<i>Genes, Cells and Brains</i> by Hilary Rose and Steven Rose - Review
By Steven Poole,
The Guardian (UK)
| 12. 19. 2012
We have outsourced the job of interpreting ourselves to the modern life sciences. The decoding of the human genome will tell us who we really are, pledged the gene-merchants. Brain scans will tell us who we really are, swore the neuro-hustlers. And what did we get? We got suckered. It turns out that humans have roughly as many protein-encoding genes as a fruit fly, and that
fMRI scanning is still such an inexact art that a team of satirical neuroscientists have demonstrated significant "brain activity" in a dead salmon.
This fascinating, lucid and angry book by the sociologist Hilary Rose and the neurobiologist Steven Rose (they are married) boasts abundant targets and a lethally impressive hit ratio. They decry the entrepreneurialisation of science – "wealth creation is now unabashedly formalised as the chief objective of science and technology policy" – not least because it actually impedes science. ("PhD students can work for months on a project only to find that they cannot continue as they have run into a patent.") They lambast the "armchair" theorising of evolutionary psychology, with its...
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The Center for Genetics and Society is delighted to recommend the current edition of GMWatch Review – Number 589. UK-based GMWatch, a long-standing ally, was founded in 1998 by Jonathan Matthews as an independent organization seeking to counter the enormous corporate political power and propaganda of the GMO industry and its supporters. Matthews and Claire Robinson are its directors and managing editors.
CGS works to ensure that social justice, equity, human rights, and democratic governance are front...