Armand Marie Leroi - Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body

MUTANTS

Armand Marie Leroi, in addition to many technical articles on evolutionary and developmental biology, has written for the London Review of Books and The Times Literary Supplement. He was appointed Reader in Evolutionary Developmental Biology at Imperial College in 2001 and was also warded the Scientist for the New Century medal by the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Mutants is his first book.

Praise for Mutants

Armand Leroi is not yet a household name but he soon will be, if Mutants wins the following it deserves. The discovery of a distinguished scientist who can write with such style and flair is cause for rejoicing.

The Independent

Leroi has an extraordinarily extensive familiarity with a dazzling range of information . [He] draws tight his net of wonderful human diversity and gracefully displays its contents, and I am full of admiration an exquisitely life-enhancing book. It captures what we know of the development of what makes us human . Read it and marvel.

Nature

Lerois debut is a gloriously inquisitive and even hopeful journey into the making and unmaking of human beings, a recognition that genetic variation is essential to life even as it bears us down to our graves.

The Village Voice

Leroi is a gifted storyteller he places each mutation in a literary framework. TimeOut New York

In a series of erudite, gracefully crafted essays, Leroi guides us through a wealth of medical phenomenaboth the normal and the shockingly abnormal he lifts us up from an instinctive horror at the bizarre to a more profound sense of wonder.

The Sunday Times (London)

There are three things that lift this book above mere exploitation: the seriousness of Lerois scientific investigations; the humane concern he manifests for the suffering of others; and the sensitivity of his aesthetic appreciation of the wonders of nature . [His] patient unfolding of the mysteries of modern genetics Poetic, philosophical, profound, witty and challenging, Leroi is, as he says of Goya, a compassionate connoisseur of deformity.

The Guardian (London)

For those who truly wish to know their origins without consulting a dry academic tome, this is a book to read.

The Economist

Gracefully written and up-to-date account of the state of the field. His approach is cunning; like a fairground barker, he first appeals to our voyeurism, but then adroitly bends our interests toward the science underlying the mutants . Mutants roams engagingly through great swathes of literature, mythology, and history . Well worth reading, not only for its fascinating tales of development, but also for its scrutiny of a vast uncharted area of biology.

Professor Jerry A. Coyne, TLS

Leroi writes about the body with Pateresque delicacy; he is an aesthete for whom understanding enhances mystery; an artist who gazes at the dance of genes as the fetus forms itself.

Sunday Telegraph (London)

In a book thats as disturbing as it is enlightening, as unsettling as it is compelling, Leroi examines all sorts of genetic variability in humans and explains how that variability helps scientists understand the processes associated with human growth and development . Although the subjects Leroi presentsconjoined twins, individuals with cyclopia (a single eye), deformed or missing limbs, abnormal height often appear grotesque, he approaches all of his topics and each of his human subjects with great respect.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Once, people with disfiguring or bizarre mutations were thought monstrous. Now they give vital clues to the dance of genes during the bodys growth. Armand Leroi combines meticulous historical research, brand-new genetic understanding, and consummate skill with words to tell an absorbing tale.

Matt Ridley, author of Genome

File under: not to be read during pregnancy.

TimeOut London

This book is not a smarmy gallery of freaks and monsters an elegant study Lerois aim is to illuminate, not to titillate a testament to both the ingenuity of organic life and the protean nature of what it means to be human.

Natural History

[A] fascinating and immensely readable book.

Financial Times

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First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2003

Published in Penguin Books 2005

13 15 17 19 20 18 16 14

Copyright Armand Marie Leroi, 2003

All rights reserved

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

Leroi, Armand Marie.

Mutants : on genetic variety and the human body / Armand Marie Leroi.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-670-03110-0 (hc.)

ISBN 0 14 20.0482 0 (pbk.)

1. Abnormalities, HumanGenetic aspectsHistory. 2. Human anatomyVariationHistory. 3. Mutation (Biology)History. I. Title.

QM691.L47 2003

616.043dc22 2003057619

Printed in the United States of America

Set in Granjon

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Frontispiece to Fortunio Liceti 1634 De monstrorum natura caussis et differentiis. (Wellcome Library, London)

The Monster of Ravenna (1512). From Ulisse Aldrovandi 1642 Monstrorum historia. (Wellcome Library, London)

Robertss syndrome. Stillborn infant. From B.C. Hirst and G.A. Piersol 1893 Human monstrosities. (Wellcome Library, London)

Conjoined twins: pygopagus. Judith and Hlne (170123). From George Leclerc Buffon 1777