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The Genetic Age - Matthew Cobb *****

This big book is a deep dive into the history of a relatively new aspect of science - genetic modification - from the first crude steps to the sophistication of CRISPR-based gene editing.

Matthew Cobb takes us through the basics of what is involved in genetic modification technically, from attempts dating back to the late 60s using a phage (a virus that attacks bacteria) to extract a gene from a bacterium up to the apparent precision of modern gene editing. But the importance of this book is not in giving us an increased understanding of plasmids or homologous recombination (don't biologists love vast numbers of technical terms?), but rather in getting a clear picture of how the science of genetic modification has developed and the disputes that have taken place over the ethics of undertaking these experiments.

One thing that surprised me, as someone with no familiarity with this aspect of science, was how much of the ethical concerns came from the scientists themselves. Possibly because scientific debate tends not to be undertaken through the media, I was more familiar with protestors destroying GM crops, or politicians debating the rights and wrongs, but Cobb opens up the efforts by some within the field to have controls or even moratoria, while others wanted to forge ahead, arguing that science should not be held back.

It's all interesting, but everything moves up a notch when we get on the gene editing capabilities of CRISPR, and particularly the potential and risk of using it to do germline editing on human embryos that would lead to an inheritable genetic change. Cobb describes well the shock when this was undertaken for real by a Chinese scientist, making clear that what was done to these (now) children was nowhere near as precise and targeted as the hype around CRISPR suggests and produced 'mosaics' where not all cells had the same versions of their genes. In referring to another CRISPR experiment, Cobb bluntly puts it 'CRISPR is described as "editing", but this looked like someone had been using a word processor while wearing boxing gloves.' He also highlights how much the vagueness of the scientific establishment in what was and wasn't considered acceptable was part of the problem.

All the way through, Cobb is even handed in that he emphasises both the potential benefits and risks of different genetic modifications. (This was one of the damning aspects of the CRISPR experiment producing children - there were plenty of risks but no benefits.) Often, given the huge amount of hype around these technologies, it seems that things are significantly more complicated than the sales pitch suggests - and it's arguable whether the benefits are worth what has been done. There is no doubt that much genetic work has had benefits in understanding genetics, but even widely recognised positive outcomes, such genetically modified golden rice, are shown to be mixed bags. One little aside - I don't know if Cobb has had a bad experience with the journal Nature at some point, but he mentions them a lot, and it's rarely in a positive light.

It's interesting that a number of the puffs in the blurb make a point of emphasising the depth of the research. This is obviously true - while never getting too heavily into the science to make it unapproachable, Cobb gives us lots of detail on exactly who did what when. This is great to an extent - but for me, it was too much. My first instinct was to say that the book is too long - but on checking, there are only 368 (admittedly large) pages of main text. It's more that there is so much detail that it feels long. It's always difficult to know what to cut, especially when you've invested as much time and effort as Cobb clearly has in this book, but the manuscript would have benefited from some pruning to make it perfect.

That doesn't stop this being a truly valuable book, though. Most of us get very big picture ideas of what's going on with gene editing and other genetic modifications from the media. Now we've got the real story.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here
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