If social values determine what counts as a mutant gene, then genetic definitions of disease inherit the same value-ladenness as organismal definitions.

Besides these attempts to reduce species to beanbags of genes, genetic reductionism enters in attempts to explain cellular or organismal properties solely in terms of genes, or entire organisms in terms of genomes. Gilbert (1992) endorses an essentialism of this sort as well: “The information carried on the DNA, that genetic information passed down from our parents,” he writes, “is the most fundamental property of the body” (p. 83), so much so, in fact, that “one will be able to pull a CD out of