Peter Conrad. Society. Volume 37, Issue 1, November 1999.
We have entered a genetic age. The Human Genome Project, the largest biological research enterprise in history, promises to have our entire genetic structure mapped by 2001. Our media report new scientific claims of genes associated with diseases, conditions, behaviors or personality traits so regularly that it seems that we are being provided with a gene-of-the-week. Cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s disease, Fragile X syndrome, breast cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, colon cancer, bipolar illness, obesity, homosexuality, alcoholism, “novelty seeking,” crime, shyness, bed wetting; the list goes on. James Watson, co-discover of the double helix structure of DNA and founding director of the Human Genome Project has declared, “We used to think our fate was in the stars. Now we know, in large part, it is in our genes.” Author Tom Wolfe asserted, “The sudden switch from a belief in Nurture, in the form of social conditioning, to Nature, in the form of genetics and brain psychology, is the great intellectual event, to borrow Nietzsche’s terms of the late 20th century.”
Scientists already have made brilliant discoveries of genes associated with diseases. Identifying the genes for cystic fibrosis and Huntington’s disease are clearly major achievements, although as yet neither has generated new treatments for the disorders. Locating the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes for breast cancer were remarkable breakthroughs, although they account for less than ten per cent of all breast cancer. Discoveries of genes for bipolar illness, alcoholism, and novelty-seeking were widely heralded in the media, only to be later disconfirmed when others scientists failed to replicate the results. Scientists will discover significant genetic associations with diseases in the next few years, some of which may eventuate in preventions or treatments that may reduce human suffering. While the implications of finding genes for behavior are less clear, there is little doubt that scientific reports of new genetic predispositions or causes of behaviors will be commonplace in the new millennium. Moreover, various types of genetic “choice” from sex selection to personality traits to enhanced abilities may become available through “gene therapy,” genetic reproductive technologies or human cloning. This is but the dawn of the age of genetics; the genetic future is largely uncharted territory.
At the moment the public discourse about genetics outdistances validated scientific knowledge. The media reports on “the gay gene” or “obesity gene,” prematurely indicating that there is a gene that one could identify and point to. People freely engage in what ethicist Philip Kitcher has called “genetalk,” talking as if there were specific genes “for” particular traits, as in “I crave chocolate; I must have the chocolate gene.” Genetics has become a popular explanatory discourse for personal and social problems. While genetic causation and association are complex, much of the public discourse is based on the O-GOD assumption (one gene, one disease). This greatly oversimplifies scientific realities, but creates a kind of public shorthand that overstates the genetic influence on problems and reinforces a kind of geneticization of life. There is no question that genes are important, but they seem to be privileged in the public discourse and accorded power that they do not actually possess.
Genetics has captured the popular imagination. Dorothy Nelkin and Susan Lindee in The DNA Mystique contend that genes have become something of a cultural icon in American society, used to sell cars or clothes as well as explain human problems. The double helix is represented as widely in popular culture as the atom was in the 1950s. It is a symbol of scientific progress, of the power of science into the future. The new molecular-biology based genetics is still haunted by the specter of the misuses of eugenics earlier in this century. At the same time genes are a popular cultural icon, cultural anxieties about the implication of genetics remain. The Hollywood film GATACCA, with its advertising slogan “There is no gene for the human spirit,” is a recent rendition of these misgivings.
Popular Images of Genetics
Imagenation examines popular conceptions of genetics since the late 1950s. Jose Van Dijck argues that “the dissemination of genetic knowledge is not uniquely contingent on the advancement of science and technology, but equally dependent on the development of images and imaginations.” She finds these images in a range of materials from non-fiction books, magazines, science fiction, advertisements and public relations missives. Rather than relying on a standard model of dissemination, which can be represented as science [right arrow] journalists [right arrow] public, Van Dijck emphasizes the “mediation” of science as a chain of interactions and alliances between various professional groups. The popularization of science, in this view, is a process of translation and negotiation. “The shaping of knowledge occurs in science and journalism as well as popular culture.” But rather than by persuasive factual presentations or logical arguments, it is through “images and imaginations” (mental pictures or compelling stories) that genetics is interpreted in popular culture. The acceptance of new concepts rests in part on how they articulate with extant cultural assumptions.
Van Dijck, a literary scholar at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, uses the metaphor of a “theater of representation” as a framework for examining the changing popular images of genetics. She presents her analysis as a play in four scenes, each scene signifying a moment in the story of geneticization. While the theater metaphor allows a focus on contested popular meanings of genetics, it is forced in some places (e.g., p. 90) and tacked on in others. Nonetheless, her presentation of four time periods reflects significant changes in the popular images of genetics. To her credit, Van Dijck analyzes the changing images of genetics in the context of events occurring in science and society.
The first scene, encompassing the 1950s and 1960s, converges on the rise of the new biology. The attempt here, beginning with Watson and Crick’s discovery of the double helix, was to create a new image of genetics and dissociate genetics from its discredited precursor eugenics. Watson’s book, The Double Helix, solidified the image of the male scientist as hero. Although the amount of genetics in the news was minimal (Watson and Crick’s discovery received little press coverage), journalists in this era rarely questioned scientific authority. The limited discourse reflected awe and promise, with few signs of trepidation. In part, this was a result of a paucity of science reporters and a journalistic indifference to science.
In the context of the fierce DNA debate in the 1970s, genetics became more of an environmental concern. In this scene we see the gene reified as an alien object, able to threaten the environment, as exemplified by the popular novel The Andromeda Strain. Environmental activists, bioethicists and feminists raised issues about genetic technologies. This was most evident in the 1976 Harvard-Cambridge controversy over the dangers of recombinant DNA and the 1975 Asilomar conference. In both cases, the safety issues surrounding DNA research were central; social and ethical concerns were hardly voiced. Bioethicists, and to a lesser degree journalists, began to articulate misgivings about the potentials of genetic engineering. Journalists substantially redefined their professional roles, “they regarded themselves no longer as stenographers of authorities, but as the eyes and ears of the public.” In the wake of Watergate, a more critical and investigative journalism came into fruition. Scientists and scientific journals became increasingly interested in media strategies and made themselves more user-friendly to journalists. The critical stance of the media was limited, and the closer relations between scientists and the press eventually was depicted by Dorothy Nelkin as “selling science.”
In the 1980s, the scientific entrepreneurship and growth of the biotechnology business heralded an “industrialization” of genetics. Biotechnology is seen as potentially revolutionizing the pharmaceutical industry; the irony of this third scene is the image of a thriving industry, prior to the development of any products. This “biomania” inflated expectations for magic bullets which attack cancer cells on the genetic level. The commercialization of genetics shifted the borders between academia and industry. Amidst the financial and scientific optimism of biotechnological ventures, cultural misgivings appeared in novels like Robin Cook’s Mutation, a modernization of the Frankenstein metaphor.
The emergence of the Human Genome Project (HGP) in the 1990s creates the final scene (thus far). The HGP is a two billion dollar international scientific endeavor with the aim of mapping the entire human genetic structure. The primary goals of the project are medical: find the genetic causes of diseases and “fix” them with gene “therapy” and curative medicine. The powerful images here emanate from the imaginations of the wonders of curative medicine, amplified by claims of DNA publicists. But the HGP has impacts that go beyond medicine. The scientific focus on genetic research and the discovery of subtle genetic differences among people fuels an increased geneticization in popular culture. As Van Dijck insightfully points out, “The ‘geneticization of society seems to be the flip side of the medicalization of genetics…The metamorphosis in public opinion seems at least partly due to medicalization.” Not only do we see genetics used as evidence that social problems may be fundamentally biological problems (e.g., alcoholism, obesity, ADHD) but we also see a medicalization of language, going from genetic engineering to genetic therapy. Metaphors about genes abound in the public discourse: mapping, code, blueprint, alphabet, language, program. Computer metaphors replace industrial ones: “Now that the computer dominates the genetic imagination, the body becomes part of the informational network.” Scientists and the press have deemed DNA as “the holy grail” and the genome as “the book of life.” Gene hunters are the new scientific heroes, as personified by Francis Collins and French Anderson.
Optimism about genetics is modulated by uneasiness about genetic discrimination, privacy and the potentials to create and modify life. In the penultimate chapter, Van Dijck showcases the critics of genetics, who appear in roughly the stone period at the HGP enthusiasts. She notes, “The heavily publicized ‘search for genes’ provides a major selling point of the HGP, but narrows the public’s vision to a highly limited aspect of the relationship between genotypes and phenotypes.” At the very least, genetics is privileged in media and popular representations of genetic associations; more troubling is the growth of biological determinism, the decontextualing of health and behavior from its environments. Genes are only manifested in environments, but the environments often get short shrift in the face of the genetic allure of specificity. “The gene … is often used as an explanation of disease, scapegoat for deviance, or a legitimation for inequality.” Genetics does not develop in a vacuum. Science and culture are inseparable and genetics must be seen as a part of culture.
Van Dijck’s interweaving of scientific, literary, metaphoric, and “real world” renditions of genetics provides the most comprehensive analysis yet of popular conceptions of genes. She has read widely, and comments wisely. While one can take issue with her periodization, it is a reasonable scheme for examining the emerging public understanding of genetics. I am impressed with the clarity of the work, although I am left with a few quibbles. Van Dijck doesn’t guide us to what materials, presentations or ideas are more important than others. She treats all depictions of genetics as more or less equal, which shows her democratic spirit, but probably doesn’t accurately reflect differential influence. The theater framework works as a container for her study, but it doesn’t add much analytical power and in places the metaphor strained under reality. Because Van Dijck limited herself to books and popular literature, she completely neglected the prolific and articulate critics who write in the professional literature. A number of times she assumes these popular depictions represent “the public mind,” which they don’t. How the public interprets these images remains an empirical question.
Images of Genetic Hazard
There are two great literary images that have become symbolic of the social hazards of biology and genetics: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Both have created metaphors that have extended far beyond the books that spawned them and become cultural images that are invoked as critiques of science. Frankenstein has come to represent scientists creating monsters who reel out of control; brave new world implies a scientifically controlled world that genetically determines inequality, eliminates freedom, and oppresses those who oppose it.
Jon Turney’s Frankenstein’s Footsteps offers a history of public images of biology organized around the image, myth and use of the story and metaphor of Shelley’s Frankenstein. The longevity and resilience of the Frankenstein story is truly remarkable. Mary Shelley published her novel anonymously in 1818 to a “scandal of reviews,” but over the past two centuries Frankenstein has become a virtual myth. It has literally taken on a life of its own. Thousands of stories have been written, hundreds of books published, over 400 films shot and countless references made based on the Frankenstein tale. Turney’s calls Frankenstein the “first great myth of the industrial age.” Short of bible stories and children’s fairy tales, I am hard put to think of a more well-known mythical story in our society.
The resonance of Frankenstein is clear. The story Shelley wrote at the beginning of the modern era identified concerns that are still with us. She “produced a story which expresses many of the deepest fears and desires about modernity, especially about violation of the body.” Frankenstein is about the scientist (Victor) whose good intentions blind him to the dangers from his enterprise (creating life) until it is too late. As a myth it offers a view of science and its ambiguities, in terms of controlling and creating the biological realities of life. Frankenstein represents our ambivalence about the powers of science. The story contains numerous social and moral hazards: getting and using scientific knowledge; the power of knowledge for creating life; the loss of control over one’s creation; the lack of scientific responsibility; and, in its extreme, the scientist as creator of evil. It is frequently offered as a cautionary tale, a horrific warning about the possible perils of unrestrained science.
Throughout his book, Turney links scientific advances with public conceptions. He reviews well known and more esoteric attempts to create life in the laboratory, by Loeb, Carrel, Schafter and Hamson, and reflects on the popular reactions to this science. While focusing on Frankenstein, he surveys other literary responses as well, including Karel Capek’s R.U.R., J.B.S. Haldane’s Daedalus, Huxley’s Brave New World, along with any number of pulp science fiction books and magazine and news articles. While these commentaries varied in form and substance, they show “the persistence of a contradiction in outlook … enthusiastic approval of the medical benefits of biological research alongside disquiet about its other possible applications.” Typically, these works emphasize past benefits, while expressing fears over visions and images of the future.
In the 1950s scientific misgivings about the dangers of radiation from the atom bomb and later from atomic energy itself emerged. Images of nuclear radiation creating genetic mutations were common; I remember hiding under my seat during the 1954 movie Them!, which featured genetically-mutated giant ants ravaging a Southwestern community. Had splitting the atom unleashed a Frankenstein in our midst?
By the 1960s, concerns about science were turning to molecular biology and the manipulation of life in the laboratory. According to Turney, “three related ideas – the centrality of DNA, the notion that life might be created by synthesizing DNA, and its form altered by altering DNA – were the major motifs in the discursive literature….” The possibilities of genetic engineering changing the inheritance and destiny of plants, animals and even humans engendered a renaissance of genetic anxieties. Gordon Rattray Taylor’s popular 1968 book The Biological Time Bomb explicates the potential harmful effects of genetic technologies. With the development of IVF technologies and the birth of Louise Brown, deemed “the first test tube baby,” apprehensions about creating life and manipulating hereditary futures expanded into new terrain. Critics of genetic research again invoked the Frankenstein myth as a rhetorical warning that the products of science may turn into evil. One can imagine how the cloning of Dolly, mentioned briefly, elicits thoughts of Frankenstein.
Turney, a professor of science communication at University College London, gracefully and incisively traces the use of Frankenstein and subsequent popular works explicating the hazards of science. His close readings of the texts provide new understanding about the power of the Frankenstein myth and its relevance to the promises and threats of the new genetics. It is fair to say, the book is more about Frankenstein and the perils of biology than it is about genetics per se (despite the book’s subtitle), since genetics doesn’t play much of a role in the first half of the book. I wondered why Turney didn’t discuss connections between Frankenstein and the eugenics movement. Yet in a few places, he may have seen shadows of Frankenstein where others might not (e.g., Taylor’s book); not every critique of biology is implicitly about Frankenstein. Turney provides a valuable service, however; by recounting the images of Frankenstein, he highlights the ancestry of this powerful idiom of disquiet for our genetic age.
Genes and Human Imaginations
In Genetic Images and Human Imaginations, Barbara Katz Rothman writes in a different voice than Van Dijck and Turney. She writes about the current images of genetics in a conversational style, full of personal examples, anecdotes, clever common sense, and home-spun analogies (comparing genetic influence to baking bread, for instance). In this friendly and insightful book we encounter Rothman’s children, her great Aunt Jean, her father, and any number of friends and acquaintances. One almost gets the feeling that one is sitting with an iconoclastic “Aunt Barbara” sharing her down-to-earth observations. Anyone looking for a systematic academic analysis will be disappointed there. Rothman is reaching out to an audience that resides beyond the halls of ivy.
Rothman’s major interest is how genetics has shaped the lens through which we see the world: “Genetics is not just a science…. It is a way of thinking, an ideology. We’re coming to see life through a ‘prism of heritability,’ a ‘discourse of gene action,’ a genetics frame. Genetics is the single best explanation, the most comprehensive theory since God.” She is troubled by this geneticization of life and reminds us of C. Wright Mills’ call to expand our sociological imagination by connecting personal troubles to public issues.
Rothman, a sociologist at the City University of New York, considers three areas where genetic thinking has held sway: “race,” illness, and genetic engineering. Her discussion of “race,” building on the work of anthropologist Jonathan Marks, is particularly perceptive. She sees “the microeugenics of race,” pointing out the arbitrariness of its definitions and showing (again) how race is not a valid biological concept. She views race as a tool of dominance and oppression (and there is a great deal of historical evidence to support that contention). Thus she is skeptical about the Human Genome Diversity Project, an attempt to trace ethnicity and migration through the DNA by sampling 25 individuals from several hundred indigenous groups. She fears the genetic reality will be seen as more valid than the cultural reality: “Genetic thinking places ‘authenticity,’ real membership in a community, in the cells of individuals, not in the fabric of the people. Genetic thinking takes power away form people to tell their own history, and gives power to people with the technology to scientifically read that history.” This could create a new kind of genetic hegemony submerging long held myths of origin. Is what is gained worth what is lost?
Rothman’s criticisms of the uses of genetic screening (why were clinicians more sensitive in treating Jewish carriers of Tay-Sachs disease than African Americans with Sickle Cell trait?) and breast cancer (the privileging of genetics and the individualization of the problem) are by now well known. In the final section of the book, she returns to her long-time interest, prenatal diagnosis, and raises some difficult questions about genetic testing. By testing, “We are asking what makes life worth living, under what conditions is a life not worth living, and who is to judge.” In the future, will parents get a map of the genetic structure of their potential child and be able to engage in ‘quality control’ by selecting the child’s characteristics? And will parents have the choice not to make such a choice? Although Rothman is occasionally too glib or dismissing of valid scientific controversies, she raises poignant issues in an accessible style.
In the next decade, the science of genetics will make important discoveries, contribute to reducing disease, and stake new claims to understanding. The social consequences which accompany the development and application of this new knowledge are contestable and still not fixed. Popular conceptions of genetics reflect a real ambivalence about biotechnological possibilities. It is in genetic imaginations that we can see the dilemmas and pitfalls of the genetic revolution without being overwhelmed by the DNA dialect and the dramas of destiny.