32 THE MISMEASURE OF MAN
my lifetime? Slash every program of social services for people in
genuine need; terminate support for the arts (but don't cut a dime,
heaven forfend, from the military); balance the budget and provide
tax relief for the wealthy. Perhaps I am caricaturing, but can we
doubt the consonance of this new meanspiritedness with an argu-
ment that social spending can't work because, contra Darwin, the
misery of the poor does result from the laws of nature and from the
innate ineptitude of the disadvantaged?
I would add another reason for the particular appeal of genetic
explanations in the 1990s. We are living in a revolutionary age of
scientific advance for molecular biology. From the Watson-Crick
model of 1953 to the invention of PCR and the routine sequencing
of DNA—for purposes as varied as O. J. Simpson's blood signature
to deciphering the phylogeny of birds—we now have unprece-
dented access to information about the genetic constitution of indi-
viduals. We naturally favor, and tend to overextend, exciting
novelties in vain hope that they may supply general solutions or
panaceas—when such contributions really constitute more modest
(albeit vital) pieces of a much more complex puzzle. We have so
treated all great insights about human nature in the past, including
nongenetic theories rooted in family and social dynamics, most
notably (of course) Freud's notion of psychosexual stages, with neu-
rosis arising from suppressed or misdirected development in ontog-
eny. If insightful nongenetic theories could be so egregiously
exaggerated in the past, should we be surprised that we are now
repeating this error by overextending the genuine excitement we
feel about genetic explanation?
I applaud the discovery of genes that predispose carriers to cer-
tain illnesses, or that cause disease directly in normal environments
(Tay-Sachs, sickle-cell anemia, Huntington's chorea)—for the great-
est hope of cure lies in identification of a material substrate and a
mode of action. As the father of an autistic son, I also celebrate the
humane and liberating value of identifying inborn biological bases
for conditions once deemed purely psychogenic, and therefore sub-
tly blamed on parents (especially by professionals who swore up and
down they harbored no such intent, but merely meant to specify
sources in the interest of future prevention; autism, at different
times and by various psychologists, became a result either of too
much, or of too little, maternal love).
The brain, as an organ of the body, is as subject to disease and