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Nearly two decades ago, Paul H. Silverman testified before Congress to advocate the Human Genome Project. He later became frustrated when the exceptions to genetic determinism, discovered by this project and other investigations, were not sufficiently incorporated in current research and education.
In "Rethinking Genetic Determinism,"1 Silverman questioned one of the pillars of molecular genetics and documented the need for determinism's expansion into a far more valid and reliable representation of reality. He would receive correspondence from all over the world that reinforced this vision.
Silverman firmly believed that we needed a wider-angled model, with a new framework and terminology, to display what we know and to guide future discovery. He also viewed this model as being a catalyst for exploring uncertainty, the vast universe of chance differences on a cellular and molecular level that can considerably influence organismal variability. Uncertainty not only undermines molecular genetics' ...
