Who stitched those genes?

Michael Crichton, it would appear (and this is confirmed by his endnotes), does not like the way gene testing is now proceeding and the laws that govern/don't govern it, so he does what authors like him do best: weave an absorbing story around the worst possible scenarios that you can think of. And, to make it more real, Crichton's Next, is interspersed with real life news stories from newspapers like the New York Times, and The Sunday Times, wire services like Reuters, magazines like Nature and even various medical journals! Not surprisingly, the future, as the book's blurb says, looks closer than you think. To put things in perspective, though, Crichton is not against genetic research (how can you, given the kind of medical breakthroughs offered such as designer chickens, genetically modified to produce eggs which, if things work out, can be used to cure cancer), he's in favour of sensible regulations and clear guidelines on the use of human tissue.

What are the worst-case scenarios that you can think of when it comes to biotech? That people steal your genes and create horrific mutants who they lose control of? That there will be trafficking in genes, even professionals selling their genes the way they sell blood or sperms today? Crichton has all of these""indeed, the book begins with a detective shadowing a postdoc who's stolen some embryos and is transporting them in a cryogenic vessel to the buyer, and it goes on to a teenager who's taking fertility drugs so that she can sell her eggs to a doctor who is using them for genetic testing. Worse, one of the characters, Frank Burnett, is suffering from cancer and pledges that his cells can be used for scientific research by the UCLA, which, in turn, licences these out to BioGen Research. For some reason, principally to enhance the story, the cells get contaminated and BioGen needs to get more where they come from. So, the firm's lawyers argue that since they own Burnett's cell lines, Burnett (who naturally has these very same cells in his body) and his children are in a sense guilty of holding stolen property and the firm is well within its rights to get its property back. A bounty hunter, with an ambulance for the procedure of taking blood or other samples, is then brought into the plot. At one point, before the cells get contaminated and Burnett is challenging the UCLA's right to license his cells for commercial use, his lawyers privately tell him he may not have a case at all since, if the UCLA loses, the state could get his cells under the right of eminent domain anyway! This, Crichton's end-notes suggest, is not so fictional after all, and he cites a case which has elements of this.

The main story itself is woven around a scientist who, at some point in his life, decides to surreptitiously inject his DNA into a chimp in one of the research projects he's involved in. Many years later, he's saddled with his second 'son' thanks to the DNA results. On a similar note, though less horrific in some sense, a leading doctor is confronted with his 'daughter' from an anonymous sperm sale he'd made while in college to earn some extra money, after the daughter does a DNA test""she knows her mother got the sperm from the university's sperm bank, figured out it was probably a freshman who sold it for the money, got the university to cough up the DNA records of the doctors ... !

No story on genetic research is complete without some bizarre humour. So, there's a scene in the book on how, when a company thinks it has discovered a gene that makes users behave in a more mature manner (imagine drug addicts getting de-addicted as they now behave in a more mature manner?), the marketing/ad chaps get together to figure out what it should be called. Someone suggests 'conventional gene' since it makes users behave conventionally. Terrible, that's so conventional. So what about 'civilizing gene'? Worse, even more designed to get people off it. So, you have 'party gene', 'fun gene', 'happy gene' and even, if you please, 'stone-washed' genes! In another chapter, the Madison Avenue types think of the huge difference such research could make to the vastly overcrowded field of advertising. Imagine a fish swimming by in the river with its scales patterned in such a way as to say 'BP' or 'Exxon' for that matter! Lastly, since lawyers are the most creative when it comes to misusing any possible leeway the law offers, Crichton's characters plan a 'genetic defence'""a man accused of serial sex with minors is advised to use the 'genetic defence'""his genes pre-dispose him to doing unconventional things, to seek risk...

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Michael Crichton
HarperCollins
Price: Rs 195; Pages: 431