and ovaries or living with the likelihood of one day developing cancer. As Gessen wrestled with her own health decisions, she sought more information about the implications of genetic testing from a variety of sources—ranging from others faced with her same dilemma to medical researchers, historians, and religious thinkers. With concerns both practical and philosophical, personal and societal, her inquiry led her across the globe, with stops in Israel, Russia, Austria, and the United States.
Weaving her own story into her journalistic research, Gessen offers insight into how knowledge that was once unimaginable now shapes our lives. Blood Matters explores not only the decisions we must make in our physical and emotional health, but also the ethical choices we face when choosing spouses or having children.
“Valuable reading to almost anyone facing a huge health decision, not only for the literary commiseration it offers, but also for the inspired example of medical sleuthing on one’s own behalf that it provides. Gessen keeps an inflammatory topic at room temperature, writing elegantly and without self pity.” —The New York Times Book Review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This energetic but unfocused account awkwardly merges several strands: the author's experience with the threat of breast cancer, discussions of genetic inheritance in Jewish families and a look at how the ability to test for genetic predispositions to various diseases is changing lives. With a family history of breast cancer, journalist Gessen (Dead Again: The Russian Intelligentsia After Communism) was not surprised to learn she had inherited a "deleterious mutation" in the BRCA1 gene, one of two genes known to be linked to breast and ovarian cancer. The BRCA1 mutation was first discovered in Jewish women, a "compact population" with a higher-than-average breast cancer rate. Gessen describes her narrow options, with "nondirective counseling" steering her toward prophylactic removal of her breasts and ovaries. Then she jumps the track to talk about Dr. Henry Lynch, who, in 1966, first suggested that predisposition to cancer might be hereditary. Gessen also covers Huntington's disease, maple syrup disease among Old Order Mennonites, eugenics and how a genetic testing program is affecting marital choices for some Orthodox Jews. Gessen covers a fair amount of ground, but in a haphazard fashion. The book's strongest parts are on genetics and heredity in the Jewish community.
