This isn't a post about the morality of genetic engineering.
This isn't a post about nature vs. nurture (well, maybe a little).
Although I'll probably post about all of these things in the future...
This is a post about the fact that people seem to think that our genetics are the absolute end all be all about everything that ails society. From disease to maladaptive personality traits, people are want to believe that everything can be explained or solved through genetics. This simply isn't the case, and I'll explain why in a moment.
This post is about those people who like to play the "genetics card" and blame every problem they have, like drug addiction, commitment problems, tendency to abuse their kids, and anything else that they might not have an explanation for, or they're too lazy to fix or both. Large news aggregators like CNN or MSNBC or NPR have decided it would be a good idea to link genetics with things like child abuse and heart attacks, and even the inability to recognize faces. I'm not saying it's not true that our genes might affect our ability to recognize faces, but we are all products of our environments and our genes, you can't blame everything on one factor.
The truth of the matter is that genetics can only play part of the role in determining somebody's propensity for a certain trait or a certain disease or a certain something or other. The way the media portrays genetic studies makes it seem like we're all slaves to our genetics.
What people need to understand is that genetics plays a ROLE in determining somebody's personality or propensity towards heart attack or inability to recognize faces.
There is no "heart attack" gene that we can remove to ensure that you'll never have a heart attack. You might have a gene (or lack of a gene) that gives you less of a chance of having a heart attack, but if you eat a double cheeseburger with bacon every day you're still going to have a heart attack eventually(probably).
There are definitely genes that are set in stone though, like hair color, eye color, how much hair you have, etc. These things might be set in stone, and they might be governed solely by genes, but that DOESN'T mean that they're controlled solely by ONE gene. Often times many genes working in tandem with each other determine somebody's hair color, or skin color.
This is also true for the less "set in stone" genes like a propensity for heart attack, there are dozens of factors, dozens of genes, that will determine whether or not you have a heart attack, and painting one gene as the enemy of anybody who's ever had a heart attack diminishes the seriousness and the size of the problem that scientists face when they're looking for cures for diseases.
PROOF! (You're Welcome)
0 comments:
Post a Comment