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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
From its very beginnings, this century has been under the sign of genetics. Indeed, it was in 1900 that the laws established by Mendel in the mid-nirieteenth century were rediscovered. In that same year, Landsteiner identified the first human blood typing, the ABO system. At that time, agronomists, eugenicists, and physicians were the principal agents of the development of genetics. The chromosome theory of heredity was asserted beginning in 1911; it was followed in the 1940s by the understanding of the role of the gene in cellular metabolism, and in 1954 by the explanation of the structure of the DNA double helix. The pre-eminence of genetics was to increase through the second half of the century, particularly in the 1970s with the advent of genetic engineering.
1. Reference is made here to the growing importance accorded to biological kin ship and to the desire to preserve one's genes for posterity through one's descendants, whereas kinship was first defined by affective bonds within an ethno-sociological context, without particular reference to biology.
2. Lévy-Leblond et al., in Le Monde, 15 June 1977.
3. The lack of interest on the part of certain biologists and the ignorance of many technocrats with respect to these questions often stem from an unshakable faith in the inevitability of "progress." "One of the inevitabilities of scientific progress is that if something can be done then it will be done," according to Daniels et al., in Journal of Biosocial Sciences 28 (1996): 491-507. Moreover, some ways of accentuating and encouraging the hope that may arise out of any sci entific advance is in fact only a clever tactic for leaving one's hands free to cover up research whose consequences will ultimately escape control (on this subject, see the analysis by Axel Kahn, Futuribles 223 (1997): 5-27.
4. Provine, "Geneticists and the Biology of Race Crossing," Science 4414 (1973): 790-796. The word "race" is to be understood in its historical context.
5. Dunn and Dobzhansky, Heredity, Race and Society (New York, 1946), p. 114.
6. Provine, "Geneticists and the Biology of Race Crossing," p. 796.
7. Galton himself participated actively in this effort by developing the statistical concept of correlation.
8. Sir Francis Galton, Hereditary Genius : An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences (London, 1892; 1st ed. 1865).
9. Charles J. Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson, Genes, Mind and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1981).
10. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford, New York, 1976).
11. In particular by Feldman and Lewontin, and in France by Jacquard in Eloge de la différence (Paris, 1978).
12. "Estimates of heritability apply only to the population studied at that particu lar time, and under environmental conditions that prevail at that point," in the words of M. Rutter and R. Plomin, "Opportunities for Psychiatry from Genetic Findings," British Journal of Psychiatry (1997), pp. 209-219.
13. Devlin et al., Nature 388 (1977), pp. 468-471.
14. McGue, "The Democracy of the Genes," Nature 388 (1977), pp. 417-418.
15. L. Bourdel, Sangs et tempérament (Paris, 1962).
16. Gibson ect al., "Ig and ABO Blood Groups," Nature 246 (1973), pp. 496-499.
17. Dumont-Damien and Duyme, Genetics and Alcoholism (Les Editions INSERM, 1993).
18. Plomin et al., Behavior Genetics 21 (1995): pp. 31-48.
19. And a few other questions whose technical aspects exceed the scope of the present article.
20. Campion et al., "Les facteurs génétiques dans l'étiologie de la maladie d'Alzheimer," Médecine/Sciences 12 (1996): pp. 723-731.
21. G. Turner, "Intelligence and the X Chromosome," The Lancet 347 (1996): pp. 1814-1815.
22. Resta, "Whispered Hints?", American Journal of Medical Genetics 59 (1995): pp. 131-133.
23. Plomin, Owen, and McGuffin, "The Genetic Basis of Complex Human Behav iors," Science 264 (1994): pp. 1733-1739.
24. Kupiec and Sonigo, "Du génotype au phénotype: instruction ou selection?," in Pour Darwin, ed. Patrick Tort (Paris, 1997), pp. 1025-1034.
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