FORGOTTEN BOOK: NEXT

Nest by Michael Crichton  (2006)

This was the last book Crichton published during his lifetime.  (He has had four other books -- two of them in collaboration-- published posthumously.) With Crichton, you can usually expect a change of pace and Next is no exception.  It's a satirical techno-thriller written with a scattershot, diffuse approach, targeting various people and locations with various plotlines, most of which tie up well by the book's end.  This time around, Crichton's target is transgenics, with side jabs to outmoded legal rulings, corporate greed, and genetic research.

Frank Burnet has an aggressive form of leukemia and has been given only a few months left to live.  He undergoes extensive treatment at a major university and is completely cured within six months.  Still, his physician has him returning every six months for checkups and invasive testing.  He believes that his doctor and his experimental treatment had cured him.  Not so.  Frank has a unique chromosome that basically cured himself.  While he supposedly was conducting the follow-ups, Frank's physician had been secretly harvesting his cells and the university had sold the cells to a genetic research company  for billions of dollars -- all of which Frank was unaware.  The university had been given a patent for frank's cells, which it considered to be "waste" and no longer Frank's property.  When someone broke into the research company and destroyed all of Frank's cells in their possession, the company faced financial disaster.  But because they held a patent on the cells, they could go back to Frank and harvest more of his cells through eminent domain.  But Frank went into hiding, so what was the company to do?  Frank had a daughter and a grandson and they had Frank's genomes which were legally the research company's property and could be harvested legally, even though it would mean kidnapping one or the other and forcing needle biopsies on them.  To do this, they hire an unscrupulous bounty hunter retrieval expert to get the samples they needed.

Harry Kendall, a researcher at another biotech company, had allowed his cells to be used in an experiment tp combine human genes with those of a chimpanzee.  The result was never meant to go to term.  Harry moved on, not realizing that his cells had been illegally used by NIH to create a human-chimp hybrid chimp-boy named Dave.  Harry discovered this and met Dave, shortly before the NIH had scheduled to destroy Dave to cover up their illegal activities.  Harry snuck Dave out of the lab and took him home in order to save him.  Harry's wife decided to incorporate Dave into the family and as a companion for their young son Jamie.  Shaved, and wearing bulky clothes, Dave entered the second grade with Jamie.  There were some problems:  when a group of sixth-grade bullies attacked Jamie, Dave attacked them, bit one, then climbed a fence and began throwing feces ate the older kids.   Dave's feces flinging was surprisingly accurate.

Gail Bond, an animal research behavior expert, owned Gerard, a two-year old African grey parrot, who had been injected with human genes while a chick.  Gerard, it turned out, was inhumanely smart, could carry out conversations, mimic anyone's voice, and do simple math.  Gail's husband hated Gerard, and told Gail that the bird has escaped through an open window although he actually gave the bird as a unique gift to a lecherous client.  Through a series of un usual events, Gerard eventually ended up with a pet store clerk, who decided to go on a three-day cross-country to gift the parrot to another owner.  The clerk, Stan, grew tired of Gerard's constant talking, though, and abandoned him on the side of the road in the desert.

In Sumatra, an orangutan is spotted which can speak Dutch and French.  He is captured by an adventurer who used too many tranquilizers and went into a coma.  The captor used mouth-to-mouth respiration to revive him, but in doing so, passed on a respiratory infection and the orangutan eventually died.

An advertising agency proposes that genetically-altered animals and plant could be used to display product advertising on their bodies.

A biogenetics company is working on a "maturity" gene to help control addictive behavior.  Researcher Josh Winkler's drug-addictive brother, looking for a new high, ingests the gene and soon becomes straight.  Josh's mother insists he use the gene to cure the addicted children of some of her friends.  Unfortunately, it turns out that the gene also rapidly increases again, leading to early death.

Robert Bellarmino is a leading genetics researcher with no scientific talent but lots of political clout.  A man with no sense of ethics, he is also a lay preacher who uses his faith in any way possible to advance his goals.  He ends up being shot by Brad Gordon, who was a security chief at the biometrics firm which had bought Frank's genetics line; it was Brad who destroyed all the cell samples of that line.  Brad, who had a thing for teenage girls, was then framed for raping an underage girls and was on the run.

Jack Watson is a billionaire venture capitalist who is manipulating things behind the scenes, soon to be caught in his own trap.

A hospital morgue staff is illegally harvesting bones from corpses, often substituting them with pieces of wood before burial or cremation.

The book also includes numerous news reports about Neanderthals being the first blondes and more intelligent than Cro-Magnons.

As I said, a mishmash of plot threads, most of which come together for a satisfying ending.  Most of the characters are not nice people, and the legal morass surrounding genetic research can be disheartening.  But it is a very entertaining book, and the brightest spots involve the two major transgenic hybrids, Dave the boy-chimp, and Gerard, the smart and sassy grey parrot.  If for no other reason, read the book for them.