In His Own Image

In a wheel chair and marked by an ugly birthmark over much of his face, Dr. Adam SZYMANSKI (POV) has been obsessed by hereditary diseases all his life. But there is a cloud over the opening of his new Institute for Genetic Disease Control (IGDC) For one thing his patented process for making synthetic replacement genes for those missing in victims of such diseases as hemophilia or phenylketonuria can only be delivered to human eggs in an extrauterine fertilization process. That, he quickly discovers, makes untreatable over 90% of the potential beneficiaries who dont know they have the disease until they are born. In addition the Szymanski process does not find favor among several groups of activists and newspapers who deliberately choose to misinterpret its purpose and function. Pickets surround his new building as they did its run-down predecessor. Eugenics, Engineered Children, The People Factory as well as Human Guinea Pigs fill the loud rhetoric surrounding the controversial IGDC. Adam battles the picketers and is sued for assault. The Szymanski process is a computer driven chemical process deliberately limited to the specific genes responsible for the subject disease to prevent any possible side effects from spurious genetic material. But it is so complex that it could not come to fruition without the computer expertise of IGDC co-founder Michael RICHARDSON, a PhD from Cambridge and an Olympic gold medalist in swimming. From humble beginnings in Britain, Michael is torn between his love for his work and his obsessive unsatisfied need for money. He has already expanded the role of the IGDC with a genetic information bank from which he supplies subscribers medical and genetic information on hereditary diseases for a fee. The data bank doesnt quite bring the IGDC into the black, so he also accepts a special project for the study of hereditary diseases endemic to the Mideast Not everyone fears the synthetic gene factory. There are some who covet this ability to genetically alter the human condition. Josip MIKHAILOVICH despises ethnic cleansing in his native Bosnia and is determined to use the Szymanski process as a way to by-pass it with ethnic enhancement. Towards this end he devises elaborate schemes to wrest the process from the IGDC. But Josip has to work with brash young activists like Draja GREGORICH whos missionary zeal impels them to eliminate the enemy. Draja finds working with Josip both baffling and frustrating. Nonetheless they incite activist groups, former patients, politicians and newspaper reporters like Pamela BERGER--a freshman reporter with the local Daviston Star. They even infiltrate the IGDC and try to influence its board of trustees-- a committee of the board of trustees of Haalvorsen University on whose medical school campus and under whose wing the IGDC operates. The board finds many reasons to doubt the wisdom of bringing the IGDC aboard. Gloria WICKERSHAM, a patrician from the founding family of Haalvorsen, has an infant, Brian, with Severe Combined Immunity Deficiency (SCID.) A concert pianist, Gloria comes to the IGDC to prevent having another child with the same affliction. But during the preparatory testing, Theresa FERNANDEZ, an IGDC lab tech who is working her way through medical school, discovers that the SCID child is not the son of Glorias attorney husband Arthur. A devout catholic from rural Puerto Rico she quits thew case but is talked back into it by Adam. She later discovers by accident that the father is Michael Richardson. She is morally outraged, quits and returns home to Puerto Rico. Adam goes tpo Puerto Rico to convince her to return. Meanwhile Gloria contracts meningitis on one pof her many free concert tours at chilfrens hospitals. She transmits it to her SCID son whohas no resuistance to the disease. Aam reveals his plan to attach the immunity fraghment to a mild invasive virus and trea