ABSTRACT
After the start of the human genome project in 1990, media and public interest in molecular biology and genetics increased in the following years. Scientists working in the context of the project hoped to decipher the “book of life,” but they also envisioned new medical options for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. The press regularly reported new discoveries in the area of genetics (Gerhards and Schäfer 2006 ), and genetic modes of explanation gained more and more credibility in everyday culture (Nelkin and Lindee 1995 ; van Dijck 1998 ; Duden and Samerski 2007 ). One of the consequences of this “gene hype” (Fleising 2001 ) or “gene fetishism” (Haraway 1997 : 141-148) was that not only specifi c and rather rare diseases but also forms of behavior and capacities like intelligence, aggressiveness, and sexual preference were conceived of as caused or at least signifi cantly infl uenced by genetic factors (Wasserman and Wachbroit 2001 ; Pieri and Levitt 2008 ; Kim 2009 ).
