Michael D Stern

The Renaissance Gene Michael D Stern

Publisher Marketing: Who knows where babies come from? Or where they go... In 1997, lapsed Catholic medical student Daniel Lahey falls mortally ill after scrubbing on an abortion. Tormented by guilt, he makes a high-tech bargain with God. Thirty years later, Lahey is Chief of Ob/Gyn at the prestigious Homeland Hospital in Baltimore, when a brilliant African-American law student is devastated to learn that he has the wrong blood type, and an 8-year-old girl at a Catholic children's home develops a strange new type of leukemia. When the oncologist son of a Hasidic Rebbe teams up with a Catholic social worker to search for the girl's birth family, they find themselves being stalked by Renaissance, an unholy corporate alliance between God and greed, that is not above murder and kidnapping. So begins a year of miracles and tragedies, when the secrets hidden in plain sight for three decades will change everything. Set in a near future when players in today's "culture wars" have traded roles, this novel is a fast-paced thriller that attacks headline ethical issues: When does human life begin? Who has the right to "play God"? What are the meanings of family and race in a diverse and technological age? Are human beings again becoming a commodity?