Molecular Genetic Medicine

Friedmann, Theodore

Medical Books

Academic Pr

Politics & Social Sciences

Anthropology

From the discoveries of the principles of genetic inheritance in the 19th century to the development of the concepts of human molecular genetic disease in the 20th century, the treatment of human disease has been transformed from a focus on symptoms to the goal of correcting underlying genetic defects which are the cause of many human diseases. Here, Theodore Friedmann shows that this scientific revolution in medicine compares in importance to Copernicus's demonstration of the sun-centered order of the planetary system, the 18th and 19th century discoveries of the cellular structure of living systems, germ theory of disease, the invention of anaesthesia, and the discovery that genetic information is stored and transmitted by DNA.\nThe Origin and Development of Genetic Therapies explores the origins and early developmental history of the medical field of gene therapy. Friedmann examines the early failures and increasingly promising clinical "successes" for this new approach to cure genetic disease and explores how the concepts of gene therapy can affect human hereditary and human evolution.

The Origin and Development of Genetic Therapies: From Magic and Superstition to Molecular Genetics and the Human Genome

Science & Math

Evolution

Oxford University Press

As Albert Camus's famous dictum has it, the only truly important philosophical question is suicide, or whether or not life is worth living. Now, in Pieta, his latest collection of essays, George Klein—distinguished biologist, writer, Holocaust survivor, and humanist—faces this question head on, in a series of meditations on subjects ranging from the misuses of science to the vital importance of art, music, and literature to surviving catastrophes like the Holocaust and AIDS. Pieta is a passionate book of scientific and personal ethics, inspired by tragic events that resonate in the consciousness of each of us. Klein examines the thoughts of a number of people both famous and obscure—whose lives may provide some sort of answer to Camus's philosophical question. One essay, for example, deals with the tormented and unstable Atilla Jozsef, one of Hungary's greatest poets and now a national hero. Other figures from the past appear, too: fellow Holocaust survivor Rudolf Vrba, one of the first people to escape from Auschwitz; Simon Srebnik, a teenaged Pole who survived the Nazis by working on their riverboats, singing sentimental ballads for them; the geneticist Benno Multler-Hill, whose meeting with Klein leads to a fascinating discussion of the role of German scientists in preparing the conceptual underpinnings of the Nazi genocide. Klein moves on to a more general elaboration of the misuses of science, from CIA-sponsored LSD experiments to medical experimentation by the Japanese in Manchuria, and ultimately to a thoughtful reconsideration of his own role and responsibility as a scientist. He uses his extensive medical background to present a discussion of the processes of the biology of individuality, concluding with an extended and impassioned look at AIDS, as both a biological problem and a situation that will require the utmost pieta from each of us. Born in prewar Hungary, George Klein was raised in Budapest in an intellectually prominent Jewish family. He has led the Department of Tumor Biology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm for more than three decades.

Pieta

Klein, George

Philosophy

Mit Pr

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Books by Friedmann, Theodore