Mutants

MUTANTS

Armand Marie Leroi, in addition to many technical articles on evolutionary and developmental biology, has written for the
London Review of Books
and
The Times Literary Supplement.
He was appointed Reader in Evolutionary Developmental Biology at Imperial College in 2001 and was also warded the Scientist for the New Century medal by the Royal Institution of Great Britain.
Mutants
is his first book.

Praise for Mutants

“Armand Leroi is not yet a household name but he soon will be, if
Mutants
wins the following it deserves. The discovery of a distinguished scientist who can write with such style and flair is cause for rejoicing.”

—
The Independent

“Leroi has an extraordinarily extensive familiarity with a dazzling range of information… . [He] draws tight his net of wonderful human diversity and gracefully displays its contents, and I am full of admiration … an exquisitely life-enhancing book. It captures what we know of the development of what makes us human… . Read it and marvel.”

—
Nature

“Leroi’s debut is a gloriously inquisitive and even hopeful journey into the making and unmaking of human beings, a recognition that genetic variation is essential to life even as it bears us down to our graves.”

—
The Village Voice

“Leroi is a gifted storyteller … he places each mutation in a literary framework.” —
TimeOut New York

“In a series of erudite, gracefully crafted essays, Leroi guides us through a wealth of medical phenomena—both the normal and the shockingly abnormal … he lifts us up from an instinctive horror at the bizarre to a more profound sense of wonder.”

—
The Sunday Times
(London)

“There are three things that lift this book above mere exploitation: the seriousness of Leroi’s scientific investigations; the humane concern he manifests for the suffering of others; and the sensitivity of his aesthetic appreciation of the wonders of nature… . [His] patient unfolding of the mysteries of modern genetics … Poetic, philosophical, profound, witty and challenging, Leroi is, as he says of Goya, a ‘compassionate connoisseur of deformity.”’

—
The Guardian
(London)

“For those who truly wish to know their origins without consulting a dry academic tome, this is a book to read.”

—
The Economist

“Gracefully written and up-to-date account of the state of the field. His approach is cunning; like a fairground barker, he first appeals to our voyeurism, but then adroitly bends our interests toward the science underlying the mutants… .
Mutants
roams engagingly through great swathes of literature, mythology, and history… . Well worth reading, not only for its fascinating tales of development, but also for its scrutiny of a vast uncharted area of biology.”

—Professor Jerry A. Coyne, TLS

“Leroi writes about the body with Pateresque delicacy; he is an aesthete for whom understanding enhances mystery; an artist who gazes at the dance of genes as the fetus forms itself.”

—
Sunday Telegraph
(London)

“In a book that’s as disturbing as it is enlightening, as unsettling as it is compelling, Leroi examines all sorts of genetic variability in humans and explains how that variability helps scientists understand the processes associated with human growth and development… . Although the subjects Leroi presents—conjoined twins, individuals with cyclopia (a single eye), deformed or missing limbs, abnormal height … often appear grotesque, he approaches all of his topics and each of his human subjects with great respect.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

“Once, people with disfiguring or bizarre mutations were thought monstrous. Now they give vital clues to the dance of genes during the body’s growth. Armand Leroi combines meticulous historical research, brand-new genetic understanding, and consummate skill with words to tell an absorbing tale.”

—Matt Ridley, author of
Genome

“File under: not to be read during pregnancy.”

—
TimeOut London

“This book is not a smarmy gallery of freaks and monsters … an elegant study … Leroi’s aim is to illuminate, not to titillate … a testament to both the ingenuity of organic life and the protean nature of what it means to be human.”

—
Natural History

“[A] fascinating and immensely readable book.”

—
Financial Times

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2003

Published in Penguin Books 2005

13 15 17 19 20 18 16 14

Copyright © Armand Marie Leroi, 2003

All rights reserved

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

Leroi, Armand Marie.

Mutants : on genetic variety and the human body / Armand Marie Leroi.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-670-03110-0 (hc.)

ISBN 0 14 20.0482 0 (pbk.)

1. Abnormalities, Human—Genetic aspects—History. 2. Human anatomy—Variation—History. 3. Mutation (Biology)—History. I. Title.

QM691.L47 2003

616’.043—dc22 2003057619

Printed in the United States of America

Set in Granjon

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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List of Illustrations

Prologue

 I Mutants (An introduction)

II A Perfect Join (On embryos)

  III The Last Judgement (On first parts)

IV Cleppies (On arms and legs)

 V Flesh of my Flesh, Bone of my Bone (On skeletons)

VI The War with the Cranes (On growth)

 VII The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole (On gender)

VIII A Fragile Bubble (On skin)

IX The Sober Life (On ageing)

 X Anthropometamorphosis (An epilogue)

Acknowledgements

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Frontispiece to Fortunio Liceti 1634
De monstrorum natura caussis et differentiis.
(Wellcome Library, London)

The Monster of Ravenna (1512). From Ulisse Aldrovandi 1642
Monstrorum historia.
(Wellcome Library, London)

Roberts’s syndrome. Stillborn infant. From B.C. Hirst and G.A. Piersol 1893
Human monstrosities.
(Wellcome Library, London)

Conjoined twins: pygopagus. Judith and Hélène (1701–23). From George Leclerc Buffon 1777
Histoire naturelle générale et particulière.
(Wellcome Library, London)

Conjoined twins: parapagus dicephalus tetrabrachius. Ritta and Christina Parodi (1829). From Étienne Serres 1832
Recherches d’anatomie transcendante et pathologique.
(British Library)

Conjoined twins: parapagus dicephalus dibrachius. Normandy. From Pierre Boaistuau 1560
Histoires prodigieuses.
(Wellcome Library, London)

Conjoined twins: parapagus dicephalus dibrachius. From B.C. Hirst and G.A. Piersol 1893
Human monstrosities.
(Wellcome Library, London)

Conjoined twins: cephalothoracoileopagus. From Étienne Serres 1832
Recherches d’anatomie transcendante et pathologique.
(British Library)

Conjoined twins: situs inversus viscera. Ritta and Christina Parodi. From Étienne Serres 1832
Recherches d’anatomie transcendante et pathologique.
(British Library)

Kartagener’s syndrome. Dissected infant showing situs inversus viscera. From George Leclerc Buffon 1777
Histoire naturelle générale et
particulière.
(Wellcome Library, London)

Cyclopia. Stillborn infant, Firme, Italy (1624). From Fortunio Liceti 1634
De monstrorum natura caussis et differentiis.
(Wellcome Library, London)

Cyclops wooing Galatea. From Blaise de Vigenère 1624
Les images Philostratus.
(British Library)

Cyclopia with conjoined twinning. Attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. From Fortunio Liceti 1634
De monstrorum natura caussis et differentiis.
(Wellcome Library, London)

Cyclopia. Stillborn calf. From Willem Vrolik 1844–49
Tabulae ad illustrandam embryogenesin hominis et mammalium tarn naturalem quam abnormem.
(Wellcome Library, London)

Cyclopia. Stillborn infant. From B.C. Hirst and G.A. Piersol 1893
Human monstrosities.
(Wellcome Library, London)

Wild type mouse; sonic hedgehog-defective mouse. (Chin Chiang, Vanderbilt Medical Center)

Duplication of face in a pig: ‘Ditto’. (Jill Helms, University of California San Francisco)

Sirenomelia or mermaid syndrome in a stillborn foetus. From B.C. Hirst and G.A. Piersol 1893
Human monstrosities.
(Wellcome Library, London)

Supernumerary neck auricles on goat and satyr.
Pan Raping a Goat.
Roman copy of Hellenistic original, second–third century BC. (Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum, National Archaeological Museum, Naples. © 2003, Photo Scala, Florence)

Supernumerary auricles. Eight-year-old girl, England 1858. From William Bateson 1894
Materials for the study of variation.
(Imperial College London)