![]() The trouble, says Mukherjee, is that we are going to encounter this sort of thing increasingly often as our ability to unravel the DNA of our fellow citizens becomes more powerful. Put that way, the notion looks unpleasant. ![]() To his credit, Mukherjee is suspicious of the ethics of a scheme whereby an authority, having genotyped children in a particular area, could then be allowed to choose who is worthy of the attention of the best teachers and the most resources and who is not. The idea of a resilience gene has since taken root, leading psychologists to propose that susceptible short-variant children – the worst behaved but better at responding to counselling – be targeted for scarce and costly intervention. “It is as if resilience itself has a genetic core,” says Mukherjee in this broad-ranging guide to modern genetics and its impact on life. That grim start to life was not quite so hopeless as it seemed. They found the former group, while more prone to antisocial behaviour, was also more likely to react positively to counselling. ![]() But the researchers went further, providing counselling for short-variant binge drinkers and long-variant “normals” to see how each group responded to help from others. ![]() Combine a deprived background with a set of “bad” genes and your chance in life was doomed, it appeared. Sure enough, the scientists found that possessors of short variants were more likely to binge drink, use drugs and be sexually permissive. ![]()
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