SOLD! Just Around the Corner (by Misha Angrist)

Some book deals are especially meaningful because of the people involved. I’m thrilled to announce the sale of Misha Angrist’s Just Around the Corner: The Long Road to Curing One Rare Genetic Disease to Robin Coleman at Johns Hopkins University Press. Misha was one of my professors at Duke University and served as my master's thesis advisor. Check out this photo of us at my graduation!

For most of human history, to be born with a genetic disease was to be condemned to a short and brutal life. Just Around the Corner takes one rare inherited condition—maple syrup urine disease, or MSUD—as a lens through which to examine the extraordinary evolution of genetic medicine.

Misha’s first book, Here Is a Human Being: At the Dawn of Personal Genomics, chronicled his experience having his genome sequenced and made public at the beginning of the personal-genomics era. At the time, he was an enthusiastic participant in—and advocate for—the movement to democratize genetic information. He believed that DNA should not remain the exclusive province of white-coated gatekeepers, and that ordinary people should have meaningful access to their own genomes.

But the years since have complicated that optimism. The promises of direct-to-consumer genetics proved far grander than the science could support, while companies found more value in aggregating and selling customers’ data than in empowering individual patients. As Misha writes in the new book, he became disillusioned with the “mostly empty calories of personal genomics” and its breathless marketing to affluent consumers.

Misha began looking instead for examples of genetics being used to actually help people. His search brought him to the Clinic for Special Children in Pennsylvania, where physicians care for Amish and Mennonite patients with rare inherited diseases. There, in what he calls “genomics in a cornfield,” he encountered a more grounded and consequential form of genetic medicine—one rooted not in selling people speculative insights about their DNA, but in diagnosing and treating children who urgently need care.

Just Around the Corner traces the decades-long evolution of MSUD treatment, from its discovery in the 1950s and the development of terrible-tasting formulas that kept babies alive, through the advent of liver transplants, and toward a groundbreaking gene-therapy trial sparked by a calf named Petunia.

The story moves from Bellevue Hospital to specialized clinics serving Anabaptist communities, from family farms and church gatherings to a Pittsburgh operating room and the biotech labs developing one-dose genetic cures. Along the way, unforgettable patients, families, physicians, and researchers illuminate the shifting line between managing a condition and attempting to cure it.

The book is neither a triumphalist celebration of “The Cure” nor a rejection of medical progress. Misha is interested in the harder questions: What counts as adequate treatment? When is a treatment good enough? How much are we willing to pay for a cure? And who gets to decide which treatments are worth developing?

Misha Angrist is an associate professor at Duke University. He holds a doctorate in human genetics, a master’s degree in genetic counseling, and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. A former editor-in-chief of Genome Magazine, he has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, Nature, Undark, and many other publications.

Congratulations to Misha and Robin—and happy Friday, everyone. Stay cool out there!