The DNA mystique : the gene as a cultural icon /

"The gene" is much more than a biological concept; the term may assume different, often inaccurate, meanings in popular culture as politics, society, and science each usurp the concept for their own purposes. In one chapter, Nelkin and Lindee examine the idea of "sacred DNA"--how its completeness and essentialness are often believed to reflect a "divine" purpose in its code, one too pure for the hands of scientists to unravel, even if they could. In other chapters, they reveal how false images of genetic omnipotence in development serve to reduce personal and social responsibility for crime and poverty, or discrimination based on gender, race, or sexual orientation. Extensively referenced with a complete index. Definitely recommended for all levels of readers. D. Carmichael Pittsburg State University

Nelkin and Lindee, sociologists and historians of science at New York Univ. and at the Univ. of Pennsylvania, respectively, have assembled a compendium of ``folklore'' documenting images of the ``gene'' in contemporary American popular culture. They utilize this material to examine diverse intersections between current social issues and ideas about genetic determinism. The main chapters are informative surveys of such topics as eugenics, gender, sexuality, familial relations and social behaviors (criminal genes). The authors show how malleable arguments concerning genetic determinism can be and the ways popular images may channel public perception and influence courses of research. The nontechnical text avoids scientific errors. Although overviews in the initial and final pages are less coherent and although they are marred by the occasional opaque buzzword (essentialism, secular soul, supergene), the body of this work offers valuable insights. Illustrations. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Newspapers, TV talk shows, comic books, and even jokes are full of genetic soundbites‘celebrity DNA and designer genes, genetic counseling, genes for cancer, and maybe gayness. Nelkin (Dangerous Diagnostics: The Social Power of Biological Information, Basic Books, 1991) and Lindee review the public's perception of genetics in pop culture, from early 20th-century eugenics, the ongoing nature vs. nurture debates, to current psychosocial concepts of the "gene" and what they term "genetic essentialism." This scholarly but nontechnical book documents public perceptions of simplistic genetic determinism. But will it help people differentiate the reality of clinic or courtroom from the fantasy of Jurassic Park? Maybe, but overall an optional purchase.‘Mary Chitty, Cambridge Healthtech, Waltham, Mass. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Policy, popular culture, and genetics meet in this intelligent critique of our society's search for easy answers. Genetic essentialism is on the rise, contend Nelkin (Sociology/New York Univ.; The Creation Controversy, 1982, etc.) and Lindee (Sociology of Science/Univ. of Pennsylvania; Suffering Made Real, not reviewed). They argue convincingly that while the science of genetics doesn't offer conclusive biological information, it is shaping us culturally and being used to justify conservative social policy: If everything from intelligence and sexual orientation to alcoholism and violence is inherited, then problems can be controlled, ``not through the uncertain route of social reform, but through biological manipulation.'' The authors' assessment of genetics' dangerous social potential may sound like Orwellian alarmism, but they draw on solidly familiar examples from American popular culture, including television, movies, books, and the media (they cite, for instance, a TV movie, Tainted Blood, that posits homicidal tendencies being passed from mother to child). The book is also impressively up-to-date on the political front, bringing health insurance, adoption surrogacy, welfare reform, and concern about the family into the picture. This broad range of examples reflects the gene's remarkable currency--a power gained, Nelkin and Lindee claim, by the malleability of its potential. Culturally, the gene is conceived as everything from the computer chip of personal identity to the ``secular equivalent of the Christian soul.'' These assumptions bear frightening resemblance to the beliefs of the American eugenics movement in the early 1900s, say the authors, who point to a reemergence of social intolerance and blame. An important, timely commentary on the manipulation of scientific inquiry in the interest of political ideology.