Monday, May 12, 2008

When you care enough to send the very best DNA

Yesterday was Mother's Day, and while searching for a card I spied what looked like a double helix on the front of one card. Finding this odd, I checked the card in detail -- and indeed it was DNA!

DNA is clearly in the public consciousness -- years of Law & Order and CSI have ensured that, but I found it striking that the image of a double helix is deemed recognizable by as mainstream & middlebrow a company as Hallmark.

A nice twist is the card actually bore a message along the lines of 'even though you didn't give me any DNA...' -- a card for mother figures, not birth mothers. So this isn't a sign of rampant DNA deterministic thinking, but rather the imprint of DNA on the public (or at least corporate) mind

2 comments:

Steve Murphy MD said...

Keith,
Now you have to buy and scan the card so we can see it. Hallmark's brand is warm and comforting.....Do you feel that way about DNA? I sure do ;)

-Steve
www.thegenesherpa.blogspot.com

Keith Robison said...

Nuts! I should have snapped it with the cell phone in the store (or picked it up) -- by the time I get back to a store they will have cleared out all those cards