From our food and medicine to our sexuality and emotions, the avalanche of new findings in genetics requires us to rethink our views about what it means to be human, to form social bonds, and to live in society. Focusing attention on both the opportunities and the challenges this situation presents, the Institute for Society and Genetics aims to make these possibilities explicit and to help work t
owards a society that understands, discusses, and makes informed decisions about issues in human genetics. The more we learn about the relation between genes and behavior the more we appreciate the complexity and plasticity of these relations. There is no longer any possibility of separating out nature and nurture as two opposed determinants of who we are. For that reason, the Institute takes as its intellectual focus the idea of co-evolution of society and genetics shaping each other in a dynamic interrelationship. This orientation follows naturally from the Human Genome Project, which has focused attention on two major concerns. First are the ethical and legal issues arising from knowledge of the human genome and from associated research and technology. Second is the fact that the genetic basis of human life far exceeds mere gene sequences. Instead, understanding genetics requires a sophisticated view of complex interactions of multiple genes, gene expression and their social context. In fact, both concerns draw attention to the iterative, coevolutionary nature of the scholarship integrating society and genetics. With a better understanding of all of the levels of co-evolution, we will be in a better position to evaluate how we as a society are engaged at every level in the process of producing who we are and what we are becoming. Most importantly, we will be better able to judge the benefits and harms and the freedoms and inequalities that are being generated, and to make informed ethical judgments about matters of law and policy. These issues are becoming ever more pressing as genetics becomes an increasingly prominent aspect of everyday life.
