Jonathan Pettitt – Sci-fi still influences how society thinks about genes—it’s time we caught up

We used to think that our fate was in the stars. Now we know in large measure, our fate is in our genes. When the Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of the DNA double helix James Watson made his famous statement in 1989, he was implying that access to a person’s genetic code allows you to predict the outcome of their life. The troubling implications …