A Remedy for Death

It's said that we only go around once in life . . . at least that's the way it's always been.
But what if? What if the terms of life have changed . . . for an elite, self-selected few?
What was "mere" science-fiction not long ago is a fast-approaching reality in the era of bio-tech and genetic engineering.

Chicago: On the night his wife and young daughter are kidnapped and murdered, Dr. Doug Daulby, a neuroscience researcher, is caught performing an unauthorized illegal experiment- implanting human fetal tissue into the brain of a chimp to explore if it will develop human verbal abilities. The scandal costs him posts as a surgeon and neuroscience researcher at the university hospital.

San Diego: The twin sister of Kate Remington, PhD., a psychologist with a controversial approach to Multiple Personality Disorder / Dissociative Identity Disorder (MPD), is mugged and left in a permanent coma. Kate's ideas on mind and MPD are too radical for the university, and she loses her grant . . . along with her job and insurance for her sister.

The promise of a chance to start over in a state-of-the-art lab dedicated to cutting-edge bio-science and mind-science research lures Daulby and Remington to a clinic in the mountains of central Europe. But once there, they find the reality is vastly different from what they were told. And there is no way out.

They realize, too late, that a secretive cabal of the rich, powerful and politically-connected is funding "a kind of Jurassic Park for rich old guys". The aim: to recreate themselves, and hence gain the chance to go around again in life, as one of them put it, in "healthy, horny 21-year old bodies complete with all our accumulated savvy from this lifetime."

The work offers the promise of Frankenstein and eternal youth in the era of bio-tech, genetic engineering, tissue engineering, radical life extension, cutting-edge mind and neuroscience research, explorations of the line between mind and brain, cloning, regenerative medicine, and a branch of bio-science beyond cloning.

The project is almost successful . . . but the work opens dangerous doors . . . doors that, once opened, cannot be closed.