“Mutants: On the Form, Varieties and Errors of the Human Body”, Armand Marie Leroi

I read this initially because we invited the author to speak at the GenSoc Darwin Day Symposium 2006 and I wanted to be prepared. But it turned out to be really fascinating in the way that deformities are fascinating. The book features a lot of pictures, drawings and photos of mutants, but they are not even needed to keep the reader hooked. It’s well written in an intentionally dramatic style ( “Cleopatra ordered the dissection of pregnant slave girls so that she could observe the progress of their embryos. While we may admire her curiosity and ability to fit laboratory work into a busy social schedule, we can hardly follow her lead. We must approach the human body more circumspectly. We must find mutants.” ), which serves the slightly circus-like topic of the book well.

From a scientific perspective it is a very good overview of embryogenesis, Hox genes, the history of science and even human nature in dealing with “monstrosities”.

The last two chapters, however, seem like an afterthought, as if he’d covered the main themes and then remembered “I’m also interested in ageing and race!”. Those topics are also well dealt with and interesting, the style just changes to a more familiar genetics popular science book.

He is not intimidated by over-cautious ethical concerns and speaks honestly about his views of human race and brings home the message that studying inter-continental genetic variation does not make a scientist a racist.

Leroi does not try to patronise his readers by over-simplifying his explanations and this means that it is not the easiest read and is probably not intended for lay people. His use of foreign language expression is a little excessive but gives his writing a personal style.

Reading “Mutants” makes me wonder if it is advisable to have children at all for fear of the large number of things that can go wrong in their development. But then again, as Leroi puts it in his introduction: “We are all mutants. But some of us are more mutant than others.”