The double helix of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) has become one of the most powerful representations of what life is: life is its chemistry (when it is not its electronics). The sequences of the 4 components (nitrogenous bases) of the double helix have been deployed wherever possible: from criminalistics to genetic engineering.
Although many impressive scientific claims in the early stages of the supposed mapping of human DNA were quickly proven to be unsubstantiated or even false, “genetic determinism” – that is, the attribution to DNA (and consequently to heredity, as well as to its mechanical correction) of various abilities or disabilities – prevailed without obstacles and has become entrenched in contemporary social imagination. Along with it, something that had been placed only a few decades earlier in the darkest periods of capitalist humanity also gained acceptance: eugenics. Even if the modification/enhancement of genes is a myth, it is still a manipulative fairy tale with very dangerous implications.