Specialist books : Battle lines

Robert Cook-Degan’s The Gene Wars: Science, Politics and the Human Genome
(Norton, £10.95, 0 393 31399 9) follows the sequence of political events,
scientific advances and personality clashes that shaped the international human
genome project, as it emerged from a multitude of fragmented research efforts.
Like DNA itself, at close range the sequence may at times seem baffling, but the
crucial events provide landmarks with which to map out the overall story.
Extensively referenced.