Eric Lander Interview (page: 8 / 9) Founding Director, Broad Institute	Print Interview

Genetic information can tell us so many things about ourselves: how we're going to age, what diseases we're going to get. What do you do with that information except become a neurotic mess?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Eric Lander: We run a risk of a naive biological determinism, too. One thing I worry about is that as we begin to understand the role of genes better and better, we will tend to forget -- not scientists, but the general public -- will tend to forget that genes are only part of the story. They are where the light is good, and so we look there now. But, in fact, good geneticists know that everything is a product of genes and environment in a very interwoven fashion. So I do dearly hope that the Genome Project does not give rise -- I certainly want to prevent the Genome Project from giving rise -- to some naive biological determinism that says we are nothing more than the sum of our genes. Geneticists don't believe that. Geneticists believe genes are an important part of the story. By understanding that part of the story, we're in a so-much better position to try to understand the rest of the story.

Right now we have amniocentesis, and can learn the sex of a child before it's born. But some people choose not to find out the sex of their child. Maybe that will be the case with some of the gene information too. People may decide, "Okay, I could find that out, but I don't want to."

Eric Lander: I know how to go back to my lab and do the Alzheimer's test but I don't see any point in doing it. I haven't had a genetic test for anything in particular.

We know it wasn't what you ended up doing, but how did you get into math originally?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Eric Lander: I got interested in math by accident. I had a wonderful sixth grade teacher who was my math teacher. I only found out many years later he was actually a social studies teacher who was substituting doing math, but he somehow got me tremendously excited and interested about that, and it just stuck and stuck, past there for many years. But it wasn't a professional mathematician, it wasn't anybody who had any experience doing math. It was a guy called Jack Druckman, and he just did a great job.

Where was this? Where were you in sixth grade?

Eric Lander: Brooklyn, New York, where I grew up. Born and bred in Brooklyn all my life.

And what school?

Eric Lander: That would have been Junior High School 78, Brooklyn, New York.

What kind of work did your parents do?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Eric Lander: Both my parents were trained as lawyers. Indeed, they met in law school. Although from the time that I was about five years old my dad was ill. He had multiple sclerosis and really didn't practice past then. By the time I was about six or so, (he) was in hospital, until he eventually died, at about 11. So my mother supported our family, partly as a lawyer, but mostly as a schoolteacher through my growing years.

She had a law degree but she taught school?

Eric Lander: Yeah. In Brooklyn, New York, a law degree wasn't a ticket to necessarily a tremendously financially successful future. Certainly, as a woman lawyer in New York it was not a ticket to anything in particular, and so she practiced some real estate law. But a much steadier line of work was teaching school, and that's what she did for a long time.

How many kids?

Eric Lander: I had one brother, younger by a year-and-a-half.

You've probably been exposed to Frank Sulloway's thesis about older and younger siblings.

Eric Lander: Read the book, yes.

So how do you fit in, in your family?

Eric Lander: Oh, I think I probably fit as a typical first child.

In what way?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Eric Lander: I always had the sense of responsibility and seriousness that a first child had, particularly a first child without a father at home, which I think impacts all areas but accounts for even more in terms of the weight of responsibility one feels. My brother -- who actually also is a scientist, he's a neurobiologist-- he's definitely much looser and freer in a "second child" sort of way. It's, I suppose, a kind of natural thing when you come in as a first child that you feel a certain weight of responsibilities.

Do you think that affected your life, or your personality, being that responsible person?

Eric Lander: Oh, I reckon it did.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I think in many ways much of my early development was somewhat conditioned by being very good at things, being very good at math, being very good at school, and taking with it a whole lot of expectations about what I ought to go do. So in fact, much of my school years were pursuing academic excellence. It was all wonderful. I loved mathematics. I did well in high school. I did well in college. I went on and did well in graduate school. But it meant that only after I got out of graduate school did I stop to ask what did I really want to do, and I wasn't really sure at all. So in fact, I don't begrudge it for a moment. I had a wonderful time doing all those sorts of things, but there was a certain sense that there were things to be done, and only later do you stop and say, "Okay. Now why am I doing this and where exactly am I going with any of it?" And that, for me, happened after I left graduate school.

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