Ridley attacks Venter for spilling the news in advance of the press embargo deadline, and for packaging it in a myth subsequently promulgated by many major newspapers - that the small number of genes kills off the idea of biological determinism and leads to the conclusion that our environments must be responsible for much of human diversity. The starting point is the announcement in February 2001 that the human genome has about 30,000 genes, far fewer than had previously been thought.

The dragon that Ridley seeks to slay is the widespread popular fear of a genetic basis for human nature, whose cause and/or symptom is the idea that genes are destiny, the enemies of choice and meliorism: that 'a gene for' X is an unalterable sentence to suffer, or benefit, from X. Its main theme is outlined in the title: many traits of human behaviour, and consequently features of human culture and society, have a basis in enabling genes (nature), but the development and expression of these traits depends on complex regulatory mechanisms that are to some extent under environmental control (nurture), including control by the brain. 'Nature via Nurture' is loosely organised around the lives and thoughts of '12 hairy men' late 19th and early 20th century researchers (possessing between them a large amount of facial hair) whose thoughts have influenced the long-running nature/nurture debate. 'Genome' gave readers a grand tour of recent discoveries in genetics and genomics, traversing the individual chromosomes in turn. Ridley's follow-up to the success of 'Genome' (4th Estate, 2000) develops some of the themes introduced there.

Genome by Matt Ridley