Pinker On Genes and the Brain
Personalized genetic testing can tell us about our physical traits, but what can it tell us about psychology? In this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Harvard professor Steven Pinker combines a narrative of personal genetic discovery with some insight into behavioral genetics.
As a participant in the Personal Genome Project, Pinker’s complete genome and medical history are available on the Internet for researchers to explore. His own experience poking around his genetic profile and reading about studies correlating specific variations to heritable traits leads him to speculate on what does (and will continue to) motivate people to know themselves by reading their own DNA.
For better or for worse, people will want to know about their genomes. The human mind is prone to essentialism — the intuition that living things house some hidden substance that gives them their form and determines their powers. Over the past century, this essence has become increasingly concrete.
But despite his sense that genomoics plays into this essentialism, Pinker’s explanations of the state of scientific research go a long way towards demonstrating that we are not simply the sum of our genetic parts:
Many of the dystopian fears raised by personal genomics are simply out of touch with the complex and probabilistic nature of genes. Forget about the hyperparents who want to implant math genes in their unborn children, the “Gattaca” corporations that scan people’s DNA to assign them to castes, the employers or suitors who hack into your genome to find out what kind of worker or spouse you’d make. Let them try; they’d be wasting their time.
Considering the social elements of our genomes will only become increasingly important—in part because that desire to know one’s self will drive some of the consumer interest in sequencing and interpretation, along with the business models that enable both. A significant element of the service 23AndMe offers is the ability to social network with others who have submitted their spit vials for testing. For the moment, this is considered “recreational.” But if a drop in cost combined with a policy push to include genetic information with electronic health records puts this sort of data in the hands of large numbers of Americans, it seems reasonable that a significant number of people will be equally curious about who has genes similar to theirs, and what behavioral traits they might share.
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