Collins is an expert in genetics, holding a PhD in chemistry and an MD, and ran the Human Genome Project.  With this background, and knowledge from a number of professional relationships he has built, a vast tale of personal medicine based on genetics is told.   He manages to tie together large bodies of cited research with human stories.  The author brings real stories of real people impacted by real science: cutting-edge genetic testing and genetic treatments.  These are stories of cancer, Huntington’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and heart attacks.  They are stories of sorrow, of hope, and of the controversy and ethics of stem cells, cloning, and genetic testing of fetuses.

I was caught off guard with the advances being made in the various medical fields related to genetics.  This isn’t pie-in-the-sky stuff.  Collins documents a well-know (in medical circles) case of AIDS being cured with a genetically-modified stem cell implant.  He discusses how patients’ lives have been saved with genetic screening, and how patients have avoided painful and unnecessary procedures because of the same screening.  He also discusses a number of cures waiting in the wings, often delayed by an archaic FDA.

Most convincing to me was his line of predictions.  Collins illustrated 10 predictions he made in 2000 about the state of genetic medicine in 2010.  At the time he got laughs, yet all 10 predictions have come true.  He lays out further predictions for the future.  We are looking at a time when major diseases could be cured due to our increased understanding of DNA, and new techniques being developed almost weekly for the modification of our genetic code.

Beyond the stories and the medicine, this book provides a solid layman’s education in DNA and microbiology.  I would recommend it to anyone with a disease (especially cancer), to anyone concerned about their health, or anyone curious about genetics and the future of medicine.

Companies, of course, exist to make money. That’s often what makes them seem so rapacious. But their primal greed also plants them inevitably in the “reality-based community.” If a firm’s bottom line is going to be affected by a changing climate — say, when its supply chains dry up because of drought, or its real estate gets swamped by sea-level rise — then it doesn’t particularly matter whether or not the executives want to believe in climate change. Railing at scientists for massaging tree-ring statistics won’t stop the globe from warming if the globe is actually, you know, warming. The same applies in reverse, as the folks at Beluga Shipping adroitly realized: If there are serious bucks to be made from the changing climate, then the free market is almost certainly going to jump at it.

Observations of a Nerd tells a fascinating story about the evolution of wild dogs in Moscow.  Apparently they have evolved into four general breeds of dogs with specific traits.  This highlights how extreme conditions can accelerate the normally slow pace we associate with evolution.

An important part of the DNA <-> RNA -> Protein model is RNAi, or RNA interference.  RNA provides a couple of mechanisms that allow interference of what parts of the DNA (genes) are being expressed (turned-on) in a cell, and to what extent those that are turned on influence cellular processes.  RNAi is important in the development and day-to-day (or minute-to-minute) running of a cell.  It is also an important mechanism for fighting off viruses and other invaders of the cell.

Because RNAi can be used to turn-down or turn-off functions in the cell, it has long been seen as a possible weapon against disease.  For example, cancer cells could be targeted with RNAi from outside the cell and reproduction or mutation could be halted.  In this way cancer cells could be killed.  This same technique could be used to guard against viruses and other genetic pirates of the molecular biology world.

One problem with this approach has been the inability to correctly target only those cells that one wishes to affect.

Nanotechnology has a history filled with more speculation and hypothesis than experimental science and real use.  However, in recent years nanotech and medicine have seen a couple of breakthroughs that might result in new therapies for disease.  A breakthrough last year showed how gold nanoparticles can been used in conjunction with radiation to treat cancer.  And now researches at  CalTech have demonstrated nanobots that accurately deliver RNAi to melanoma cells (cancer).  This type of chemical deliver has huge promise.

The fight against cancer has always been waged with blunt instruments.  Chemotherapy attacks the cancer, but it also attacks healthy systems in the patient.  The same is true of radiation treatments.  Surgery is invasive and often ineffective.  But the delivery of specific chemical compounds to very specific locations within the body (individual cells!) could see the battle against cancer and other diseases gaining a very precision weapon.

Image if Einstein decided to retract general relativity in the late 1920s, with no reason or evidence justifying this action.  Imagine he simply decided that he no longer supported the idea.  Surely that would have caused a great stir in the scientific world and particularly in the world of theoretical physics.  However, the scientific community, in the end, would not have abandoned general relativity without proof it was wrong.  They would have stood by the theory, since in the 1920s there was already a lot of proof that it was very right.  We don’t need Einstein to agree that the theory is sound; we need evidence to agree that the idea is sound.

Similarly with evolution, Darwin doesn’t really matter other than the fact he first proposed it.  What matters is not what aspects of his original theory are right or wrong, though the vast majority of Darwin’s original theory has survived the test of time and more than one revolution in biology.  What Darwin said or did doesn’t change reality.  The theory, backed with evidence, changes our perceptions.  And that evidence is overwhelming in the cases of General Relativity and Evolution.  An attack on Darwin, or Einstein, is just an attack on a person, not on all the evidence supporting their theories.

A belief in evolution is not a faith.  Its based on the fact that evolution has been proven true by multiple, separate lines of evidence.  Evolution, for all intents and purposes, is a scientific fact.  It doesn’t matter what attacks might be made on the great man.  Those attacks, or anything Darwin said or did, does not change the physical reality that all organisms have evolved to their current states via natural selection.

Quantum Physics flies in the face of common sense.  Our brains evolved with macro cause and effect, with objects that are solid and act in a fashion that we expect.  Particles at the quantum scale do not act solid, do not act in a fashion that our brain would expect, yet this science and been experimentally proven to a level that is only rivaled by the evidence for evolution or relativity.

One of my favorite sections of the book addresses quackery and popular misconceptions around quantum physics.  Orzel does a good job comparing and contrasting the science with the misconceptions perpetrated by these quacks, and by the media.

I would highly recommend this book for anyone looking to learn more about Quantum Physics.