Siddhartha Mukherjee

Quotes by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Emblematic of this era was the prolific Viennese surgeon Theodor Billroth. Born in 1821, Billroth studied music and surgery with almost equal verve. (The professions still often go hand in hand. Both push manual skill to its limit; both mature with practice and age; both depend on immediacy, precision, and opposable thumbs.)
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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.
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Natures and features last until the grave
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Freaks become norms, and norms become extinct. Monster by monster, evolution advanced
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History repeats itself, in part because the genome repeats itself. And the genome repeats itself, in part because history does. The impulses, ambitions, fantasies, and desires that drive human history are, at least in part, encoded in the human genome. And human history has, in turn, selected genomes that carry these impulses, ambitions, fantasies, and desires. This self-fulfilling circle of logic is responsible for some of the most magnificent and evocative qualities in our species, but also some of the most reprehensible. It is far too much to ask ourselves to escape the orbit of this logic, but recognizing its inherent circularity, and being skeptical of its overreach, might protect the week from the will of the strong, and the 'mutant' from being annihilated by the 'normal'.
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Intelligence...[is] not marathon rac[e]: there is no fixed criteria for success, no start or finish lines -- and running sideways or backwards, might secure victory.
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Without equality, he argued, eugenics would degenerate into yet another mechanism by which the powerful could control the weak.
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History repeats, but science reverberates.
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If we define beauty as having blue eyes (and only blue eyes), then we will, indeed, find a gene for beauty. If we define intelligence as the performance on only one kind of test, then we will, indeed, find a gene for intelligence. The genome is only a mirror for the breadth or narrowness of human imagination.
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History repeats, but science reverberates.
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History repeats itself, in part because the genome repeats itself. And the genome repeats itself, in part because history does. The impulses, ambitions, fantasies, and desires that drive human history are, at least in part, encoded in the human genome. And human history has, in turn, selected genomes that carry these impulses, ambitions, fantasies, and desires. This self-fulfilling circle of logic is responsible for some of the most magnificent and evocative qualities in our species, but also some of the most reprehensible. It is far too much to ask ourselves to escape the orbit of this logic, but recognizing its inherent circularity, and being skeptical of its overreach, might protect the week from the will of the strong, and the 'mutant' from being annihilated by the 'normal'.
Read quote
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.
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Intelligence...[is] not marathon rac[e]: there is no fixed criteria for success, no start or finish lines -- and running sideways or backwards, might secure victory.
Read quote
Freaks become norms, and norms become extinct. Monster by monster, evolution advanced
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Without equality, he argued, eugenics would degenerate into yet another mechanism by which the powerful could control the weak.
Read quote
Emblematic of this era was the prolific Viennese surgeon Theodor Billroth. Born in 1821, Billroth studied music and surgery with almost equal verve. (The professions still often go hand in hand. Both push manual skill to its limit; both mature with practice and age; both depend on immediacy, precision, and opposable thumbs.)
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If we define beauty as having blue eyes (and only blue eyes), then we will, indeed, find a gene for beauty. If we define intelligence as the performance on only one kind of test, then we will, indeed, find a gene for intelligence. The genome is only a mirror for the breadth or narrowness of human imagination.
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Natures and features last until the grave
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There is an enormous amount of options that a physician can provide today, right down from curing patients, treating patients, or providing patients with psychic solace or pain relief. So, in fact, the gamut of medical intervention is enormous.
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I think the way we think about cancer, the way we treat cancer, has dramatically changed in the last century. There is an enormous amount of options that a physician can provide today, right down from curing patients, treating patients or providing patients with psychic solace or pain relief.
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