title: Exploding the Gene Myth: How Genetic Information Is Produced and Manipulated by Scientists, Physicians, Employers, Insurance Companies, Educators , and Law Enforders
author:  Ruth Hubbard 
description: How Genetic Information Is Produced and Manipulated by Scientists, Physicians, Employers, Insurance Companies, Educators, and Law Enforcers
zlib_text: The Commentators
  
  What your genes reveal about you
  
  Richard Dawkins
  
  02/24/1997, The Independent - London, Page 15
  
  Polly Toynbee is my hero, a journalistic knight in shining armour. To tone
  down the metaphor, she can usually be relied upon to hit any nail squarely on
  the head. But nobody is perfect, and even the best-placed and best-intentioned
  thumb occasionally sports a bruise. Her column last Thursday,
  
  "The nature of our DNA will always lag behind nurture", must not pass without
  correction, and I offer it in a spirit of pained admiration.
  
  Owing to some weird tribal or union practice of the newspaper world, authors
  don't write their own headings, so Polly Toynbee cannot be blamed for: "Gene
  testing is pointless. Our fates are more likely to be shaped by our
  postcodes". Nevertheless, it is an accurate reflection of what she wrote.
  
  But even if the postcode remark were true, gene testing wouldn't be pointless.
  Insurance actuaries would still want to read our genes, just as they reco