Book Review

Genome: The autobiography of a species in 23 chapters

N Engl J Med 2000; 342:1763June 8, 2000

Article

Genome: The autobiography of a species in 23 chapters
By Matt Ridley. 344 pp. New York, HarperCollins, 1999. $26. ISBN: 0-0601-9497-9

We have come a long way since the public confrontation in 1860 between Bishop Samuel Wilberforce and Thomas Huxley, one of Charles Darwin's chief advocates. When the bishop asked him whether apes were on his grandmother's or grandfather's side, Huxley snapped that he would prefer an ape to a man who “introduces ridicule into a grave scientific discussion” (Adrian Desmond. Huxley. Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1997). In his latest discourse on evolution, Genome, Matt Ridley, a fluent science writer, points out that “we are, to a ninety-eight per cent approximation, chimpanzees, and they are, with ninety-eight per cent confidence limits, human beings.” Yet in August 1999, the Kansas Board of Education voted to delete any mention of evolution from the science curriculum of the public schools in its jurisdiction. This act of political flimflam denies Kansas students not only the right to think for themselves but also the ennobling awareness of the fundamental unity of all living creatures. Ridley says it well: “Wherever you go in the world, whatever animal, plant, bug or blob you look at, if it is alive, it will use the same dictionary and know the same code. All life is one.” How unfortunate that students in Kansas cannot share Ridley's enthusiasm for life.

Genome is a gambol through the 23 human chromosomes. It is not a catalogue of the 80,000 or so genes that wind around beads of histones to form chromatin, the stuff of chromosomes. Instead, Ridley samples one or two genes from each chromosome, selecting them to form a base from which he can wander freely into realms of biology and medicine that reach from the Prader–Willi and Angelman syndromes (for an essay on genetic imprinting) to why Mediterranean people eat cheese (Ridley will tell you). In Genome you will find essays on, among many topics, alkaptonuria, asthma, Huntington's chorea, the immune system, eugenics, and cancer. The emphasis is not so much on the genome as on evolution and natural selection, especially on how we became the way we are in form, thought, and behavior.

Ridley is a personal guide through the thickets of complex biologic systems. He addresses you directly (“Are you still with me?” punctuates a story about the role of serotonin in anxiety and depression). He is enthusiastic (“Mock my zeal if you wish”), and he challenges (“Once you start thinking in selfish-gene terms, some truly devious ideas pop into your head”). Above all, he speculates — sometimes soberly, sometimes wildly, but never boringly. Ridley's musings can reach ethereal heights, only to be caught in a downdraft of fact. There is little or no jargon, which is fine, but also none of the equivocation that glues us to reality — readers will not often encounter “perhaps,” “might,” and “maybe.” A typical pronouncement: “Freudian theory fell the moment lithium first cured a manic depressive, where twenty years of psychoanalysis had failed.” Perhaps. Or “products of the chemical industry, may be responsible for . . . the falling sperm counts of modern men.” The evidence of “falling sperm counts” is tenuous, at best. And this: “Natural selection is the process by which genes change their sequences.” Surely Ridley means “mutation” and not “natural selection.” And Ridley's speculation about why some of us are milk drinkers and others cheese eaters veers dangerously toward the ideas of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, who ruined Russian agriculture with his cockamamie theory that acquired characteristics can be inherited.

Even so, Genome is instructive, challenging, and fun to read. I envy Ridley's talent for presenting, without condescension, complex sets of facts and ideas in terms comprehensible to outsiders. His chapter on Huntington's chorea is a masterly plain-English exposition that any writer of scientific papers could take as a model. Ridley's enthusiasm is so high that it is best to keep the book on your night table. Read a chapter a night.

Robert S. Schwartz, M.D.