Blood Matters : From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene

English

ISBN: 0156033313

EAN: 9780156033312

Category: Medical / Genetics

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

Release Date: 11/30/2009

Synopsis: 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.

Awards: J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize – null  New York Times Notable Books of the Year – null 

Blood Matters : From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene

Illustrated: No

Format: Paperback

Height: 0.75 inches

Width: 5.31 inches

Length: 8.0 inches

Weight: 11.08 oz

Pages: 336