Abstract
The author contends that, while understanding the role of DNA in human evolution and development is an exciting challenge for biology, it is not likely to lead to direct methods of increasing human perfectibility. The interaction of DNA with its immediate cellular environment as well as with the broader social environment is crucial and infinitely complex. Rose discusses how developmental and evolutionary biology both tend to ignore the active part an organism plays in changing its environment. The human genome makes possible the brain and the social and tool-using abilities which enable people to "transcend the limits apparently set by that very genome." Accordingly, techniques such as in vitro fertilization, gene therapy, and sperm banks will have a marginal effect on human evolution since DNA is subject to an almost infinitely varying set of environments.
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