Rating 4.5

Demolishing The Icon of the Gene

I highly recommend this book to anyone working or interested in the fields of public health, medicine or genetics. Futher, this book is important for anyone who falls under one of the social designations Kaplan includes in his review. Though the text is laden with references and can be tedious to read, it is yet another significant blow to the notion of genetic determinism.

Still Not in Our Genes

But Kaplan's main concern lies in challenging the ways in which claims about the supposedly genetic causes of human behavior and physiology get used in political and legal decision-making. So he argues that the search for a 'criminal gene' reinforces the idea that violence and criminality are the problem of the individual. Similarly, the creation of depression as a genetic disease makes depression out to be solely the result of a biochemical disorder of the brain and entirely disassociates it from society at large. The point here being that if criminality or mental illness are the result of our genetic make-up, if they are internal to the individual, then capitalism cannot be to blame for their prevalence, nor held responsible for doing something about them.

Kaplan's marshalling of evidence against the much of the research itself is what makes this book so valuable. For example, Hamer famously found a marker on the X chromosome which was highly correlated with male homosexuality in the population he considered. However, Kaplan points out that a 1999 study failed to confirm Hamer's results. Further, despite the strength of the supposed correlation, no gene has been located, let alone a biochemical pathway by which it is supposed to have its effect.

Another of Kaplan's criticisms of the homosexuality 'marker' is one that he argues applies to all human genetic research. Such research looks at the current make-up of a particular population, the particular environment of the population and the particular ways the various member organisms of the population are distributed within the environment. But, if any of these factors change the result in question can, and often does, change as well. In short, genetic research is a local measure that provides very little basis for the general claims that are implied by talk of a 'gene for' homosexuality or any other complex human behaviour.

Kaplan also takes on the claim that intelligence is coded in our genes. Here the evidence presented is some of the most striking in the whole book, especially where he challenges Murray and Herrnstein's The Bell Curve. Their claim is that an individual's social standing is based on how intelligent they are, which in turn is supposedly confirmed by performances on IQ tests. So, for example, differences in social standing between blacks and whites are supposedly due to differences in intelligence. While you don't need to read Kaplan's book to know that this is nonsense, he does provide the detailed evidence to show just how bankrupt and biased IQ testing is. For example, he notes that blacks who are told they are taking an IQ test significantly underperform compared to those who are not and that merely being asked to state one's race lowers the average scores of blacks but not whites.

This book clearly demonstrates that it is not our genes that explain why people commit crimes or fall mentally ill, why it's seen to matter whether people sleep with the opposite sex or their own, or why different ethnic groups fair worse than others. Given the limits of what present genetic research can tell us about who we are, Kaplan argues that we should look elsewhere for guidance in setting social policy, to the social nature of these issues. And while Kaplan does not explicitly suggest a collective response to these matters this is clearly where his arguments lead.

A Competent and Serious Book, Despite the Silly Title

That model has been repeatedly falsified in recent years through a wide array of empirical data. Moreover, our increasing ability to located the neurological bases of human sociality and to discover the genetic bases for some diseases has led to a complete turn-around in the public perception of the relative importance of genes and environment in influencing human behavior and health.

The popular understanding of these scientific advances often takes the form of "its hereditary, so there's nothing we can do about it." This book is a serious and informed attempt to show that this interpretation is dead wrong. The book is not light reading---it takes seriously the task at hand, and it assumes the reader is willing to follow a complex scientific argument. But by doing so, the reader will be well rewarded.

The main point of the book is this: the fact that something is hereditary to a given degree says something about the interaction of people with their environment. When heredity is high (as in the case of height, or IQ) it does not mean that we cannot find environments in which we can increase people's height, or equalize their IQ's. Moreover, to a significant extent, people create their own environments (niches), which appear mathematically as a product of genes, but misleadingly so.

For instance, height is highly heritable, but succeeding generations of Americans are consistently taller than their parents. IQ is heritable, but IQ scores rise dramatically from generation to generation (the Flynn effect).

The new genetic research should not make us conservative and defeatist concerning the possibilities of improving the welfare of humanity, but rather guide and inform us in how to search for more effective environmental interventions.

There are problems with Kaplan's book, however, and they are serious. First, he blames the common public view of the matter on the researchers ("Lies"), when almost all in the field (including me) agree wholly with his analysis, and say it again and again in print! Kaplan considers the new research something of a right wing conspiracy against the welfare state, which is just nonesense. He trots out the book by Herrnstein and Murray again and again as an example, when he must know that virtually the whole behavioral genetics community has criticized it vigorously. There are NO examples in his book, as far as I can tell, where the researchers are at fault.

In fact, I see this reaction to behavioral genetics a lot from well-intentioned, progressive people, who wish we were back in the Good Old Days of the SSSM, where proper socialization and spending plenty of money were considered sufficient to solve social problems. Well, it just ain't so. We will not get social policy on track in eliminating poverty, sexism, racism, or any of the other ills that Kaplan (and I) bemoan, until we work out the proper interaction of human nature, genetic potential, and environmental interaction. Just criticizing the scientists won't get us anywhere, I am afraid.