Early on in the new book by behavioural geneticist Kathryn Paige Harden, she recounts a letter she once received. The correspondent told her a story about a 16-year-old boy who kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered a young woman. The letter posed an uneasy question to Harden: if we’re all condemned to our genetics, could this boy really be to blame for his heinous crimes?
When Harden, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, researched the name of the man who wrote the letter, she realised it had been sent from jail. The person who had written to her was recounting his own story. He was looking to Harden for biological absolution.
