Perfect People
Nature, nurture and genetic engineering
So, what did I make of Peter James‘ book on designer babies, Perfect People, which I mentioned last week? Well, to begin with, I realised fairly soon that I’d actually read it before, and indeed reviewed it on my blog in February 2014. Whoops! But given the topic (very much in my bailiwick) and because I certainly didn’t remember the detail, I continued anyway.
The plot in a nutshell …
John and Naomi Klaesson are devastated when their son Halley dies aged just 4 years old. He has Dreyens-Schlemmer syndrome, a rare condition carried on recessive genes. John is a scientist himself and feels a terrible weight of responsibility for the welfare of his family. Now he knows they both carry this faulty gene, he’s desperate to find a way of eliminating the possibility of a repeat. His research leads him to the work of billionaire geneticist, Dr Leo Dettore: a man who claims to create embryos free from all diseases. Oh, now you’re talking!
But … it comes at a price! Eye-watering sums. Fees non-refundable. And in pretty bizarre circumstances to boot.
But John and Naomi are prepared to borrow the dollars – it’s only money. They’re willing to fly out to a ship in the Atlantic Ocean outside of the jurisdictions that prohibit engineering human genes, where they’re to remain until the embryo is created and successfully implanted. They’re desperate enough to endure a gruelling selection process, hours and hours of questioning and difficult choices – not just relating to faulty genes that might predispose to certain medical conditions (diabetes, ovarian cancer, manic depression), but also to physical attributes (height, intelligence, athleticism), and character traits (calmness, compassion, sensitivity). Three thousand options!
Detorre is clearly unimpressed by the meagre list the Klaessons select, but John and Naomi just want a healthy child with a few advantages, not a superhuman son who will never fit in with his peer group. Conceiving any child is always a gamble, a random throw of the genetic dice; they just want the odds reduced. What’s wrong with that? Would you take a different option?
Having choice in the matter, though, creates its own dilemmas, major challenges that haunt them day and night. Is this really the science of the future?
If they had known Halley would be afflicted by the terrible disease that ended his life after four short years, would they have had him?
If they were to rely on nature a second time would they be willfully denying their child the advantages available – for mere money?
Have medical and scientific advances actually weakened the human race – had a bad influence on human evolution?
Will naturally-produced children become a form of genetic underclass in the future, never reaching the heights of the genetically engineered children?
The questions are endless.
Once back at home, with Naomi now pregnant for the second time, things quickly start to unravel. She suffers from hyperemesis and is severely depleted by it. An ill-advised interview by John makes their news public knowledge and overnight their world is turned upside down. The press are relentless in their pursuit of interviews and photos. A fanatical religious group, Disciples of the Third Millenium, violently (and I use the term advisedly) opposed to science, target first Dr Detorre and then the families he treated. Eliminating them. And the Klaesson’s are definitely in their cross-hairs.
Meanwhile Naomi’s pregnancy continues inexorably. But … one after another tests reveal facts Dr Detorre had not mentioned – was he really the genius he claimed to be? … when he couldn’t even get the sex of the baby right? … when he didn’t diagnose a biological anomaly? … when he implanted two embryos not the one requested? Then, after the birth, the results of Detorre’s interventions take on a whole different dimension … bewildering, terrifying, inexplicable.
This is clever writing, with enough of reality to suck us in. Which of us doesn’t want the best for our children? But what constitutes too high a price to pay? I’m not surprised that Peter James took an age to write this story, and often despaired of finishing it. It’s immensely complicated, laden with medical and scientific detail, and deeply disturbing. And the ending is simply heartbreaking.
As Einstein said, Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere. This author’s imagination has been given free rein! But his research has been meticulous, his logic perfectly credible, which all adds to the sense of plausibility.
Disturbing enough for me to draw comfort from the ongoing humdrum knitting keeping me anchored in present normality.
Multi-tasking
With so many people at home and abroad really struggling this winter I decided to rustle up another batch of woolly hats to help with the crises. Time then for some light reading to accompany the flying needles, and clear some books from my shelves in the process.
Peter James is a prolific crime writer, most famous for his series starring Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. I happened to have the first two books in the set sitting all neglected in my study, at around 500 pages apiece, long enough to get me through the creation of a fair few hats, methinks! And an opportunity to sit at the feet of a master-craftsman at work and hopefully absorb some useful writerly tips. So, off I went …
Dead Simple introduces us to DS Grace and his personal backstory – his own wife Sandy went missing nearly nine years ago and he has been unable to find any trace of her since. This deep-seated and pervasive grief makes him super-sensitive to reports of missing persons in his professional life. There are c25,000 who go missing in England every year, so he’s not short of cases, cold as well as current.
In Dead Simple, he’s intrigued by a case of a missing bridegroom, Michael Harrison, and brings all his skill in observing and interpreting human behaviour to bear to solve his disappearance. Michael’s four friends took him on a pub crawl days before the wedding and left him in an open hole in a coffin with the lid screwed down (no spoilers; it’s in the first chapter). When the four friends are all killed in an horrific car accident, it’s a race against time to find the missing man, not to mention getting him to the church on time. So why wasn’t the best man there? Why does he say he has no idea what was planned? Who else knows about this young man’s whereabouts? Friend or foe?
Looking Good Dead is a more sinister tale. A young woman is brutally stabbed to death and decapitated. Who is she? And what is the significance of a macabre trademark left at the scene? Her gruesome murder is filmed by a person or persons unknown, and an innocent man sees the footage by accident. Frightening things begin to happen to him and his family. James weaves a complicated network of characters and agendas together without dropping a bobbin. Tense stuff.
Both books are compulsive reading, with short chapters, fast action, and numerous cliffhangers; the pages turned effortlessly. And the pile of knitteds grew effortlessly too. But I’m reminded of one of the drawbacks of reading a series like this consecutively: details are repeated in the second and subsequent stories with which we are already familiar. But set against that is genuine admiration for a writer who can sustain progressive backstories for his characters that make them such rounded and believable individuals. And there are currently eighteen books in the Roy Grace series; that’s no mean feat.
Ah, but I see I have another of James’ books, a standalone … Perfect People – at the back of one of the shelves I’m clearing. And this one is more in my own field – genetic disease, rogue genes, parental bereavement … Yes! That’ll do me for the next few hats.
Perfect people
Imagine if you’d lost a child to a rare genetic disorder at the age of four … You know that neither your sanity nor your marriage could survive watching another one die … Then along comes a charismatic doctor who offers you … not only eradication of the rogue gene you both carry, but subtle improvements on nature too … if you choose them.
What would you do? (I went part way down this path in researching for my own novel, Saving Sebastian – a ‘designer baby’ with a difference; so of course I’m instantly drawn to the question behind Peter James‘ novel, Perfect People.)
You know enough to realise that tampering with the germline is serious stuff: there’s no going back. You’d be altering something fundamental which will be carried on in future generations. But then … where’s the harm in choosing a child who won’t need much sleep when he grows up? Or who won’t put on too much weight? Or who’s got excellent hand-eye co-ordination? Why not? Future progeny would be grateful to inherit such characteristics, wouldn’t they? You’ll be sensible, of course you will; you won’t be seduced by the idea of genius, or film-star looks, or Olympic medal sporting prowess. You only want what’s best for your child. Like every other normal parent.
In Perfect People, Dr Leo Detorre promises all this. More than that, he persuades couples that naturally-formed babies will, in 40 years time, have become the ‘genetic underclass’. They owe it to their child to give him/her the advantages of genetic enhancement. Anything less would be a dereliction of their parental responsibility.
Swedish scientist, Dr John Klaesson, and his British wife, Naomi, have every reason to want to eliminate the risk of inherited diseases. Their little boy Halley died from the consequences of a fatal defect carried by them both. They know they can’t cope with a repeat of that. But they have a one in four risk. Dr Detorre is their only hope.
He maps both parents’ genomes; he lists a shocking multiplicity of defects they are susceptible to. He promises to eradicate all the risks. For an eye-watering sum of money. They’re desperate; prepared to borrow way beyond their means, in order to have one healthy child. A boy. And they’re restrained: Dr Detorre offers them far more than they’re prepared to accept. They simply want a child free from disease with a little advantage or two, and they do a lot of heart searching before allowing even that little enhancement.
Once they’ve set the ball in motion, everything feels surreal. They’re flown to a floating offshore clinic way out in the ocean, isolated from all human contact ‘to avoid any contamination’ of any kind. For tests. For injections. For the conception itself.
But afterwards, back at home, in the humdrum reality of everyday normality, everything starts to assume a quite different perspective. If he’s so clever, why did Dr Detorre get the gender wrong? How come he introduced more than one embryo? – things any ordinary embryologist or fertility specialist knows how to do routinely.
Misgivings ratchet up to a whole new level when sinister things start to happen. A bomb destroys the brain behind the scientific revolution. The Klaesson secret gets out; the world’s media react. The twins start to show weird behaviours, precocious abilities, and worrying physical and psychological anomalies.
Other families treated by Dr Detorre are massacred horribly. A sect called The Disciples of the Third Millenium declare themselves determined to stamp out this work of Satan. And one of the Disciples is stalking the Klaessons.
Tested almost beyond endurance by the twins’ behaviour, John and Naomi are nevertheless devastated when the youngsters vanish, apparently willingly accompanying a murderer. And in the search for their children, they gradually uncover the truth behind Dr Detorre’s work and the appalling consequences for their family.
OK, there are some rather unbelievable features to this sci-fi thriller and some irritating linguistic flaws, but I found it was a real page turner of a book. And a cautionary tale to boot. Be careful what you wish for! The author says there were times when he thought he’d tackled too complex a topic this time. He did; but for me he pulled it off. I didn’t actually care that the genetic disease was fictional, or that the parents were naive, or the outcome predictable. There’s a price to be paid for sticking too closely to the facts, and I think James made some choices for the sake of dramatic tension that paid off. It’s not a treatise about genetic engineering; it’s a novel! Enjoy!