Summary
Summary
A few dead bodies are a small price to pay in the quest for immortality.
In 2025 America, it's hardly news when a renowned octogenarian scientist dying of cancer disappears from a local hospice, but when Kansas City Star reporter Rich Azadian begins to dig, he discovers that other elderly scientists around the world have also vanished recently--all terminally ill and receiving the same experimental treatment from a global health company. His investigation leads him to the reclusive Noam Heller, a brilliant researcher exploring new technologies to reverse-age cancer and other cells. Using revolutionary stem cell treatments and snippets of DNA from rare, immortal Arctic jellyfish, his breakthrough promises the genetic equivalent of the fountain of youth.
But when Heller is murdered and his lab destroyed, Rich and his girlfriend Antonia become targets themselves. With the local police and federal authorities failing to see the big picture, he realizes he must take matters into his own hands to survive and stop the killing. His only hope is to mobilize his network of brilliant misfits and infiltrate the vast and lethal race--among cutthroat corporations, national intelligence services, rogue scientists, and a mysterious international organization--to control the new technologies and perhaps the secret of life itself.
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Author Notes
Jamie Metzl is a Senior Fellow for Technology and National Security of the Atlantic Council. He appears regularly on national and international media discussing and writes regularly on genetics, national security, and Asian affairs. Jamie has served in the US national Security Council, State Department, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and with the United Nations in Cambodia. He lives in New York City.
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
The high-stakes world of bio-tech wrapped in a sequel thriller package. This novel features the same cast, same scientific underbelly that appeared in The Genesis Code (2014), but it's set several years later in 2025 (135). It's sprinkled with infomercials about the first book, and that can be distracting. Newspaper reporter Rich Azadian is enjoying the fruits of his success(6) with a book that happens to be called Genesis Code ((6), when he's assigned an odd missing-person story by his editor at the Kansas City Star. As he follows the clues he realizes that a pattern is formingoctogenarian scientists, all Jewish, all dying of cancer, are disappearing from hospice care and appearing on security video in Tobago. (76) But there's something strange about the videos; even though eye-scanning technology at the airport verifies the identities of the missing scientists, they all look like men in their 40s clearing customs.[77-79] Rich's investigation finds that a researcher named Noam Heller is the key; he's working on a project to reverse illness and aging, a fountain of youth to honor his late wife, who died of cancer. When Rich and his lover, Toni,/WHY IS HE TAKING HIS LOVER ALONG WHILE REPORTING A STORY? visit Hellers lab, they hear the eternal sonata (114) that plays as Heller works./IS THE MUSIC LITERALLY PLAYING? THIS QUOTE REFERS TO THE DOG'S NAME, SEBASTIAN, WHICH LEADS RICH TO BACH, AND AN INSIGHT ABOUT THE GENOME/ Big pharma and greed are the ghosts in the music and when Hellers lab explodes and Toni becomes a target for the bad guys after learning the third element of Hellers formula,//WHAT ABOUT THE FIRST TWO ELEMENTS? //the reportage becomes global//WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? RICH TRAVELS THE WORLD?nbsp; for the answers to the missing scientists and the deeper meanings of their total cellular reversion. (233) Metzer //utilizes a fine trope//WHAT? in Scientists Beyond Nations (SBN) (141), a research group on an almost invisible ship governed by the Council of Elders, (114) who protect medical ethics by excluding national interests from their research and discoveries and so can benefit all. Social issues, cool not so far in the future gadgets, and a well-paced thriller make for a good read. Less edgy than its predecessor, this thriller is based in the reality of the big business of science that has lost its way in the ethical wilderness of stock prices and ego.nbsp; Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.