Project 2

Student: Wuwei Lee

Case study: Do genes decide all?

We always say like father like son.

This proverb existed even before we knew

the human’s body is made up of cells and

some substances called DNA controlled

inheritance. We believe something is

unchangeable during a person’s whole life

because “those are in his bones”.

Nowadays, with the development of

biology, we alter the description to “those are in his DNA (or genes)”.

It is true that giving keen attention to genetics research will produce

deterministic understandings of human actions and motivations as being

grounded primarily or exclusively in biological factors that are not

amenable to individual influence or control. There is a common belief

that if we only knew enough about genes (about what they are and how

they “act”), we could understand all of biology.(1) Experts called the

belief system “genetic determinism”.

Genetic determinism picture a bright future for us: so long as we

reveal the secret of genes, we will be powerful enough to fight terminal

diseases such as cancer. However, could the law of nature be as simple

as that?

Recently, I have read an article in The New York Times (2)which was

a sad story. In Bogotá late December 1988, two sets of twin brothers

born in a same hospital. It should be a story about two happy families,

but that was disturbed by a careless nurse who accidentally swapped

one baby from one set of identical twins with a baby from another pair.

After more than twenty years, they found their blood brothers by

chance. When they met each other face to face in a club, they could

only attribute the misfortunes to the destiny, because the two families

had reverse backgrounds: one is poor and one is wealthy. The two young

men who raised in city both are white collars and have good salaries,

while others who from country are butchers and struggle for life.

More concerning, however, the mixed-up brothers showed significant

differences in the foster families even from their childhood. Although

they live under the same roof, they had different personalities and a

little isolated to the rest family members. Moreover, their personalities

actually more like their identical brothers, for example, the man who

should had lived in the city are a fighter in his blood just like his identical

brother rather than a man who just want a simple life as his

not-blood-related brother.

As we all know, identical twins have almost the same genes (except

cytoplasm genes). The story of mixed-up brothers of Bogotá seems to be

a good evidence to proof “genes decide all” . Just as the Chinese old

saying goes “Dragons beget dragons, phoenixes beget phoenixes”

But, thinking carefully, the proof cannot hold the water. I think most

people have watched Disney animated movie Tarzan (3). He raised by

apes in the African jungles, which made his behavior more like an ape

than human. You may said, “Oh, come on, that’s just a fictional story.” In

fact, Tarzan has an archetype who was a feral child and later

experienced civilization only to largely reject it and return to the wild.

According to the records, feral children often seem mentally impaired

and have almost insurmountable trouble learning a human language.

That may attribute to the existence of a critical period for language

learning. While to us, speaking seems to be an instinct, not because the

ability of speaking is written in our DNA but the impact of the

environment around us.

Exaggerating the role played by gene may lead to

“gene discrimination”. Today, some companies give services of

gene-sequencing to the public, misleading the ordinary people that

having a disease-producing gene are equal to have the disease. That is

not the truth. “The common mistake people make is to assume that if,

for example, autism is 90% heritable, then 90% of autistic people got the

condition from their parents. But heritability is not about chance or risk

of passing it on. It simply means how much of the variation within a

given population is down to genes. Crucially, this will be different

according to the environment of that population.” Said Professor Tim

Spector.(4)

One of my favorite films called man of steel （directed by Zack

Snyder） shows a fictive scene that on a planet called Krypton, which is

superman’s birthplace, all the citizens are created by artificial

intervention. They insert different genetic code into embryos, deciding

the fates of them even before their birth. Is this what we are longing

for——be slaves to genes and let the unconscious biological forces drive

our beliefs and actions ? It must be so terrible if our genes decide

everything.

Fortunately, it is not. As Doctor Richard Dawkins suggested in his

book the selfish gene “We, alone on Earth can rebel against the tyranny

of the selfish gene.” There are a large amount of other factors that make

who we are.

So, be the owner of yourself and do not let the genes kidnap you.

Even if you have some bad gene such as heart disease gene, you have

the ability and responsibility to take a good care of yourself to avoid it.

Reference:

(1)http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/k/keller94.pdf

(2)http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-mixed-up-brothers-of-b

ogotá/ar-AAcKNQn

(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarzan

(4)http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/19/do-your-genes-d

etermine-your-entire-life

the image derived from Shutterstock