‘Why Biology Is Not Destiny’: An Exchange
By Kathryn Paige Harden et al.,
The New York Review
| 05. 25. 2022
Kathryn Paige Harden, Nick Patterson, Victor I. Reus, and Henry D. Schlinger Jr., reply by M.W. Feldman and Jessica Riskin
In response to:
Why Biology Is Not Destiny from the April 21, 2022 issue
To the Editors:
Marcus Feldman and Jessica Riskin did not like my book. Or rather, they did not like a book called The Genetic Lottery by an author named “Kathryn Paige Harden,” but their review [NYR, April 21] so badly distorts my arguments that I have the curious impression that Feldman and Riskin somehow got their hands on another book entirely, an evil doppelgänger to mine. Therapists, parents, and the unhappily married would recognize the feeling I had upon reading their review the first time: it’s both vexing and bewildering when someone is spoiling for a fight about something you never said.
As a longtime reader of The New York Review of Books, I am surprised and disappointed that this review was published in such an esteemed outlet. Yes, “we all enjoy an intemperate paragraph of syntactically inspired bile,” to quote Zadie Smith, and Feldman and Riskin do deliver the bile. But I assume that, besides wanting to be entertained by vitriol... see more
Related Articles
By Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic | 06.22.2022
Photo by ANIRUDH on Unsplash
In October 2019, Jordan Janz became the first person in the world to receive an experimental therapy for cystinosis, a rare genetic disease. The treatment was physically grueling. Doctors extracted blood stem cells from Janz’s...
By Ian Sample , The Guardian | 06.22.2022
More than half the UK backs the idea of rewriting the DNA of human embryos to prevent severe or life-threatening diseases, according to a survey.
Commissioned by the Progress Educational Trust (PET), a fertility and genomics charity, the Ipsos poll...
By Fiorella Valdesolo, WSJ Magazine | 06.08.2022
“Where is the we?” It’s the question that was the driving force for Vida Delrahim and Ronit Menashe when they created WeNatal, a new brand of prenatal supplements that aims to be more inclusive. In the process of trying...
By Michael Le Page, New Scientist | 06.16.2022
CRISPR gene-editing trials for treating sickle cell disease and beta thalassaemia are being extended to include children aged under 12 after the therapies proved successful in ongoing trials involving people aged between 12 and 35. The aim is to treat...
