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Yes, this is a very sad story and here is a passage from Siddhartha Mukherjee's wonderful book "The Gene"

...Avery was still denied the Nobel Prize because Einar Hammarsten, the influential Swedish chemist, refused to believe that DNA could carry genetic material...

Siddhartha Mukherjee is a fantastic author. If you liked Emperor of All Maladies, check out The Gene: An Intimate History.

This is cool! Let's not forget that over time genes variate on their own. Both human-modified genes continue to mutate along with side organic genes.

For folks looking to learn more about Genes in general I recommend the book below.

The Gene: An Intimate History

https://g.co/kgs/EPDUmk

For a good read, I recommend The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee

The Gene touches on this a bit (great book in general), but Mendel was actively trying to reach out to researchers and share his findings. They just wouldn’t listen to him and didn’t care.

His second book, The Gene, is excellent too and definitely worth reading if you liked The Emperor of All Maladies.

Lying - Sam Harris.

Behave - Robert Sapolsky.

Gene: An Intimate History - Siddhartha Mukherjee

I’ve been recommending The Gene to people who are just generally interested in this sorta thing

I highly recommend "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
https://www.amazon.com/Gene-Intimate-History-Siddhartha-Mukh...

Seconded, I just finished this book and it is an introduction to the basic science and history of genetics that reads like a masterfully written narrative. If you have any interest in genetics I think The Gene would be well worth your time.

Fahrenheit 451

Animal Farm

The Gene: An Intimate History

The Martian

Currently reading Sapiens: A brief history of humankind. I would recommend all these books, if you're interested in the subjects they are written about.

Was literally reading about this last night in "The Gene, An Intimate History": https://www.amazon.com/Gene-Intimate-History-Siddhartha-Mukh...

Couldn't help but think of this troubling incident while reading about it.

- Read some books, like The Gene.
- Improve my soft skills.
- Work on some idea.

On DNA/genetics:
Life's Greatest Secret, Matthew Cobb
Siddhartha Mukherjee's books: 'The Emperor of All Maladies' + The Gene are very good as an introduction (start off by watching the PBS documentary)

Jim Baggott's books are good on physics e.g. 'Mass'.
Also Jim Holt, though he was trained as a philosopher.
Penrose 'The Emperor's New Mind' etc are very good but not new.

Huntington's also has an interesting place in the history of genetics, genetic diseases, and heredity.

I wish I could find the excerpt, but the book The Gene talks about the original research and it's an interesting story.

The book is worth reading in general (Siddhartha Mukherjee is a great writer and it's really good).

http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Gene/Siddhartha-Mu...

I enjoyed The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Depending on what you're looking for it might be relatively light on the science side and includes autobiographical digressions, but overall gives a high-level overview of key developments in the field.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gene:_An_Intimate_History

I find biology to be endlessly fascinating. I know this is terribly off-topic but, if you enjoy learning about this kind of information, I'd highly recommend 'The Gene: An Intimate History.' It's a lovely read that brings you from before Mendel up to the brink of modern genetics.

I'd like to hear any other book recommendations people may have related to this topic.

1. Sapiens - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23692271-sapiens

2. The Gene: An Intimate History - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27276428-the-gene

3. I Contain Multitudes - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29083367-i-contain-multi...

4. Stuff Matters - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19553030-stuff-matters

5. Rework - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6732019-rework

As a disclaimer I haven't read CODE, even though it's been on my list for a while (sounds like I ought to prioritize it!).

From my understanding of the style I believe The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee is a similar take on genetics.

It stays fairly high level as it doesn't require a molecular biology degree, but Mukherjee gives a fantastic primer on many of the concepts in genetics in a deeply interesting and human fashion. It's always refreshing when non-fiction books manage to weave a narrative throughout in a way that feels natural.

If you have some time, The Gene [0] is a good read. One of the cases the author describes is when a lot of people decided to be very optimistic at the same time and things didn't end well.

Not questioning your frustration though, but it's good to have extremely cautious people around.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Gene-Intimate-History-Siddhartha-Mukh...

When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi (highly recommended, but come prepared)

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - J. K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, John Tiffany (recommended for HP nostalgia)

Elon Musk - Ashlee Vance (recommended)

Shoe Dog - Phil Knight (highly recommended)

Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell (meh)

The Gene - Siddhartha Mukherjee (currently reading, recommended so far)

This was addressed in the appropriate chapter in The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee[1]. It was the first I had heard of Rosalind Franklin and I was very grateful for this account which gave appropriate recognition. (Side note: the entire book is also highly recommended)

[1]: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1476733503

Some books I've enjoyed in the past year:

Wish to laugh?

* Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah

* Yes please! by Amy Poehler

Think?

* Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell

* Where Good Ideas Come from, by Steven Johnson

* The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene: An Intimate History both by Mukherjee Siddhartha

Learn (more) about great thinkers?

* Einstein or Leonardo da Vinci or Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

* Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike, by Phil Knight

Yuval Noah Harari 3 good ones:

* Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

* Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

* 21 lessons for the 21st century

From time to time, I try to put some good ones over here: https://greenido.wordpress.com/?s=book

Absolutely not. Scaling is the whole problem with gene therapy. If we could scale it we would have had it in 1999. In that year, a man was injected with lentivirally carried genetic therapy to cause his liver cells to break down ammonia (they weren't before and he couldn't eat certain foods, lived an uncomfortable but livable life). He died due to the immune response. His name was [Jesse Gelsinger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Gelsinger). It froze gene therapy funding for 10 years. Siddharta Mukerjee has a really good discussion on it in his book, The Gene.

Scaling gene therapy is THE problem of gene therapy. Not editing genes themselves.

I didn't realize it when I posted, but I looked back at Mukherjee's book The Gene: an Intimate History and realized that this article is an excerpt from two parts of that book. Awhile ago I gave up on it a quarter of the way through, bogged down in an interminable section on fruit fly genetics, but have picked it up again now and am enjoying it.

If you haven't read it yet, I recommend the book more for his personal narrative (the one that the article hones in on) than for the rehashing of Mendel or the Watson/Crick/Rosalind Franklin story, and in some ways it feels like a bit of a Frankenstein's monster a result of stitching together so many different stories. But he really is a beautiful writer. I'm starting to think of him as the successor to Oliver Sacks (RIP).

In line with this, I'd also like to recommend 'The Gene'[0]. The author has informed me of new things (Even though I studied biochemistry during college) and also focused a lot on the ethical discussions relating to genetic modification. It also directly discusses CRISPR as it is quite new. I'd recommend all of Mukherjee's other books as well (Mainly Emperor of all Maladies).

[0]https://www.amazon.com/dp/1476733503

I'm so sorry for your loss.

Dementia and schizophrenia are present in my family as well and caring for those in the later stages has been really hard.

I found myself torn by the same question of whether to test for genetic predisposition. After reading The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee, whose author is in a similar position, I have found some comfort in deciding not to test for now. As he says in an NPR interview:

> There's no one-to-one correspondence between a genome and the chances of developing schizophrenia. And until we can create that map - and whether we can create that map ever is a question - but until I - we can create that map, I will certainly not be tested because it - that idea - I mean, that's, again, the center of the book. That confines you. It becomes predictive. You become ... a previvor (ph). A previvor is someone who's survived an illness that they haven't even had yet. You live in the shadow of an illness that you haven't had yet.

https://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/528097708/the-power-of-genes-...

I'd recommend this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7170627-the-emperor-of-a...

His other book (The Gene) is also great.

The current model allows drugs like Herceptin to be found that target the actual mechanism of action of a specific cancer (rather than just targeting the growth more generally)(https://www.amazon.com/Her-2-Making-Herceptin-Revolutionary-...).

Models can always be improved, but there's a lot of evidence that the current model is on the right path.

I suspect two likely futures for general cancer 'cures'. Both require sequencing the cancer of the patient and then determining which set of growth related mutations it has (thankfully there aren't an infinite amount).

Then you either give them a tailored drug cocktail that either inhibits or activates those specific areas (that you need to take forever like herceptin) or you use something like CRISPR to edit the code directly. Both of these methods require sequencing to be inexpensive and 'precision' medicine. Both methods are also vulnerable to future mutations.

(Also Phlogiston was attempting to explain fire, not sickness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory)

If you are interested in learning more about CRISPR checkout this article - http://gizmodo.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-crispr-... .

This podcast by Radiolab also breaks down the idea really well - http://www.radiolab.org/story/antibodies-part-1-crispr/ .

I am currently reading this book - The Gene http://www.amazon.com/Gene-Intimate-History-Siddhartha-Mukhe... to gain a better understanding of what genes are and I have found it to be really well written even for someone who last studied biology over 15 years ago.