This is a bold, thought-provoking exploration of the gaps in our understanding of the ethical, philosophical, and political ramifications of our genetics and how they are shaped by our environments.
Disentangling humans synthesizes life and social sciences, and the humanities, into a philosophical understanding of humans in terms of wellbeing, sociality and ethics.
Drawing from the fields of classical genetics, evolutionary biology and sociopsychology, and infused with references to classic literature and popular art, Dr Apidianakis examines the following questions through the lenses of DNA:
1. Is it more meaningful to predict the disease prospects of each individual or to indiscriminately prevent disease from happening?
2. Are there biological limits in achieving the humanitarian ideal of human equality? That is, are there inerasable inequalities among people?
3. Can we be determined by our genes and environments and still be responsible for our actions?
4. Are we more behaviorally free when following our hearts or when planning for the future?
5. When we punish people, should we be aiming to pacify the victim or rectify the prospective perpetrator?
6. Which should guide our politics and ethics, our ideals or our universal behavioral attributes?
7. What does it mean to be human?
The book is a flow of ten interlinked chapters intended for the scholar, the student, and the layperson alike. It is a source of information and arguments helping to understand the human condition from the perspective of genetics..
Apidianakis, Yiorgos: - Yiorgos Apidianakis has a PhD in Molecular Genetics and is a professor of Genetics at the University of Cyprus since 2012, where he teaches Classical Genetics and Immunology for undergraduates and Quantitative Human Genetics for graduate students. He has been trained in biomedical research for 10 years at Harvard Medical School; 6 years as a postdoctoral fellow and 4 years as a Harvard Instructor in Medicine in the field of human infectious diseases and carcinogenesis. He practiced his research at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Shriners Hospitals for Children in Boston, USA. He is a Faculty Opinions member since January 2020 at the division of Cellular Death and Stress Responses and ad-hoc editor for the journals Metabolites and Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology. He has published scolarly articles in peer-reviewed journals, such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Nature Communications, Nature Protocols, Cell Host & Microbe, PLoS Pathogens, The Lancet Infectious Diseases and EMBO Reports. He is an expert in modelling Microbe-Metabolite-Host interactions leading to tumorigenesis in fruit flies. He also leads "The Cyprus Intestinal Health Study" (http: //cihs.cs.ucy.ac.cy/), a clinical study to explore the effect of microbial and environment factors in colon cancer development.
