Why we are more than our genes

Steve Talbott

When it emerged a few years ago that humans and chimpanzees shared, by some measures, 98 or 99 percent of their DNA, a good deal of verbal hand-wringing and chest-beating ensued. How could we hold our heads up with high-browed, post-simian dignity when, as the New Scientist reported in 2003, “chimps are human”? If the DNA of the two species is nearly the same, and if, as most everyone seemed to believe, DNA is destiny, what remained to make us special?

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/getting-over-the-code-delusion