This Sunday Times columnist's book is a chatty, middlebrow critique of modern genetics - for him, the biggest paradigmatic shift in human history. Quoting some outrageous statements from Linus Pauling and James Watson, he argues that all scientific ideas are polluted by culture and prejudice. Citing Josef Mengele and other Nazi biologists, he argues that eugenics, once a left-wing progressive ideal supported by G. B. Shaw, has recovered well from Auschwitz, due to our largely uncritical optimism about technology since the end of the Cold War. He romps through a familiar bestiary of bugaboos: Dolly, xenotransplantations of pig organs, germ-line therapies, artificial chromosomes, etc, let alone the dilemmas facing medical insurance, on which the American health industry relies.
He fans more anxieties about "free-market, consumer eugenics", as parents are faced with the choice of aborting embryos with genetic abnormalities. It's a pity there isn't more bite to his critique of corporate science, and he scarcely discusses GM foods, never mind human genome patents. But he convincingly asserts that "scientism" is meaningless as a moral guide, and while predictable and infuriating by turns, Appleyard is nonetheless damned readable.