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Previous Volume 329:1662-1663 November 25, 1993 Number 22 Next

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By Ruth Hubbard and Elijah Wald. 206 pp., illustrated. Boston, Beacon Press, 1993. $24. ISBN 0-8070-0418-9.

This book is a sobering antidote to the intoxicating enthusiasm for genetic solutions to human diseases. The authors place disease in a social context, pointing out that with rare exceptions its occurrence and severity are influenced by socioeconomic status and environment and that, again with rare exceptions, reductions in the prevalence of disease have had more to do with improved living standards than with individual medical treatments. Some of the rare exceptions have been single-gene (mendelian) diseases that appear regardless of class or environment, although their course is influenced by these factors and by access to medical care. Now that . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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