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What is the "next"?
"Next" is the last novel published by science fiction writer and author of Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton, in which he uses his fiery storytelling skills to intricately intertwine several clues and numerous characters, through these characters and stories, he tells his thoughts on the age of genes that are about to emerge.
masterstroke
The story revolves around BioGen Research, a bioTech company based in Southern California. BioGen's CEO, Dr. Rick Diehl from a family of medicine, founded the biotech company with his wife's inheritance after obtaining permission from Los Angeles to produce a cell line with anti-cancer effects. Soon, however, Diehl discovers that his wife's estate is nowhere near enough to cover the cost of expensive clinical trials, and is forced to get into the urn of Jack Watson, a venture capitalist who has long been eyeing him.
BioGen's approved cell line was obtained from a cancer patient named Frank Burnet. Burnet, 51, who served in the Marine Corps, went to Los Angeles University Medical Center eight years ago for an acute T-cell lymphoblastic leukemia and was told less than a year after his diagnosis. Surprisingly, Burnet miraculously survived. A year later, his doctor told him: The cancer cells are gone, you are cured!
For the next four years, however, Burnet was repeatedly recalled to the hospital for a follow-up examination, which included not only blood but also liver tissue biopsies. At first, he thought the cancer had returned, so he became restless again, until one day, when the hospital asked him to sign a form allowing his cells to be used commercially. After some investigation, Burnet finally learned that the cells in his own body that helped him defeat the cancer cells were able to quickly and efficiently produce cytokine that could kill cancer cells. Over the years, his doctors have been pulling cells from him for research, eventually selling the cell line to BioGen. Burnet, furious when he learned the truth, took Los Angeles to court with his daughter, who was a lawyer.
Los Angeles has invested heavily in hiring a team of well-known lawyers to fight the lawsuit, while constantly smearing Burnet's father and daughter in the media, portraying them as profiteers who want to make huge profits. In the end, the lawyers succeeded in convincing the jury in court that the Los Angeles ramp-up approach, which benefits many cancer patients, deserves the protection of the law. So, duang! The hammer falls, the gourd case is closed: the ownership of Burnet cells goes to Los Angeles!
Although the mercurial venture capitalist Watson has a glamorous appearance of the conscience of the industry, often appearing at various awards parties and charity occasions, his fierceness and unscrupulous means are also well known in the circle. Watson covets BioGen's cell line and wants to keep it for himself, while arranging for Burnet to hide so that his opponents can no longer continue to extract cells from him; at the same time, he installs his nephew to bioGen as a security guard, sneaking into the laboratory late at night to pollute the cell line.
Diehl, who had lost his cell line, jumped off the wall and, at the advice of a lawyer, decided to extract cells from Burnet's daughter and grandson. So while suing the court, the Burnet mother and son carried the cells owned by their company, and at the same time, they hired experienced detectives to launch a thrilling hunt for the mother and son...
Side lines
The protagonist of the sub-line is Professor Henry Kendall of the University of San Diego. Kendall, a genetic biologist, transferred his genes onto chimpanzee embryos on a whim a few years ago during an academic sabbatical at the National Health Institutes (NIH) and implanted them into the womb of a female orangutan code-named F402. A few years later, Kendall was mysteriously recalled by nih colleagues and took him to visit a five-year-old chimpanzee named Dave. Dave has almost the same language skills as children of the same age, and is eager to communicate and play with people. Colleagues told Kendall that because it was an unapproved experiment and that passing it out would have a very negative impact on the NIH and the entire biological field, the NIH decided to euthanize Dave in strict secrecy. However, the colleague moved with compassion and summoned Kendall back so that he could see his "masterpiece" for himself.
Kendall spent an hour with Dave, and vaguely developed father-to-son feelings for Dave, so he took Dave back to his home in San Diego without his colleagues. Dave soon became good friends with Kendall's youngest son, Jamie, whose excellent bounce power allowed Jamie and his friends to win baseball games with ease. Kendall's wife soon developed a crush on Dave, who carried her husband's genes and had no intentions, and decided to let him enjoy the same treatment as the other boys. So Dave put on a baseball cap, put on his children's clothes, and went to and from school with Jamie every day.
However, a series of troubles ensued, and Dave often fought with The Bully's child Wang Da at school, and his superior physical ability always made him stand on the upper hand. The angry child King secretly carries his father's pistol and wants to kill Dave...
Another sub-line, almost parallel to this, takes place in Paris on the other side of the Atlantic. Geneticist Gail Bond's lab transferred human and language-related genes to the African grey parrot. The parrot, named Gerald, was brought home by Bond in order for him to grow up in the right language environment. Soon, Gerald not only showed his ability to imitate language, but also easily helped Bond's elementary school son with the math homework assigned by the teacher.
Bond has a banker husband who raises a junior outside. Once, the banker took advantage of his wife's outing for a meeting to take Xiao San home to steal the party, but was unexpectedly learned by Gerald. The resentful banker identified the opportunity and sold Gerald to an American tycoon. In this way, a genetically modified parrot from Paris began the adventure of the New World...
Sub-sub-lines and sub-sub-lines
BioGen also has a research project to study human maturity genes, which are still in the animal experiment stage and are led by young biologist Josh Winkler. Winkler has an addicted brother who is already in and out of drug rehab and is a super tea pot. Once Winkler was spraying a mouse with a virus with mature genes in the animal room when his mother suddenly called him to go to the drug rehab center and take his brother home. In a hurry, Winkler put the spray can containing the genetically modified virus in the pocket of his overalls. Just when he picked up his brother to go to the gas station to refuel, his brother, who could not grow up, inhaled the genetically modified virus into his lungs.
So a miracle happened, and my brother suddenly quit drugs, got a job, and became a model citizen. Before Winkler could recover from his brother's transformation, Bigmouth Mom had already gotten the news out. There are a lot of people who ask for medicine, there are big moms who can't bear the torture of adolescent sons, there are also aunts who have teenage mothers, and even New Yorkers on the East Coast want to let the mother with shopping control try this magical gene. Thinking of being able to mature so many people at no cost, Winkler was moved and decided to gamble heavily...
The sub-sub-lines should be more accurately bubbles, there are many, they do not run through the whole of the novel, but are interspersed in the main line, the sub-line and the sub-sub-line, one after another, and there is no following. These bubbles are either told in short chapters or in the form of newspaper clippings, and the content is varied: there are postdocs who are not willing to be poor and steal the laboratory for huge profits, there are alcoholic women who take DNA identification to find sperm to raise their fathers, there are performance artists who use biotechnology to be innovative, and there are various reports about risk genes, innovation genes, and master genes... A variety of things paint a dazzling ecological picture of the genetic age.
Ending and epilogue
With the help of genetically modified orangutans and parrots, Burnet's daughter successfully subdued the villains who hunted down their mother and son.
Mature genes also greatly accelerated the aging process, and Winkler's brother, who was just in his early thirties, died in a hospital bed.
At this point, BioGen's two fist products failed, and the company went bankrupt.
Watson suffers from a rare form of neuromuscular paralysis because genes associated with the disease have been patented, making it difficult to develop new drugs. Eventually, Watson died in a hospital in Shanghai.
The Kendall family and two genetically modified animals live happily together, and Kendall's wife runs a blog site that reports around the world on Dave and Gerald's every move.
The original intention of the creation of "Next" originated from a lawsuit at The University of Washington in St. Louis. Renowned urologist Dr. William Catalona, who wants to jump ship to Northwestern University. Catalona was the discoverer of PSA, who cured countless prostate cancer patients in his lifetime, and the prostate cancer he removed from patients also gave him a very rich library of prostate cancer specimens. Catalona obtained permission from his patients to take the specimens to Northwestern University to continue their research, but was sued by BGI. In the end, the court ruled that BGI owned the specimens, but Catalona's patients expressed strong dissatisfaction with the ruling.
Crichton was also very concerned about the rapid development of biotechnology and genetic engineering at the end of the last century and the beginning of this century, which led to many major ethical debates. With his experience in a Harvard Medical School class, he has written more professional subjects than other writers, and his vision is more unique and sharp. People with a little knowledge of modern biology will have a sense of illusion but reality when they read this book, and his analysis and criticism of the field of biomedical research also brings people a lot of calm thinking.
The novel ends on an autumn afternoon when Kendall takes Dave to a nearby farm to catch a market. Then a farmer ran up to Dave and said, "I want someone like this to come to my farm as a helper."
Kendall felt a chill in his back when he heard this, and the novel came to an abrupt end.
What exactly is the "next" waiting for us?
This article is from the Science Network Yu Xin blog