Without obtaining permission, his doctor sells Burnet's valuable cancer fighting cells for three billion dollars to BioGen. There are a few people to root for in Next, including Frank Burnet and his daughter, Alison, a thirty-two year old lawyer. A touch of comic relief is provided by three quasi-animals: an orangutan who speaks French and Dutch an African grey parrot who can imitate any sound, do math, and quote movies and a "humanzee" (part chimp and part human) named Dave, who wreaks havoc when his human father brings him home to meet the wife and kids.
His nickname is "Robbin' Rob," because of his practice of stealing other people's research and passing it off as his own. Bellarmino is an evangelical Christian and media savvy scientist. Another villain is the slick Rob Bellarmino, head of the genetics section of the National Institutes of Health. He is at the mercy of Watson, his chief investor, who pulls strings behind the scenes to oust Diehl and take over BioGen. Rich Diehl, the CEO of BioGen Research, is struggling to make a go of his startup. Jack Watson is a fabulously wealthy individual who pretends to be "a capitalist with a conscience." In reality, he is, a manipulative, ruthless, and ambitious monster, who commits heinous acts to get what he wants. The convoluted story involves a host of bad guys doing their best to make a quick buck at humanity's expense. Among the questionable practices in our brave new world are: patenting genes, experimenting with and selling human tissue without the consent of the donor, and using genetic testing to deny health insurance to subscribers who test positive for heart disease, breast cancer, or other life-threatening illnesses. The universities, in turn, have developed close ties with wealthy corporations. The United States government provides billions of dollars in grants to academic institutions for biotech research. There are greedy venture capitalists researchers who try untested therapies on humans and hypocritical scientists who say that they care about humanity, when their real goal is to fatten their bank accounts and aggrandize their reputations. You will need a scorecard to keep track of who is doing what to whom and why.
Be warned: this lengthy novel consists of short chapters in which the author constantly goes back and forth from one subplot to another. Michael Crichton's Nex t is another screed along the lines of State of Fear, his diatribe against global warming. (Reviewed by Eleanor Bukowsky JAN 7, 2007) ( Jump down to read a review of Airframe) ( Jump down to read a review of State of Fear) ( Jump over to read a review of Pirate Latitudes)
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