AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion

Biography

Dean Hamer received his B.A. from Trinity College, Connecticut and his Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School . He has worked at the National Institutes of Health for 24 years, where he is currently the Chief of the Section on Gene Structure and Regulation in the Laboratory of Biochemistry of the National Cancer Institute. His research has led to contributions in a variety of areas including recombinant DNA, drug and vaccine production, and gene regulation. He was a co-inventor of animal cell gene transfer, and recently has begun a program on molecular therapeutics for HIV/AIDS. For the past nine years, Dr. Hamer has studied the role of inheritance in human behavior, personality traits, and cancer risk-related behaviors such as cigarette smoking. His discovery of genetic links to sexual orientation and the temperamental traits of sensation seeking and anxiety have changed the way we think about human behavior and raise a host of important scientific, social and ethical issues. In his most recent popular book, The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes, he proposes that human spirituality is an adaptive trait, but also that he has located one of the genes responsible.