Читать онлайн «Blood Matters: From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene»
Автор Маша Гессен
Contents
The Past
My Mother’s Fatal Flaw
The Four Mothers of Jews
The Post-Nazi Era
The Present
Indecision
A Decision at Any Cost
The Father of Hereditary Cancers
The Cruelest Disease
The Science of Matchmaking
The Operation
The Future
The Future the Old-Fashioned Way
Biobabble
What We Fear Most
First Mariner Books edition 2009
Copyright © 2008 by Masha Gessen
All rights reserved
Portions of this book have been published in slightly different form in the following: “Mutations” in
Gessen, Masha.
Blood matters: from inherited illness to designer babies, how the world and I found ourselves in the future of the gene/Masha Gessen. —1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Medical genetics—Social aspects. 2. Human chromosome abnormalities—Diagnosis—Social aspects. 3. BRCA genes. 4. Genetic counseling. I. Title.
RB155.
G475 2008616'. 042—dc22 2007036751
ISBN 978-0-15-101362-3
ISBN 978-0-15-603331-2 (pbk. )
eISBN 978-0-547-42754-6
v3. 1215
PART 1
The Past
Chapter 1
My Mother’s Fatal Flaw
I SPENT THE DAY of August 21, 1992, driving to a mountainous desert town whose name, in the scorching heat and fine dust, was a seductive mockery: Palm Springs, California. I had embarked upon the most Californian of endeavors, an editorial retreat for the Los Angeles–based magazine where I worked. I ate dinner with my colleagues at a bland Mexican restaurant. I had two margaritas, talked more than I usually did, and told a story that left me vaguely uneasy, as I always feel when I talk about my mother: I cannot talk about her without telling lies. I do not remember what I said, but it was something complimentary, even prideful, I think, and though I loved my mother and was proud of her, talking of her in that way, with all that had gone wrong between us, was most certainly a lie.
I woke up at four that morning, in the bedroom of a rental bungalow, with a wave of nausea pushing its way up to my burning throat. I stumbled to the bathroom, drank from the tap and threw cold water on myself, washing my face and head clumsily, then looked at my bloated face in the mirror and wondered how two margaritas could have done this to me. I went back to bed and next opened my eyes at a few minutes before seven, without a trace of a hangover but with a sudden wakefulness I could not fight. With hours to kill before the meetings began, I tried going out for a walk in the desolation of Palm Springs, considered a swim in the kidney-shaped pool, and finally went back inside the bungalow intending to read some magazine submissions. I spread them out on the coffee table and, before starting, picked up the phone and dialed my parents in Boston. I was checking in at least daily back then and knew they would be awake—they were three hours ahead. These considerations were background noise; I had picked up the phone without pausing to think, just getting one of my daily chores out of the way while I had time to kill.
