A medical thriller and legal drama focusing on the science of CRISPR and gene manipulation.
Sammie Fuller is a journalist who befriends 3 women who lost infants to a horrible disease after conceiving via IVF at a posh clinic and research facility. Run by the brilliant Dr. Saul Kramer, the cutting edge research he is doing involves gene splicing and editing. He has focused on a rare disease, Niemann-Pick, one that is inevitably fatal in infants. D. Kramer spends many nights in his lab examining and injecting embryos that are intended for implantation. But his mission, ultimately, is not to help prevent or cure, but to cause death. What twisted motivation turns Dr. Kramer from healer to murderer. Or is he really legally culpable to be tried for murder since “an embryo is not a person.”
Despite the medical and legal aspects of this plot being so obvious, the main character was a newspaper reporter which seemed a bit of an odd choice for the primary point of view. In addition, there was a side bit on the #metoo movement which detracted from the moral and ethical questions that were really meant to be the topic of the book. I really never connected with any of the characters as they were quite one-dimensional and the reader knows who we are meant to like or dislike. Not sure how much of the science was accurate but the author made it believable. I enjoyed the medical parts of the story, the courtroom activity, and not so much the journalist filing her stories.
Easy to read in a single sitting, I do like a moral conundrum and imagine the ethics of gene therapy will be hotly debated on both sides as well as the question of — when does life being or when does a developing collection of cells become a person in the eyes of the law.
Thank you to Skyhorse for this e-book ARC to read and review.
This is a standalone and is not part of any series.
Genre - medical thriller, legal drama, journalist
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