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It Takes a Genome: How a Clash Between Our Genes and Modern Life Is Making Us Sick
Human beings have astonishing genetic vulnerabilities. More than half of us will die from complex diseases that trace directly to those vulnerabilities, and the modern world we’ve created places us at unprecedented risk from them . In It Takes a Genome , Greg Gibson posits a revolutionary new Our genome is out of equilibrium, both with itself and its environment. Simply put, our genes aren’t coping well with modern culture. Our bodies were never designed to subsist on fat and sugary foods; our immune systems weren’t designed for today’s clean, bland environments; our minds weren’t designed to process hard-edged, artificial electronic inputs from dawn ‘til midnight. And that’s why so many of us suffer from chronic diseases that barely touched our ancestors. Gibson begins by revealing the stunningly complex ways in which multiple genes cooperate and interact to shape our bodies and influence our behaviors. Then, drawing on the very latest science, he explains the genetic “mismatches” that increasingly lead to cancer, diabetes, inflammatory and infectious diseases, AIDS, depression, and senility. He concludes with a look at the probable genetic variations in human psychology, sharing the evidence that traits like introversion and agreeableness are grounded in equally complex genetic interactions. It Takes A Genome demolishes yesterday’s stale debates over “nature vs. nurture,” introducing a new view that is far more intriguing, and far closer to the truth.
187 pages, Hardcover
First published December 24, 2008
23 people are currently reading
230 people want to read
About the author
Greg Gibson
17 books2 followersGregory C. Gibson is a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), where he is also director of the Center for Integrative Genomics.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
October 3, 2010
This book started off pretty deep and got shallow quick. I felt like at first I got a pretty good overview of how genes and our environment work together to cause many of the diseases plaguing us today. The first two chapters on breast cancer and diabetes seems particularly intriguing. But it quickly lost steam.
I do not have a background in biology and certainly not genetics so I am dependent entirely on the author's explanations. I do, however, have a background in psychology and his chapter on depression seemed fantastical. The way he described depression, as walking a tight rope walking over Niagra Falls, seemed a little melodramatic. Many people who suffer from depression are not suicidal but from his accounting large portions of the country are merely one step from the final act. His attributes to marital warfare being accountable to the generational wars of World War I, World War II, Vietnam, Gulf War I and Gulf War II were a little fallacious as well. Only small portions of the population fought in Vietnam, and smaller still the two recent gulf wars. In fact only a small minority of people today would have their lives immediately impacted by the War on Terror, making his claim that 9/11 has greatly increased people's fears, which on a practical level seems untrue and where there may be evidence it could be attributed to so many factors, it would be very difficult to prove conclusively that a terror attack which killed .00001% of the population could have that stark of an impact compared to the diseases, territorial disputes, and general violence that plagued our fore fathers for countless generations before us. Overall, his lack of experience and understanding led me to call into question the rest of his book, but I since I have nothing to go by, I will take this all at face value.
Finally, he added too many political points and tried to make too many jokes to seem truly professional. Scientists need only present the facts, and while the jokes may make it more entertaining, too many of his jokes seemed like inside, personal jokes that I didn't get to improve the enjoyment of this book. Making political points may seem salient, to me, it just blurs the line between rationality and emotionality, making me question once again, if the author was truly being objective in his study or was just collecting only the data that helped him make his point, and I pointed out in the paragraph above, where I did have background, some of this seemed suspicious.
So while I feel like I got a better understanding of the human genome, I can't really give this more than an average rating.
I do not have a background in biology and certainly not genetics so I am dependent entirely on the author's explanations. I do, however, have a background in psychology and his chapter on depression seemed fantastical. The way he described depression, as walking a tight rope walking over Niagra Falls, seemed a little melodramatic. Many people who suffer from depression are not suicidal but from his accounting large portions of the country are merely one step from the final act. His attributes to marital warfare being accountable to the generational wars of World War I, World War II, Vietnam, Gulf War I and Gulf War II were a little fallacious as well. Only small portions of the population fought in Vietnam, and smaller still the two recent gulf wars. In fact only a small minority of people today would have their lives immediately impacted by the War on Terror, making his claim that 9/11 has greatly increased people's fears, which on a practical level seems untrue and where there may be evidence it could be attributed to so many factors, it would be very difficult to prove conclusively that a terror attack which killed .00001% of the population could have that stark of an impact compared to the diseases, territorial disputes, and general violence that plagued our fore fathers for countless generations before us. Overall, his lack of experience and understanding led me to call into question the rest of his book, but I since I have nothing to go by, I will take this all at face value.
Finally, he added too many political points and tried to make too many jokes to seem truly professional. Scientists need only present the facts, and while the jokes may make it more entertaining, too many of his jokes seemed like inside, personal jokes that I didn't get to improve the enjoyment of this book. Making political points may seem salient, to me, it just blurs the line between rationality and emotionality, making me question once again, if the author was truly being objective in his study or was just collecting only the data that helped him make his point, and I pointed out in the paragraph above, where I did have background, some of this seemed suspicious.
So while I feel like I got a better understanding of the human genome, I can't really give this more than an average rating.
March 4, 2018
Uma versão mais genética do Sobrevivência dos mais Doentes. Ou uma versão mais voltada para doenças do História do Corpo humano. Gibson passa pelo câncer, pela diabetes, por HIV, depressão, Alzheimer e outras doenças para falar sobre as últimas descobertas (já um pouco desatualizadas) sobre a influência dos genes nessas características. Bem legal para entender como nunca estamos adaptados ao ambiente recente.
July 31, 2012
Great review of the newest human genome research.
Told in a way so anybody with the least amount of science literacy can understand it.
This research has great implications for public health policy when it comes to treatment.
The research shows that the major human disorders: heart disease, diabetes, auto immune disorders and cancer are caused by many genes that only influences the disorder a few percent.
There are thus no hope for magic bullet that will solve these public health problems.
Only prevention and annual checkups can catch these disorders so they can be treated. So a national health system, and Obama-care is just a first step, is the only thing that can lower the mortality rate of the major human afflictions.
A must read for anybody involved in the health care debate.
Told in a way so anybody with the least amount of science literacy can understand it.
This research has great implications for public health policy when it comes to treatment.
The research shows that the major human disorders: heart disease, diabetes, auto immune disorders and cancer are caused by many genes that only influences the disorder a few percent.
There are thus no hope for magic bullet that will solve these public health problems.
Only prevention and annual checkups can catch these disorders so they can be treated. So a national health system, and Obama-care is just a first step, is the only thing that can lower the mortality rate of the major human afflictions.
A must read for anybody involved in the health care debate.
November 2, 2019
This book has come as quite a disappointment to me. I am a avid reader of science books. I love genetics especially. I am a big fan of Richard Dawkins and Matt Ridley. I haven't learnt anything new by reading It Takes a Genome. If you are already familiar with personal genomics such as 23andMe or deCODEme, you won't learn anything either. The book is very short (under 150 pages) and yet manages to be tedious, repetitive and poorly informative at the same time.
This book is clearly geared towards people who have absolutely no prior knowledge of genetics. Gibson's tone give the impression that he is addressing a bunch of American teenagers. This may be because he does teach teenagers at the North Carolina State University. He keeps re-explaining basic concepts as if he was holding a lecture in front of an audience that needed to be reminded of what had been said a few minutes ago. His use of American pop celebrities as examples and fastfood for metaphors reinforce this impression that the book was written for American adolescents. Gibson does not disguise his antipathy towards Richard Dawkins, insisting several times from the preface onwards that "genes are unselfish", and as if it was not clear enough find the need to explain in the notes at the end of the book that he chose the expression in reaction to Dawkins's book The Selfish Gene (which, incidentally, is a far more interesting read, even 30 years after its publication).
Even for those with very little knowledge of genetics, I wouldn't recommend this book. It is badly written and only concentrate on a few diseases. One of them, AIDS, has obviously no connection with the book's title, as it is not a genetic disease at all and is not caused by the modern way of life ! Yet there is a full chapter (out of 9) dedicated to it.
This book is clearly geared towards people who have absolutely no prior knowledge of genetics. Gibson's tone give the impression that he is addressing a bunch of American teenagers. This may be because he does teach teenagers at the North Carolina State University. He keeps re-explaining basic concepts as if he was holding a lecture in front of an audience that needed to be reminded of what had been said a few minutes ago. His use of American pop celebrities as examples and fastfood for metaphors reinforce this impression that the book was written for American adolescents. Gibson does not disguise his antipathy towards Richard Dawkins, insisting several times from the preface onwards that "genes are unselfish", and as if it was not clear enough find the need to explain in the notes at the end of the book that he chose the expression in reaction to Dawkins's book The Selfish Gene (which, incidentally, is a far more interesting read, even 30 years after its publication).
Even for those with very little knowledge of genetics, I wouldn't recommend this book. It is badly written and only concentrate on a few diseases. One of them, AIDS, has obviously no connection with the book's title, as it is not a genetic disease at all and is not caused by the modern way of life ! Yet there is a full chapter (out of 9) dedicated to it.
February 18, 2024
Çevirmenin akademik başarıları ve yazarın Türkçe basım için yazdığı ön söz ile beklentilerimin tavan yapması ve yaklaşık 3. bölümde uğradığım hayal kırıklığı....
İlk itirazım kitabın isminin çevirisine. "It Takes A Genome" adlı bir kitabı "Son Sözü Genom Söyler" diye çeviremezsiniz. Zaten son sözü genomun söylemediği genotipin fenotipe bire bir yansımadığı kitapta da mevcut bir bilgi.
İkinci bir nokta kitabın 2007 den beri revize edilmemesi. 17 yıl bilim için çok uzun bir süre.
Üçüncüsü bir hekim gözünden bir çok tartışmalı bilgi içermesi. Deney ve istatistik temelinde insan sağlığı değerlendirilemez. Nasıl savaşlar haritada kazanılmıyorsa çok somut görülen bir öngörü de insan işin içine giriyorsa başarısız olabiliyor.
Dördüncü ve son olarak çok iyi bilim insanı olmanız iyi bir yazar olmanızı sağlamıyor. Hele tıbbi bilgileriniz profesyonel seviyede değilse mutlaka yardım almalısınız.
Sonuçta bana hitap etmese de bir popüler bilim kitabı olarak okunabilir seviyede. Bilginin kötüsü olmaz ve bakış açıları farklı olmasa insanlık ilerlemez ve yazarın da bilimsel kişiliğini tartışmak da bana düşmez. Şahsi görüşüm 2.5 /5
İlk itirazım kitabın isminin çevirisine. "It Takes A Genome" adlı bir kitabı "Son Sözü Genom Söyler" diye çeviremezsiniz. Zaten son sözü genomun söylemediği genotipin fenotipe bire bir yansımadığı kitapta da mevcut bir bilgi.
İkinci bir nokta kitabın 2007 den beri revize edilmemesi. 17 yıl bilim için çok uzun bir süre.
Üçüncüsü bir hekim gözünden bir çok tartışmalı bilgi içermesi. Deney ve istatistik temelinde insan sağlığı değerlendirilemez. Nasıl savaşlar haritada kazanılmıyorsa çok somut görülen bir öngörü de insan işin içine giriyorsa başarısız olabiliyor.
Dördüncü ve son olarak çok iyi bilim insanı olmanız iyi bir yazar olmanızı sağlamıyor. Hele tıbbi bilgileriniz profesyonel seviyede değilse mutlaka yardım almalısınız.
Sonuçta bana hitap etmese de bir popüler bilim kitabı olarak okunabilir seviyede. Bilginin kötüsü olmaz ve bakış açıları farklı olmasa insanlık ilerlemez ve yazarın da bilimsel kişiliğini tartışmak da bana düşmez. Şahsi görüşüm 2.5 /5
June 22, 2022
Bence harika bir kitap. Anladığım kadarıyla yazar sahada faal olarakta çalışan bir genetikçi. Modern genetiğin genomik araçlarla hastalıkları ve biyolojik özelliklerini gerçekçi şekilde anlaşılmasını sağlamak istemiş. Yani genler bencildir diye indirgemeci arayış yerine genlerin gerçekten işe karışıp karışmadığına açıklık getirmeye çalışıyor; genlerin bağlamsız, kendince işlerini yapan ve hastalıklarla ne kadar ilişkisi olabildiğini basit bir şekilde anlatıyor. Genetik ve hastalık gelişimi, doğa bilimi veya tıp konusunda ilgisi olanların okurken keyif alacağı gerçekçi bir kitap.
October 11, 2016
This book doesn't exactly address the premise of the title as much as you may expect, so if you're looking for solutions, well... we don't have them. That's what genome research has told us so far: we have a lot more questions than before without a lot more answers. It's a fascinating trip through what we know, and a look at how far we still have to go before we can (possibly) know anything at all.
March 5, 2017
Really depressing and sad.
July 20, 2016
Not bad for a quick survey of the interplay between genetic research and our modern lifestyle. In agreement with another reviewer, he does make some logical leaps and unsatisfactory analogies, as well as having a tendency to lose the reader's interest in several places. Overall, it was broken down into some background and a handful of disease states - the book certainly has room to grow (for future editions). In any case, I wanted to see more of the impact of genetics on medicine than what I took away from the book. Ideal readers of this book should have some sort of acquaintance with science-y jargon found in biology, medicine, etc. - gene naming is an atrocious business.
September 25, 2012
I was so bored! I only made it about 20% through before giving up, maybe the rest of the book would have gotten better, but I have lots of other things I'd rather read than attempting to get any farther in this one. It's not because I didn't understand the subject matter. I took quite a few genetics classes while getting my biology degree, and this book made a topic that used to interest me so dry. Oh well, at least I didn't pay for it.
February 10, 2015
Good information, although a bit technical. I wasn't able to understand everything they were saying, but the basic info is quite interesting. We just don't realize what technology can do and the effects it has on us and future generations.
July 18, 2011
Nice overview of genetic status of several diaeases. Takeaway message--most genetic variation is caused by multiple genes affwcted by multiple environmental factors.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews