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The rise and rise of biological determinism is astounding in its scope. The
perfect white-collar defence, when someone accused of a crime cannot blame a
deprived background, is to blame their genetic inheritance. Dorothy Nelkin and
M. Susan Lindee trace The DNA Mystique (W. H. Freeman, USA, $12.95, ISBN
0 7167 3049 9) with an eye to the increasingly important role that genetics
plays in our lives.