Next: Michael Crichton’s Thriller About the Dark Side of Genetic Research
In Next (2006), Michael Crichton plunges us into the darkest corners of genetic research, pharmaceutical speculation and the moral consequences of this new reality. The number one international bestselling author of Jurassic Park, Congo and Sphere blends fact and fiction to create a near future in which genetic engineering opens up a whole new world of terrifying possibilities.
Author: Michael Crichton (1942–2008)
Title: Next (2006)
Format: English paperback (HarperFiction), 524 pages
Scope: Techno-thriller about genetics, biotech business and gene patents
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0007241003 (ASIN 0007241003)
A Genetic World
Is a loved one missing body parts? Are blondes becoming extinct? Has a human already cross-bred with a monkey? We live in a genetic world: fast, frightening and potentially very lucrative. There are designer pets, a genetic cure for drug addiction and a booming market in eggs and sperm.
Questions Without Easy Answers
But is there also a talking ape in Borneo? Has a ’master’ gene been found that controls the others? Could an innocent man and his family be hunted across the country because they carry certain valuable genes? Crichton weaves several storylines together, some comic and some chilling, and ends with an author’s note arguing for changes to the law on gene patents and the ownership of human tissue.
Who Owns Your Cells?
One storyline follows Frank Burnet, a cancer survivor whose cells, taken during treatment, have been sold by his university to a biotech company. When the company’s cell line is contaminated, it claims the right to take fresh cells from Burnet’s daughter and grandson, and a bounty hunter is sent after them. Crichton based the premise on a real case: in Moore v. Regents of the University of California (1990), the California Supreme Court ruled that a patient had no property rights over cells removed from his body and commercialised without his knowledge.
Transgenic Creatures
Other threads are stranger and often funny. A researcher discovers that a chimpanzee he once worked with gave birth to a transgenic baby, part human, which he secretly takes home and tries to raise as his son, Dave, with mixed results at school. A parrot that can do arithmetic and talk back, and an orangutan in Sumatra that swears in Dutch and French, show Crichton enjoying himself while making a serious point about how easily genes can now be moved between species.
The Author’s Note
As in several of his later books, Crichton ends with an author’s note setting out his own views. He argues, among other things, that genes should not be patented, that clear rules are needed on the use of human tissue, and that the Bayh-Dole Act, which lets universities profit from publicly funded research, should be reconsidered. Some of his concerns have since been addressed: in 2013 the US Supreme Court ruled that naturally occurring human genes cannot be patented.
Crichton’s Career
Michael Crichton trained as a doctor at Harvard, and medicine and technology run through his work, from The Andromeda Strain (1969) to Jurassic Park (1990). He also created the television series ER. Next was the last novel published in his lifetime; he died in 2008. Readers interested in the real science could pair it with Jennifer Doudna’s account of gene editing, A Crack in Creation.
Tip
Expect many short chapters and jumps between storylines; they come together towards the end.
Why Read It
It is not Crichton’s most tightly plotted novel, but it is one of his most provocative, and many of the questions it raised in 2006 are even more pressing now that gene editing has become routine laboratory work. Read it as a clever, unsettling tour of where biotechnology might go next.
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