In an independent but related strand of thinking, some observers of the unfolding genomic revolution argue that one of its unanticipated consequences is the ascendancy of a genetic-essentialist worldview in which genes come to define the essence of humans and other living creatures, the distinctions and commonalities among them. In a genetic-essentialist view, we are our genes. Genes are what make one individual different from another (Nelkin and Lindee 1995) and one species different from another (as expressed by James Watson, cited in Lindee [2003:434], the human genome reveals “what makes us human”).2
