O GENE: UMA HISTÓRIA ÍNTIMA

Since Antiquity, human beings have sought answers to questions of heredity. Aristotle and Pythagoras already showed interest in the transmission of physical and behavioral traits across successive generations. Yet it took approximately two thousand years for the first concepts on the subject to emerge that were articulated with an eye toward scientific evidence—a true saga in the history of scientific knowledge.

Siddhartha Mukherjee recounts an important part of this journey in the excellent The Gene: An Intimate History. Already a Pulitzer Prize winner for journalism for a work of scientific popularization on cancer, the Indian-born Mukherjee—biologist, oncologist, and professor at Columbia University—proves worthy of yet another major distinction with this finely written book, rich in compelling information. The author traces a broad panorama that begins with ancient beliefs in the existence of a homunculus in semen—a tiny being thought to travel through the body collecting paternal traits and, once implanted in the uterus, to be nourished until birth. He moves on to Mendel’s discoveries, which in the nineteenth century introduced the idea of the gene even before it was physically identified; to Morgan and Muller, who asserted the biological nature of genes; to Avery, who proposed the gene as a chemical entity; to Tatum and Beadle, who in the 1930s partially uncovered how genes function; to Watson, Crick, Wilkins, and Franklin, who revealed the chemical structure of DNA (which constitutes genes). From there, Mukherjee continues through the work of many remarkable researchers, arriving finally at genomic engineering and the controversies surrounding gene therapies.

More than a history of science, the book engages deeply with the complex ethical questions involved both in research in this field and in projects aimed at the practical application of acquired knowledge and developed technologies. Highly pleasurable to read, the book informs while drawing the reader into reflections on the good and the harm that may arise from a form of knowledge potentially so powerful. Amid all that remains uncertain in the ever-shifting, evolving terrain of knowledge production, one idea stands out in this work: Nature is extraordinarily strong and determining, and it does not easily or directly convert into Culture, even while the latter may contribute to aspects of its evolution. Mukherjee shows how, over the course of the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, it became nearly impossible to attribute explanations of human behavior exclusively to psychological experience and socio-cultural factors, as many social scientists once did prior to the recent and enormous advances in the biological sciences.

Mukherjee’s work is invaluable, especially because most of us still lack a clear understanding of what contemporary scientific research has revealed—and of what can no longer be sustained as valid knowledge. The book also underscores the importance of respecting what we do not know, as a form of intelligent humility that ultimately translates into a deeper appreciation of knowledge itself and of the care required in the methods by which it is woven.

Title: The Gene: An Intimate History
Original Publication Year: 2016
Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee
Translator: Laura Teixeira Motta
Publisher: Companhia das Letras