2018 Chapters (Layout Features)

The Science of One Life at a Time

Pollack, Robert

Genetic medicine is the branch of science that depends on a knowledge of many lifetimes, much history, and vast collaboration. The trick will be to see that it is informed, as Niebuhr would have it, by hope, faith, and love. Certain current practices in genetic medicine do not promise much of any of these three, all of them being the irrational properties of a religion. I will consider ways that hope, faith, and love might be returned to genetic medicine, that part of medical practice invested in a future of ever-expanding genetic knowledge. Without our choice to act now to return to these, every person will one day be obliged to pay attention to genomic news in a context possibly not devoid of faith or love, but certainly devoid of hope. There already are a few people who have had to deal with genetic news in this gloomy context. These are the descendants of genetic bottlenecks, members of groups of people — apparently unrelated — who share a small number of common ancestors. The Jews of Eastern Europe — the Ashkenazim — are one of these groups. How Jews and others respond to this challenge should be of interest to everyone whose recent family history includes the inheritance of unusual versions of one or more genes; that is, everyone.