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"action-packed chilling medical thriller"

Dr. Daniel Lowell leaves his secured tenured position as chairman of his department at Harvard to open his own research company specializing in gene therapy. He develops the HTSR technique, which involves replacing a part of a person's DNA that causes a particular disease with DNA that is disease free. His research is so cutting edge that Senator Ashley Butler is sponsoring a bill that will outlaw the technique. Senator Butler, the most powerful man in the Senate is diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, which will end his hopes for running for president.

Unable and unwilling to accept defeat the senator approaches Daniel with a proposal that will benefit them both. He will quietly drop his opposition to HTSR if Daniel will use that technique to cure him. He also wants the DNA to be used to come from the Shroud of Turin and he uses his powerful connections to get the Church to give Daniel a sample. The operation will take place in a private medical facility in the Bahamas if Daniel and his beautiful assistant can outrun and outwit Italian police and Mafia hitmen.

Robin Cook once again takes readers to the edge with this action-packed chilling medical thriller. He raises some very interesting social and moral issues and makes it clear that politicians should not be the ones who decide whether a new medical technique should be available to the general public. SEIZURE is Robin Cook at his very best.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted June 29, 2003

Senator Ashley Butler is a quintessential Southern demagogue whose support of traditional American values includes a knee-jerk reaction against virtually all biotechnologies. When he's called to chair a subcommittee introducing legislation to ban new cloning technology, the senator views his political future in bold relief; and Dr. Daniel Lowell, inventor of the technique that will take stem cell research to the next level, sees a roadblock positioned before his biotech startup.

The two seemingly opposite personalities clash during the senate hearings, but the men have a common desire. Butler's hunger for political power far outstrips his concern for the unborn; and Lowell's pursuit of gargantuan personal wealth and celebrity overrides any considerations for patients' well-being. Further complicating the proceedings is the confidential news that Senator Butler has developed Parkinson's disease-leading the senator and the researcher into a Faustian pact. In a perilous attempt to prematurely harness Lowell's new technology, the therapy leaves the senator with the horrifying effects of temporal lobe epilepsy-seizures of the most bizarre order.

Torn from the headlines, Seizure is a cautionary tale for a time where biotechnology pulls us into a promising yet frightening new world.