- Paperback: 352 pages
- Publisher: HarperPerennial; Reprint edition (5 Dec 2011)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0062074237
- ISBN-13: 978-0062074232
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13.2 x 2.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
587,643 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #74 in Books > Science & Nature > Biological Sciences > Genetics > DNA
- #87 in Books > Science & Nature > Biological Sciences > Genetics > Human
Here Is a Human Being: At the Dawn of Personal Genomics
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
In 2007, Misha Angrist became the fourth subject in the Personal Genome Project, George Church's ambitious plan to sequence the entire genomic catalog: every participant's twenty thousand-plus genes and the rest of his or her 6 billion base pairs. Church hopes to better understand how genes influence our physical traits, from height and athletic ability to behavior and weight, and our medical conditions, from cancer and diabetes to obesity and male pattern baldness. Now Angrist reveals startling information about the experiment's participants and scientists; how the experiment was, is, and will be conducted; the discoveries and potential discoveries; and, the profound implications of having an unfiltered view of our hardwired selves for us and for our children. DNA technology has already changed our health care, the food we eat, and our criminal justice system. Unlocking the secrets of our genomes opens the door not only to helping us understand why we are the way we are and potentially fixing what ails us but also to many other concerns: What exactly will happen to this information? Will it become just another marketing tool? Can it help us understand our ancestry, or will it merely reinforce old ideas of race? Can personal genomics help fix the U.S. health care system? "Here Is a Human Being" explores these complicated questions while documenting Angrist's own fascinating journey-one that tens of thousands of us will soon make.
About the Author
Misha Angrist is an Assistant Professor at the Duke University Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy. His doctoral and postdoctoral work was in human genetics and he was formerly a board-eligible genetic counselor. He received an MFA in Writing and Literature from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and his fiction and nonfiction has appeared in numerous literary journals and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He lives in Durham, NC, with his wife and two daughters.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Hardcover
This book is essential for anyone involved in personal genetics. If you're thinking of getting the tests done, it will illuminate the moral conundrums and some of the pitfalls that you can fall in to. If you work in this area, you get to read some back-story on many of the biggest names in this field, relayed with humor and sensitivity. And if you are an historian of science, reading this 20 years in the future, you will be able to read this very personal journey of one of the first 10 Personal Genome Project (PGPs) participants to be sequenced, and marvel at how far you've come. Then float away on your 3D holographic hoverboard.
Genetics to me has always been kind of a tease. When I was in high school we learned about "gene therapy" and how it was going to cure cystic fibrosis any day now. When I got to college we learned about "nature vs nurture" and heard about how the race to sequence the human genome would reveal every cause of disease once and for all. When I got to grad school I met patients with variants of inherited diseases that would affect their lifespan by a factor of decades, but still with no clearer answers than that. And now here I sit with my 23andMe account sitting in my bookmarks next to Facebook and my online banking. This book, more than anyone could do, has told me how we strayed from that pathway to genomic revelation promised to be a decade ago to today, where "recreational genomics" is widely available and through the web I can find out whether my kids will have red hair (1 in 4 chance). But just assuming those results are valid, or that the genetic truth has always been out there, would seem absurd to anyone on the inside, and what Misha Angrist does so well in this book is to introduce us to the personalities and the characters that have shaped this field.
As an ethicist and genetic counselor he is able to comment on the field's moral terrain, and as a self-deprecating participant in a grand experiment he is able to bring into personal focus his concern for his children and his family in the data that may be contained in his genome. I predict a future where we will all know much more about our genomes than our ancestors ever could have done, and we will decide as a society that genetic privacy is something worth protecting. Angrist is an engaging, witty, and quietly persuasive writer and I look forward to him documenting the next chapters of personalized medicine.
Genetics to me has always been kind of a tease. When I was in high school we learned about "gene therapy" and how it was going to cure cystic fibrosis any day now. When I got to college we learned about "nature vs nurture" and heard about how the race to sequence the human genome would reveal every cause of disease once and for all. When I got to grad school I met patients with variants of inherited diseases that would affect their lifespan by a factor of decades, but still with no clearer answers than that. And now here I sit with my 23andMe account sitting in my bookmarks next to Facebook and my online banking. This book, more than anyone could do, has told me how we strayed from that pathway to genomic revelation promised to be a decade ago to today, where "recreational genomics" is widely available and through the web I can find out whether my kids will have red hair (1 in 4 chance). But just assuming those results are valid, or that the genetic truth has always been out there, would seem absurd to anyone on the inside, and what Misha Angrist does so well in this book is to introduce us to the personalities and the characters that have shaped this field.
As an ethicist and genetic counselor he is able to comment on the field's moral terrain, and as a self-deprecating participant in a grand experiment he is able to bring into personal focus his concern for his children and his family in the data that may be contained in his genome. I predict a future where we will all know much more about our genomes than our ancestors ever could have done, and we will decide as a society that genetic privacy is something worth protecting. Angrist is an engaging, witty, and quietly persuasive writer and I look forward to him documenting the next chapters of personalized medicine.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
8 reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Here is a really great read
19 Nov 2010
Format:Hardcover
Misha Angrist's "Here is a human being: At the dawn of personal genomics" is a must read for anyone interested in knowing what's in his or her own DNA. I would further highly recommend it to anyone in the medicine or genetics field. This is the personal story of Misha Angrist who became one of the ten individuals that had their entire human genome sequenced through Dr. George Church's Personal Genome Project. This book delves into the humanity of the great question of "what DO I want to know about my DNA?" How comfortable are any of us with the knowledge that our DNA can suggest that we have inherited a predisposition to cancer or some other malady? The author does a wonderful job of approaching these questions from a myriad of ethical, legal, societal, and medical directions in a captivating, first-person narrative. This book has forever changed my views on what I would and would not want to know about my own DNA. What makes this book such a nice read is that it is a story full of fascinating people. Despite the impossibly complex science that goes into determining one's DNA sequence, the book never becomes trapped in technical speak (although the technical terminology, when present, is both accurate and accessible). I have previously read "The genome war" by James Shreeve and I consider this Angrist book to be the next chapter in the ever-unfolding genomic saga of the day.
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Missed opportunity
27 Feb 2011
Format:Kindle Edition
[Excerpt from a full review to appear in Skeptical Inquirer magazine]
Largely, the book is about (unintentionally, I'm sure) the incredible amount of narcissism characterizing most of the people involved in various aspects of the new quest for personal genomics, from scientific luminaries-become-embarrassments like James Watson to people (including Angrist himself) volunteering for the Harvard-sponsored Personal Genome Project. It's a tale of good science mixed with a dangerously careless attitude about personal privacy, to which of course you have to add quite a bit of private financial interests on behalf of a number of startup companies that stand to profit handsomely if they can convince us (and our doctors, who typically know little of genetics) that we really ought to be able to read our annotated genomes online (or maybe on an iPhone app). ... In the course of his quest, Angrist discovered many more largely useless, but highly scientific, facts about his health: his risk of colon cancer is 5%, probably not statistically different from the population average of 6%; he has almost twice the population's risk of Graves' disease, an autoimmune condition caused by an hyperactive thyroid. But there is nothing he can do about it, since the condition is currently incurable, and he shouldn't worry too much about it anyway, because his actual chances of getting it are only 0.93% (free advice: never trust two digit precision after the decimal point in this sort of data). But if he is a normal human being, he probably will fret about anything for which his genomic profile deviates from the average (which, I bet, is not likely to help is natural self-admitted propensity for depression), and his health insurance company will likely take advantage of even statistically insignificant deviations to save a buck at the cost of making his life more difficult. ... I am certainly not advocating hard core skepticism toward personal genomics, this isn't astrology or homeopathy. But it is precisely the sort of complex subject matter -- at the interface among basic science, applied science, technology, business, informatics and, last but certainly not least, ethics -- that should have inspired an equally complex and nuanced book. Alas, Here is a Human Being is not that book.
Largely, the book is about (unintentionally, I'm sure) the incredible amount of narcissism characterizing most of the people involved in various aspects of the new quest for personal genomics, from scientific luminaries-become-embarrassments like James Watson to people (including Angrist himself) volunteering for the Harvard-sponsored Personal Genome Project. It's a tale of good science mixed with a dangerously careless attitude about personal privacy, to which of course you have to add quite a bit of private financial interests on behalf of a number of startup companies that stand to profit handsomely if they can convince us (and our doctors, who typically know little of genetics) that we really ought to be able to read our annotated genomes online (or maybe on an iPhone app). ... In the course of his quest, Angrist discovered many more largely useless, but highly scientific, facts about his health: his risk of colon cancer is 5%, probably not statistically different from the population average of 6%; he has almost twice the population's risk of Graves' disease, an autoimmune condition caused by an hyperactive thyroid. But there is nothing he can do about it, since the condition is currently incurable, and he shouldn't worry too much about it anyway, because his actual chances of getting it are only 0.93% (free advice: never trust two digit precision after the decimal point in this sort of data). But if he is a normal human being, he probably will fret about anything for which his genomic profile deviates from the average (which, I bet, is not likely to help is natural self-admitted propensity for depression), and his health insurance company will likely take advantage of even statistically insignificant deviations to save a buck at the cost of making his life more difficult. ... I am certainly not advocating hard core skepticism toward personal genomics, this isn't astrology or homeopathy. But it is precisely the sort of complex subject matter -- at the interface among basic science, applied science, technology, business, informatics and, last but certainly not least, ethics -- that should have inspired an equally complex and nuanced book. Alas, Here is a Human Being is not that book.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Interesting Read
12 Dec 2011
Format:Kindle Edition
I am not someone who reads a lot of science material, at least for pleasure reading, but I found this book to be very interesting. It does more than just talk about science. It talks about the important people behind the sciences, which interest me a lot more than the actual sciences. There is plenty of science in this book, which is (for the most part) very well explained. There were times I found myself doing a little research to have a better understanding of what the sciences were about, but I feel that this book was good for those who don't necessarily want to know everything about the sciences but want to know about the process of how genomics came to the public.
When I started reading this book, I expected something a lot different than what i got, but I feel that this is a good thing. I don't think this book will necessarily appeal to science lovers and researchers; it is light compared to the hefty tomes that more suit those wanting in-depth knowledge of any subject. It covers the basics so that it can be brought to the average person who *isn't* a scientist, which is what appealed to me as I read it.
Best of all, you realistically only need middle or high school level science to understand what is going on in the book, which opens this title to the average teenager, if that sort of research is up their alley. I also like the general message of this book, and how it pursues the potential impact of genomics on base society.
When I started reading this book, I expected something a lot different than what i got, but I feel that this is a good thing. I don't think this book will necessarily appeal to science lovers and researchers; it is light compared to the hefty tomes that more suit those wanting in-depth knowledge of any subject. It covers the basics so that it can be brought to the average person who *isn't* a scientist, which is what appealed to me as I read it.
Best of all, you realistically only need middle or high school level science to understand what is going on in the book, which opens this title to the average teenager, if that sort of research is up their alley. I also like the general message of this book, and how it pursues the potential impact of genomics on base society.
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