A great FT interview of Siddhartha Mukherjee (Pulitzer
prize winning author, cancer geneticist, stem cell biologist, physician and
assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University)
“It’s tempting to
think, as science continues to unlock the secrets of our existence, that DNA
has become the new religion. “I think there’s certainly a trope in popular
culture that DNA determines everything,” says Mukherjee, as he extracts a grilled
prawn from its shell. “That, somehow or other, once we decipher genes, we’ll
all of a sudden decode a human being. And it’s really worthwhile reminding
ourselves that’s not true.” Why not? “We know [from twin studies] that even
things that share a powerful genetic determinant are only manifest 50 per cent
or 60 per cent of the time in the other twin. So there’s clearly something
[else], whether it be chance, whether it be the environment. Or something that
triggers a chain of reactions that change our genetic behaviour.””