Full Description
"[Weissmann] has emerged in the last three decades as America's most interesting and important essayist. He has achieved this status both epigenetically and through Twitter, word of mouth, so to speak...Much like Susan Sontag, Weissmann likes being a contemporary, and does not feel shackled by tradition...This book is a joy for the heart and instructive for the mind." --ERIC KANDEL, Nobel Laureate and author of In Search of Memory "Only a mind as nimble and well traveled as Gerald Weissmann's could see, never mind make and expound on, the connections between salamanders and Prohibition ...white blood cells, Hollywood and erectile dysfunction ...health care reform and Marie Antoinette ...bacteria, the Equal Rights Amendment and the "Miracle on the Hudson." Better yet, Weissmann does so with wit and insight. A fascinating tour through history, science and pop culture." --MAX GOMEZ, MD, Emmy Award-winning WCBS-TV Medical Correspondent "Erudite energy leaps from this lively commingling of art, culture and science...In each [essay], Weissmann finds links between research and elements of history and pop culture, which play off each other to illuminating effect.
So US politician Sarah Palin pops up in a discussion of 'Marie Antoinette syndrome'...and the 'meltdown' of the mythical Icarus meets the nuclear version at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan." --Nature Epigenetics, which attempts to explain how our genes respond to our environment, is the latest twist on the historic nature vs. nurture debate. In addressing this and other controversies in contemporary science, Gerald Weissmann taps what he calls "the social network of Western Civilization," including the many neglected women of science: from the martyred Hypatia of Alexandria, the first woman scientist, to the Nobel laureates Marie Curie, Christiane Nusslein-Volhard, and Elizabeth Blackburn, among other luminaries in the field. Always instructive and often hilarious, this is a one-volume introduction to modern biology, viewed through the lens of today's mass media and the longer historical tradition of the Scientific Revolution. Whether engaging in the healthcare debate or imagining the future prose styling of the scientific research paper in the age of Twitter, Weissmann proves to be one of our most incisive cultural critics and satirists.
Gerald Weissmann is a physician, scientist, editor, and essayist whose collections include Epigenetics in the Age of Twitter: Pop Culture and Modern Science; Mortal and Immortal DNA: Science and the Lure of Myth; and Galileo's Gout: Science in an Age of Endarkenment. He is professor emeritus and research professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine. His essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications worldwide, including the London Review of Books and New York Times Book Review. The former editor-in-chief of the FASEB Journal, he is now its book reviews editor. He lives in Manhattan and Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
Contents
Epigenetics in the Age of Twitter:
Pop Culture and Modern Science
i. Prefatory Note
1. Walter Benjamin and Biz Stone:
The Scientific Paper in the Age of Twitter
2. Epigenetics in the Adirondacks
3. A Nobel is Out of Order: "J-Lo" vs Hypatia of Alexandria
4. Epigenetics and Alma Mahler
5. Inflammation is Complicated:
From Metchnikoff to Meryl Streep
6. An Arrowsmith for the NASDAQ Era:
"Extraordinary Measures"
7. Sarah Palin and Marie-Antoinette:
Post Traumatic Tress Disorder
8. Coca Cola® and H.G.Wells:
Dietary Supplements as Subprime Drugs
9. Voodoo Economics and Voodoo Healing:
Witchcraft Persists in Massachusetts:
10. Myrna Loy: Co-Principal Investigator
11. Dr. Ehrlich and Dr. Atomic:
Beauty vs. Horror in Science
12. Free Radicals Can Kill You:
Lavoisier and the Oxygen Revolution
13. Experimental Errors:
Paul Bert and the Alabama Tenure Killings
14. Monumental Revolutions:
Scientific, Sanitary and `Omic
15. Quorum Sensing on the Airbus Wing
16. Sicko Statistics:
Michael Moore and L'École de Paris
17. Ask Your Doctor:
Justice Holmes and the Marketplace of Ideas
18. Filter the Dogs:
Microbial Mishaps in Massachusetts
19. Pattern Recognition and Gestalt Psychology:
The Day Nüsslein-Volhard Shouted "Toll!"
20. Not by the Sword, But Disease:
Doctor Howe and General Shinseki
21. Science as Oath and Testimony:
Joshua Lederberg
22. X-ray Politics:
The Nazi War on Röntgen and Einstein
23. Wild Horses and "The Doctor's Dilemma"
24. Glass Ceilings At the Nobel Prizes
25. Medea and the Microtubule
