Cultural psychologist Steven Heine aims to shatter myths about the overarching power of genes in his thought-provoking treatise DNA Is Not Destiny: The Remarkable, Completely Misunderstood Relationship Between You and Your Genes.
In nine incisive chapters, DNA Is Not Destiny provides a brief history of genetics as a scientific discipline before delving into the tricky issues of genetic testing, heritable diseases, race, gender, sexual orientation and social engineering. At the heart of Heine's argument is a warning against many people's fallacious tendency to ascribe effects and traits to underlying and seemingly immutable essences. Heine criticizes the pervasive sense of determinism found in popular views of genetics, which, if not called out, can lead to destructive and discriminatory beliefs. In reality, Heine authoritatively explains, most human traits are the result of genetic, environmental and cultural factors interacting with each other in a complex web. Very few conditions are irreversibly determined by genetics alone.
Besides deconstructing essentialist views and the danger they pose to human rights, Heine targets the false promises of genetic testing and consulting companies. He even reveals his own test results as a way to pinpoint what information people needlessly obsess over, including widely variable risk estimates for certain diseases. In this and myriad other ways, DNA Is Not Destiny is a powerful and important read that necessarily grounds a new era of science and healthcare. --Scott Neuffer, freelance journalist, poet and fiction author