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Blood Matters: From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene | 
| Author: Masha Gessen
Publisher: Harcourt
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $5.50
You Save: $19.50 (78%)
New (39) Used (12) from $5.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 7931
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.4 x 1.4
ISBN: 0151013624
Dewey Decimal Number: 616.042
EAN: 9780151013623
ASIN: 0151013624
Publication Date: April 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In 2004 genetic testing revealed that Masha Gessen had a mutation that predisposed her to ovarian and breast cancer. The discovery initiated Gessen into a club of sorts: the small (but exponentially expanding) group of people in possession of a new and different way of knowing themselves through what is inscribed in the strands of their DNA. As she wrestled with a wrenching personal decision—what to do with such knowledge—Gessen explored the landscape of this brave new world, speaking with others like her and with experts including medical researchers, historians, and religious thinkers.
Blood Matters is a much-needed field guide to this unfamiliar and unsettling territory. It explores the way genetic information is shaping the decisions we make, not only about our physical and emotional health but about whom we marry, the children we bear, even the personality traits we long to have. And it helps us come to terms with the radical transformation that genetic information is engineering in our most basic sense of who we are and what we might become.
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| Customer Reviews:
Genetic Diagnostics - To test or not to? April 5, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
The book describes the journey of the author who is diagnosed with a genetic mutation that predisposes her to ovarian and breast cancer. As she fights personal battle, she also tries to explore the field of genetic testing, its implications as well as ethical considerations.
The jacket cover of the book claims it is "a much needed field guide to this unfamiliar and unsettling territory." Well, it is not. It is more a rambling journey across a difficult terrain by a pioneer, discovering trails and gathering knowledge during the process. The lack of a science background and the inability to explain the fundamentals in a clear and structured way weakens the book. Explaining a complex science to the laymen is tough but has been mastered by authors like Carl Sagan, Brian Greene and Richard Dawkins. This book fails to reach that level.
However, it does capture well the agony of an individual who goes through a challenging situation created by new knowledge provided by science. This will definitely be something more of us go through in future as we will be forced to grapple with the information provided by genetic testing.
The book provides interesting information on Asheknazi Jews as well as organizations like Dor Yeshorim which collect genetic data to provide predictive information. In spite of her jewish heritage, the author covers the Nazi efforts on eugenics with equanimity. A number of genetic diseases and their current research status are covered in the book through many interviews with experts across the world. Nevertheless the lack of a clear structure, direction and focus wastes the author's efforts to a large extent.
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