The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon

Notes

otes N 206 PREFACE 1. M. Susan Lindee, Suffering Made Real: American Science and the Survivors at Hiroshima (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Dorothy Nelkin and Laurence Tancredi, Dangerous Diagnostics: The Social Power ofBiological Information, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Dorothy Nelkin, Selling Science: How the Press Covers Science and Technology, 2nd ed. (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1995). 2. The cultural studies literature often differentiates between high and low culture. We find similar genetic images in a broad range of cultural products from contemporary art to the daily soaps. 3. For analyses of these debates and empirical studies of audience reception, see Poetics, 21, 1992, a special issue on the relationship of media and audience. Also Andrea LiPress, ((The Sociology of Cultural Reception," in Diana Crane (ed.), The Sociology of Culture: Emerging Theoretical Perspectives (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1994). N01[S 10 PAG[S 1-2 CHAPTER 1 1. Advertisement, BMW of North America Inc., 1983. 2. John S. Long, uHow Genes Shape Personality," u.s. News and World Report, 13 April 1987, 60-66. 3. Cartoon by R. Chast, Health, July/August 1991,29. 4. Mervyn Rothstein, uFrom Cartoons to a Play about Racists in the 60s," New York Times, 14 August 1991. 5. Henry Howe and John Lynn, uGene talk in sociobiology," in Stephen Fuller and James Collier, eds., Social Epistemology 6:2 (April-June 1992),109-164. 6. uThe Secret of Life" is the name of an eight-hour uNOVA" series, directed by Graham Chedd and aired on public television on 26-30 September 1993. The phrase is widely used in descriptions of DNA. 7. The gene is the fundamental unit of heredity. Each gene is arranged in tandem along a particular chromosome. A chromosome, the microscopic nuclear structure that contains the linear array of genes, is composed of proteins and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the udouble helix" molecule that encodes genetic information. Each gene generates, as the ureadout" of its specific DNA sequence, a particular protein -its functional product in building the cell or organism. The 24 chromosomes in the human genome contain about 100,000 genes. 8. This term is used by Sarah Franklin in uEssentialism, Which Essentialism? Some Implications of Reproductive and Genetic Technoscience," in John Dececco and John Elia, eds., Issues in Biological Essentialism versus Social Construction in Gay and Lesbian Identities (London: Harrington Park Press, 1993), 27-39. She defines genetic essentialism as ua scientific discourse...with the potential to establish social categories based on an essential truth about the body" (34). 9. Joanne Finkelstein, The Fashioned Self (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991). See particularly 177-193. 207 NOT[S TO PAG[ 3 10. Anthropologists describe cultural differences in bodily skills that have far less to do with inherent biological limits than with social expectations. They find that bodily and mental capacities are shaped by social organization. They depend in great measure on and vary with social beliefs, practices, and techniques. Paul Hirst and Penny Woolley, Social Relations and Human Attributes (London: Tavistock, 1982), Chapter 2. 11. On the gene and its changing meaning, see ElofAxel Carlson, The Gene: A Critical History (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1989), 23-38, 124-130, 166-173, and 259-271. To quote Carlson, "The gene has been considered to be an undefined unit, a unit-character, a unit factor, a factor, an abstract point on a recombination map, a three-dimensional segment of an anaphase chromosome, a linear segment of an interphase chromosome, a sac of genomeres, a series of linear subgenes, a spherical unit defined by a target theory, a dynamic functional quantity of one specific unit, a pseudoallele, a specific chromosome segment subject to position effect, a rearrangement within a continuous chromosome molecule, a cistron within which fine structure can be demonstrated, and a linear segment of nucleic acid specifying a structural or regulatory product. Are these concepts identical?... For some of these problems, the findings from different organisms are contradictory; for others, the agreements [between organisms] may be analogous rather than a reflection of identical genetic organization" (259). See also L. C. Dunn, A Short History of Genetics: The Development of Some Main Lines of Thought 1864-1939 (1965; reprint, Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1991), 33-49 and 175 191; also, James D. Watson's treatment of the complexities surrounding the concept of the gene in his Molecular Biology of the Gene, 2nd ed. (Menlo Park...