A play within a play

If you were to take each and every finding being churned out by genetic studies now, you will be sure to head to your parents’ home and blame them for a long list of things that include, but may not be limited, to the items below:

1. Your failure to quit smoking – blamed on a nicotine gene found by a study published in Molecular Psychiatry in January 2006.

2. Your excessive preference for meat – recent findings in Journal of Physiology and Behavior show that it is inherited.

3. Your schizophrenia – published data from various sources largely support it being genetic.

4. Your breast cancer – published data overwhelmingly say that if you have one or more family members who have it, your chance of having it increases.

5. Your being obese – Science Journal this year publishes a study that has found a gene associated with child and adult obesity.

6. Your "David Blaine" tendencies – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in October 2005, says they may have found a "risking" gene.

7. Your Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) – American Journal of Human Genetics, in September 2004, says it could be genetic.

8. Your gift for dance, which your parents do not support – Public Library of Science Genetics, in September 2005, says they found this "pirouetting" gene in dancers.

9. Your sexual desire – Molecular Psychiatry 2006 journal says that a dopamine receptor gene could account for the differences in sexual desire, arousal and function.

10. And if you are 75 years old and your parents are still alive to blame, you may add to your blame list the "longevity" gene, which a study published in the Public Library of Science Journal on Biology in April 2006 has found.

Of course, you can also blame your parents for the way you look but remembering that you have blamed them for this on previous weekend visits in recent years, you probably would focus on the newer things where recent science could back you up. But if at least one of your parents had patience that stretched like gum, more loving, and familiar with the nature of science, that parent will probably listen to your litany of genetic woes and then after some time, send you a letter like the one below:

Dear Child,

No one is born completely new. You are a human version that resulted from a double spiraling mix of our genes. The package that is you is no more our fault than our parents’ for having us. The genes you blame on us for come with the genes you are also sometimes thanking us for.

Genes are "selfish." Biologist Richard Dawkins made an indelible mark on the way we think about ourselves when he wrote "The Selfish Gene" in 1976. I still have the book and Dawkins is still alive and I should warn you, as intellectually fierce, if you want to blame him. Genes replicate themselves with no deliberation toward what is "good" or "bad" as humans perceive them. He explained that genes just do that – it is their nature.

Having a gene that has been found to be associated with a disease or behavior or talent is not one hundred percent guarantee. It just means that you have an increased predisposition toward those things. 

Science is dynamic and focused on evidence. It works on what the evidence best shows, so far. It can change. A gene that is found to be responsible for a talent for dance may also be found to be responsible for a gene that predisposes you to be addicted to MTV. Science continually searches not just for genes for diseases and behavior, but their links with other genes. In other words, your list would probably keep changing so better keep an electronic file of it. I know, it is frustrating. I also keep wanting to write to you about certain things about your life’s choice but you also keep changing.

Your genes are some kind of "play within a play" according to neuroscientist Steven Pinker. The innermost play is some sort of a trip-to-Jerusalem of DNA spinning proteins and receptors that build or weaken your inclinations toward this or that disease, or this or that behavior. The more embracing play is the play of your life as it interacts with the other elements of this world within the lifetime that you live, with the other lives that you encounter. This play of your life emphasizes the opposite of what your inherited DNA is about: the element of choice.

Now, if behavior were inherited, I should be giving you a good bonk on the head, as your grandmother would have if I had given her a list like the one you just did (so do not go to her with this list as she surely will.) But one time, when you visit her, do pay closer attention to a replica of a famous sculpture she has in her garden. It is a replica of Rodin’s The Hand of God. It features a marble hand that holds a half-revealed, entwined figure of a man and a woman; half-hidden still in the stone that he was sculpting. Rodin was said to have "despised the outward appearance of ‘finish’… preferring to leave the rest to the imagination of the beholder." There at your grandma’s garden, unbeknownst to her, is a good symbol of that play within a play in us all – what you are made of and how, through your own imaginative, creative and deliberate choices, you will become the person you want to be. Then kiss your grandma, thank her for what she has passed on to you and then go. It is good to be aware, visit and mark the home of your beginnings but the rest of your own life is raging to take shape, so leave and embark on your own. 

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