In chapter 5 of The Biotech Century, Rifkin takes a stand on the nature side of the debate. He backs his positon up by citing several examples of genetic research that have reported on finding links among genes and psychological diseases. I chiefly believe that the nature plays more significant role in shaping human life in general than the nurture. Although it will take tme for the scinence community to draw important connections between our DNA machinery and the diseases that are caused by it, I do think that genes imbedded in the DNA molecule plays the most important role in IQ determinance, alcoholism, depression and so on... On page 152, Rifkin writes, " mice lacking 5-HTib receptor gene drank twice as much alcohol as normal mice when given a choice of drinking water spiked with ethanol or plain water..." This clearly illustrates why genes are involved in alcohol addition.
Alcoholism is 50% genetic disease, which should alarm the alcoholic parents to concern about theit children's future. Thus, the children of alcoholic parents are more likely to be addicted to alcohol than those of non-alcoholic parents. After reading 'The Sociology of the Gene', I strongly think that genes play a major role in determining many of our behaviors. There is no doubt about that. The challenging quesiton in the future of the Biotech Century is not -what genes are involved in what kind of behavior. Rather it is HOW do the different sequences of genes biologically affect certain type of behavior.
In chapter 1, Rifkin introduces the readers to the positive and negative consequences of the ambitious development of the biotechnology in the first chapter. Although Rifkin explains how the biotechnology is boon to the public health, the tone he carries throughout seems to be actually against the further advancement...