The Selfish Gene - book review

The Selfish Gene is hailed as a scientific masterpiece and whilst it is not directly linked to medicine it is of huge importance and for me significance for anyone who wants to venture into medicine. Medicine is the joining of the study of science with the social impact of working with patients, so therefore to not read this book purely for the fact it is not specifically medical would be wrong. The book deals with evolution, the way in which genes utilise us the survival machines to survive and live an immortal life as possible. Dawkins creates a book that explains seemingly complex scientific concepts without the use of any real scientific language and no mathematics; he explains ideas of genetics without the language of a geneticist, hence making the whole book extremely accessible and enjoyable to read for anyone. Therefore I agree with W.D Hamilton who states that ‘this book should be read, can be read, by almost anyone’.

For me the book has given me a new outlook on life. Not the pessimistic outlook and existential crisis that it has given so many, but in fact an eye opening outlook. To view evolution as a product of genes wanting to survive and not organisms is refreshing and an idea that is completely new to me, as throughout school whilst learning about evolution in biology lessons I have always been told that natural selection favours characteristics that allow survival of the organism, the idea that it is in fact the genes that are attempting to survive and are controlling us to an extent is never mentioned.  I found the first few chapters to be the most interesting, in particular the second chapter ‘the replicators’ as I have always been haunted with the question of how did chemicals evolve to become complex organisms that roam Earth today. I was fascinated to learn of replicator chemicals that lived in the primeval soup and how over time they created survival machines in order to populate the soup further, and these survival machines eventually evolved to become the modern day organisms. If anything the whole book has answered many of my questions regarding evolution and the mechanisms behind it. However, similarly the book has answered questions that I did not realise I had such as how can predators and prey co-exist? How altruism evolved? Why we have so many or so few children? The list is endless, and all the while the book introduces new ideas to me from explanation of memes (‘the seemingly self-replicating pool of art and science, literature and music, knowledge, folklore and platitude that survives with each human life’) to why we protect our family members more often than strangers.

Volunteer Diaries 6 and 7 - the last skate

Apologies for not writing my volunteer diaries for the past two weeks, between work experience, university open days and school I have had very little time to sit down and write. However, that will change in the upcoming summer.

Friday was my last ice skating session until after the summer, but I will be helping out with some of the summer volunteer projects.

The week before was quite a challenging week though. I was to look after a girl aged 11 and to say she was in a bad mood would be an understatement. It was challenging to convince her to skate and interact with the other children, but after a long talk she finally joined in. This week was extremely useful for me as it is in the taxing moments that you learn something new, if the voluntary work was easy every week I wouldn't gain anything from it. I can certainly say my communication skills have been improved as a result from that week.

I am sad that I will not have anymore sessions until September as I have made some great friendships with the children, and I love going each week. However, as previously mentioned I will be completing voluntary work in the summer so expect some more in depth posts about that.

Work Experience

To be able to choose a career it is essential that you complete work experience to gain a realistic understanding of what you would actually do, not the glamorised and romanticised versions of the job that you see on the TV or hear about. This is extremely important in medicine because being a doctor is often made out to be far easier and glamorous than it is in reality.

The past 3 days have been my 3rd amount of work experience (if you ignore voluntary work), and I have been fortunate enough to be able to complete all of my work experience in different hospitals, this time at the Queen Elizabeth hospital, Birmingham. Previously I have spent my work experience shadowing different consultants and even one medical student, and whilst in there own right this was extremely useful I wanted to be able to shadow some Junior doctors and doctors in their foundation years to be able to understand what I would be doing immediately after leaving medical school, and after 3 days I can confirm that the work experience has only solidified my desire to study medicine.
Throughout my time at the hospital I attended many different ward rounds, I saw a lumber puncture, several blood tests, a cannula being put in to a patient and also attended a radiology meeting, which particularly fascinated me as I was able to see many different MRI scans and CT scans.

Whilst I won't go into detail of the patients I saw, as I feel that is not appropriate due to patient confidentiality, I will say that I was amazed by the range of people I saw. I saw all ages from a 19 year old boy to a late 60 year old women, all with different neurological disorders. I was particularly fascinated by the disorders that were verging on to psychological disorders not something like a inflamed spine (although that was interesting too).  I suppose the diversity of each day is what intrigues me and is one reason why I want to become a doctor as each day of my work experience was completely different.
I recorded all of the diseases that each patient had in a book so that I can further research them during the summer holiday, so I will include fact files on some of them throughout the next few weeks.