“If the history of the last century taught us the dangers of empowering governments to determine genetic “fitness” (i.e., which person fits within the triangle, and who lives outside it), then the question that confronts our current era is what happens when this power devolves to the individual. It is a question that requires us to balance the desires of the individual— to carve out a life of happiness and achievement, without undue suffering— with the desires of a society that, in the short term, may be interested only in driving down the burden of disease and the expense of disability. And operating silently in the background is a third set of actors: our genes themselves, which reproduce and create new variants oblivious of our desires and compulsions— but, either directly or indirectly, acutely or obliquely, influence our desires and compulsions. Speaking at the Sorbonne in 1975, the cultural historian Michel Foucault once proposed that “a technology of abnormal individuals appears precisely when a regular network of knowledge and power has been established.” Foucault was thinking about a “regular network” of humans. But it could just as easily be a network of genes.”

Share & Save

Meaning

Not documented yet.

When It Was Said

Not documented yet.

Who It Was Said To

Not documented yet.

Historical Context

Not documented yet.

Source

Not documented yet.

Original Language & Translation

Originally said in English.

Did They Really Say It?

Not documented yet.

Did You Know?

Not documented yet.

About Siddhartha Mukherjee

Indian physician, biologist, and author

Siddhartha Mukherjee is an Indian physician, biologist, and author known for writing about medicine, cancer, and genetics. He has 76 quotes on the site. His first book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, appeared in 2010 and won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2011, along with the Guardian First Book Award. It was also included in Time magazine’s All-Time 100 Nonfiction Books. He followed it with The Gene: An Intimate History in 2016, which was named among The New York Times 100 best books of 2016 and was a finalist for the Wellcome Trust Prize and the Royal Society Prize for Science Books. In 2019, he received the Lewis Thomas Prize.

More from Siddhartha Mukherjee (76 quotes) →

READ THE SOURCE

Books by Siddhartha Mukherjee

The Emperor of All Maladies

2011

VIEW ON AMAZON

The Gene

2016

VIEW ON AMAZON

The Song of the Cell

2022

VIEW ON AMAZON

The laws of medicine

2015

VIEW ON AMAZON