El ADN dictador by Miguel Pita: What Genetics Decides for You (Spanish Popular Science)
Why can we not stop at one chocolate? Do we really choose our partners freely? Are happiness, intelligence or infidelity written in our genes? El ADN dictador: Lo que la genética decide por ti (“The Dictator DNA: What Genetics Decides for You”) is the popular-science book in which the Spanish geneticist Miguel Pita sets out to answer these questions in plain, lively Spanish. Published by Editorial Ariel on 9 May 2017, it was his first book for the general reader.
Author: Miguel Pita, PhD in Genetics and Cell Biology (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
Title: El ADN dictador: Lo que la genética decide por ti
Publisher: Editorial Ariel (Grupo Planeta), 9 May 2017
Format: Paperback (Spanish), 350 pages, illustrated, ISBN 978-84-344-2570-5; also as an eBook
Themes: Genetics, evolution, the brain, behaviour, free will, nature and nurture
Amazon: El ADN dictador on Amazon
A geneticist inside an ordinary head
According to his publisher, Miguel Pita holds a doctorate in Genetics and Cell Biology and teaches evolution and genetics at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. His research has ranged from cytogenetics to ethology, the study of animal behaviour, with projects in the United States, Chile and Australia. He is also a science communicator on Spanish radio and a director of short films and documentaries, and it shows: the book is built like a story. Pita imagines that he has slipped inside the mind of Ale, an ordinary person, for one day, and follows Ale into the lift, to work and on a date, stopping at each moment to explain what our genes are doing behind the scenes.
What the book argues
The central idea is in the title. Nature, Pita writes, has placed a “secret plan” inside each of us: our DNA directs the building of every part of the body and many of the reactions that run through it, from hormones and digestion to what happens in the brain. Along the way he explains why we crave sugar and fat (a brain shaped for a hungry past now meets a world full of sweets), how men and women can follow different reproductive strategies, what a small vole that stays with one partner can teach us about the hormones of attachment, and how twin studies help separate the inherited from the learned.
The book is not a simple “it’s all in the genes” manifesto. Pita insists that genes often need a particular environment to show themselves, that the brain can change within limits through neuroplasticity, and that we can develop technique even where we cannot choose our talent. His point is that we are free, but only up to a point, and that knowing our biology helps us understand our own reactions. Readers should keep in mind that how much genes shape complex traits such as happiness, intelligence or sexual behaviour is still debated among scientists, and the book is best read as one researcher’s lively, opinionated tour of the evidence.
Who it is for
Spanish-speaking readers who enjoy popular science, students of biology or psychology, and anyone who has wondered whether we are born or made will find an entertaining and accessible guide here, full of everyday examples. If you like big questions about the mind, you may also enjoy René Descartes: The Man Who Taught the World to Doubt; for a very different view of consciousness, see La Supraconciencia existe; and for genetics as fiction, read our page on The Lost World by Michael Crichton.
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💬 Over to you: How much of who you are do you think comes from your genes, and how much from your life? And where in the world are you reading from? Tell us in the comments.
