In the documentary “avatar” of Mukherjee’s book, Mr. The first and the second part of the documentary deal with respectively: (a) dawn of the modern age of genetics, and (b) revolution in the treatment of (genetic) disease. The film is an adaptation from a book with the same title by Siddhartha Mukherjee ( 2016). “As to what constitutes fitness to survive, man and Nature do not see eye-to-eye… The whole aim of medical art, whether therapeutic or preventive, has been to counteract the laws of Nature”-Archibald Garrod ( 1931).Ī two-part documentary film titled, “The Gene: An Intimate History” by Ken Burns, a celebrated documentarian, was aired on PBS on April 7, and April 14th. The Gene: An intimate history presented in two parts on April 7, and Apon PBS. In short, this is a beautiful and engrossing documentary on the future of Genetic Medicine.īurns, K. The film also hints at the need for taking a unified Darwinian-Mendelian and Hippocratic approach toward building a healthier human society. Burns has reinforced these ideas beautifully with illustrations, archived film footage, location filming and commentaries. Importantly, he has shown how geneticists, physicians, patients and their families as well as society at large must cooperate, develop mutual trust and share ethical responsibilities in order to predict, prevent, manage and cure many inherited disorders. The film focuses sharply on the history of genetics, the science of inheritance and variation, in particular, the gene, the central player in genetics, its discovery, structure and function as well as its myriad influence on development, growth, health, disease and evolution of all organisms. Ken Burns, a well-known documentarian has produced a film titled, “The Gene: An Intimate History” based on Siddhartha Mukherjee’s book by the same name. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

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The gene an intimate history