Fatalism

Remember when actress Angelina Jolie got a double mastectomy, after genetic tests predicted she had an 87% chance of getting breast cancer? But how accurate is genetic testing in predicting various diseases? More accurate than going to a fortune teller?

Austin L. Hughes is Carolina Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of South Carolina. He thoroughly analyzes the subject in this article in The New Atlantis.

Genetic determinism is the idea that all or most traits are determined by genes, or that the differences between us are simply caused by differences in our genes. This is not the position of any serious geneticist or biologist — they all understand that genes interact in complex ways with the environment to produce traits — but it is an idea that has a lasting appeal among non-scientists, and is also implicitly or explicitly found in the work of many of today’s advocates of scientism, from IQ theorists to evolutionary psychologists.

Hughes concludes,

Genetic determinism is the idea that all or most traits are determined by genes, or that the differences between us are simply caused by differences in our genes. This is not the position of any serious geneticist or biologist — they all understand that genes interact in complex ways with the environment to produce traits — but it is an idea that has a lasting appeal among non-scientists, and is also implicitly or explicitly found in the work of many of today’s advocates of scientism, from IQ theorists to evolutionary psychologists.

By extending the purported domain of genetic influence to encompass such traits as smoking behavior, caffeine consumption, food preference, eating behavior, measures of intelligence, memory, and pain sensitivity, genetics companies like 23andMe threaten to reinforce the idea of genetic determinism in their customers. Especially for people unfamiliar with the science, this could lead to the belief that our entire lives are determined by our genetic inheritance — a crude but modern scientific form of fatalism that will not enhance but degrade our self-understanding. Fatalistic doctrines can only undermine individual initiative, making people more apathetic, more easily dominated by tyrants or manipulated by technocrats. It was in urging resistance to tyranny that Shakespeare’s Cassius said, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Today we look falsely for the fault in our genes; but while they are far more than the stars a part of who we are, they no more diminish our nature as free beings, responsible for ourselves, our fates ultimately unwritten.