A Conversation with Michael Crichton, Author of NEXT

Q1: NEXT challenges the reader’s sense of what is happening, what is true and what is invented. How much of what’s in the book has already taken place?

It’s odd but nearly everything in the book has already happened, or is about to happen. The book does look to the future a bit, particularly with regard to some transgenic animals that become important characters. But for the most part NEXT is not really speculative fiction at all.

Q2: What scares you the most about NEXT? And conversely, which possibilities do you find the most encouraging?

I’m not really scared about anything in the genetic realm. My research actually reassured me, because I concluded that many of the things people discuss with great fear or great longing-such as designer babies, or extended longevity-are probably not going to happen.

I think that we’ll have some remarkable new therapies from this area, and we will also find that the genome is vastly more complicated than we anticipated. In that sense, the genome is a bit like the human brain-much harder to understand than we once imagined.

Q3: What first sparked your interest in genetics?

It’s a longstanding interest for me. I studied genetics and evolution in college, and of course as a medical student. Genetics has been one of the most exciting areas of scientific research in my lifetime. It’s hard to remember that when I was born in the 1940s, people weren’t really sure what a “gene” consisted of. And they thought human beings had 24 chromosomes, instead of 23! And they had no idea at all how an embryo grew and differentiated into a live birth.

Q4: In the past you’ve said that you usually do research to answer a question of your own that interests you. What was the origin of NEXT? (possibly for Powell’s)

This novel began when I attended a genetics conference at the Salk Institute in La Jolla. I learned just how fast the field was progressing, and how inappropriate certain legal positions were. The field obviously needed some broader attention from the public.

In terms of the novel, the question I asked was: what’s the current view of how the genome operates-how you get from genotype to phenotype? Because such ideas have changed hugely in the last decades. Of course, this question is ultimately the old nature/nurture issue, and so it is politically charged. How much of our behavior is ruled by genes, and how much by upbringing and experience? I ultimately concluded I couldn’t really address this question in the book, because it is so complex. But I arrived at answers for myself that surprised and satisfied me.

My answer is that genes are an integral part of our adaptive apparatus as organisms in an environment. So we find both heightened importance for nature and also for nurture. But the whole interaction is far more complicated than people thought fifty years ago. And it continues to change.

Q5: NEXT poses many complex questions and presents the audience with many moral gray areas. Where do you stand on the ethics of genetic engineering, stem cell research, genetic therapy and gene patents?

I oppose patenting genes, and argue such patents should never have been granted in the first place. The genome is our common heritage, going back millions of years, and it is absurd that anyone should own any part of it. I hope this book helps undo gene patents. The practice is obstructive and even dangerous.

Genetic therapy is highly experimental. It has great promise and great hazards. Stem cell research is more a political football than a therapeutic issue, at this point. Politically it’s a continuation of the abortion controversy that has wracked this country for nearly half a century, with no end in sight. What stem cell research will ultimately offer us is wholly unknown. It may be hugely powerful. It may be a dead end. But in any case I oppose bans on research. They don’t work and they displace the arguments, which become about the ban and not about the subject of the research itself.

As for the ethics of genetic engineering, most people argue excitedly about what is not possible. If it were possible to pop genes in and out of embryos, to make designer babies, then we would indeed have serious ethical questions to face. At the moment, that is not possible at all. I therefore don’t think that talking about it does a lot of good. On major human life decisions, I don’t think there is great value in deciding what you will do until you are actually faced with the issue. For example, I think it is fruitless to speculate what you would do if you had a fatal disease. Eventually we all get one, and our behavior at that point will probably not be what we imagined.

Similarly, I think we don’t know in advance how we will respond to opportunities in new technology. We just don’t know.

Q6: What is the latest court ruling as to what constitutes cell ownership? Are there any upcoming cases that you’re keeping an eye on?

Rules regarding tissues are fragmented. A recent Sixth Circuit decision regarding the tissue collection of Dr. William Catalona has set back the efforts of patients to have some control over what happens to their tissues, once donated to medical research. There are good reasons why patients deserve such control. If you give your tissue for prostate research, you might not want the tissues used for other purposes you disagree with. You might have religious or other objections. You might have legal concerns, because if your genetic information was published your insurance might be cancelled. These are genuine concerns.

Federal guidelines regarding tissues are much more humane. And they don’t interfere with research. We need Congress to make these guidelines the law of the land.

Q7: One of your characters warns that science is as corruptible an enterprise as any other, academics and entrepreneurs are way too cozy and data can be massaged to achieve any desired result. Is this something the American public should be more aware of?

I hope that such unsavory narratives as the Vioxx scandal will convince the public that we need better and more independent sources of information. But it is also true that the British slaughter of livestock at the height of the BSE scare now seems to have been unnecessary, the result of a flawed computer prediction. We are going to see more such errors in many areas of science. I believe we live in the greatest era of snake oil salesmen in the history of mankind. Unless government acts to assure us of independently verified information, we will continue to suffer bad science policies, and even deaths.

Q8: How do you stay informed about current and cutting-edge science? How much do you read? Are you actively involved in the scientific community?

There is no secret. I just read a lot. I don’t talk to a lot of scientists. It’s faster to read than talk.

Q9: Many of your previous books have ignited public discussion and debate. Do you think NEXT will provoke a similar response?

I am never sure how the public reaction to my books will be. I’m usually surprised. I won’t make any predictions about this book.

Q10: In 2005, you appeared before the United States Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works to discuss the politicization of scientific research. What was your message? Why is this such a big problem and what is the solution?

Essentially I argued that what we need is a government policy that assures independently verified information in any area that is important to policy. This is the essence of the scientific method. There are well-established statistical procedures to make sure that the information you get is unbiased. It’s simple enough to do, although expensive. But bad information is expensive, and bad policies are very expensive.

I argue that we live in a technological society where science matters, and it is up to the government to make sure that what we’re told is accurate.

For this rather ordinary argument I was thoroughly attacked. There are many people out there who don’t want their data to be checked!

Q11: What’s so striking about all your books and now NEXT in particular is your ability to make complicated science comprehensible to a mass audience while also showcasing your tremendous expertise. How do you pull that off time after time?

Again, there’s no secret. Making the story clear is accomplished by rewriting and rewriting until the technical passages are understandable. In any book, there are usually a few pages that I end up rewriting about twenty times.

Q12: After the final thrilling page, what would you most like readers to take away from NEXT?

The future is bright and exciting, and it will challenge us to think in fresh ways about our lives. But among our challenges today, we have some legal problems in genetics that need to be fixed. We need some laws passed, and some laws changed.

But I am optimistic about the future. Very optimistic. Michael Crichton NEXT Audio Interview Transcript

JB: Hi, I’m Jonathan Burnham, publisher of HarperCollins, and I’m here interviewing bestselling-author Michael Crichton about his new novel, Next.

Michael, as with many of your other novels, Next is a vivid dramatization of what can happen when cutting-edge science goes a little too far. Is Next a cautionary tale?

MC: Well, I think it is, in the sense that many of the books are. But for me what’s different about this book is that so much of it is real-or that so much of it is very thinly-disguised versions of actual events that have occurred. Genetics, which is the subject of the book, has advanced extraordinarily rapidly in the last 15 years or so and sometimes in directions that many people are troubled about, or disapprove of, and so it is a very interesting and hot contentious area.

JB: And have you been tracking the science of genetics for the last 15 years, watching it, seeing what’s going on, and building a portfolio?

MC: Actually, you know it’s odd, I was very interested in it at the time of Jurassic Park which now to my astonishment was 15 years ago, and I lost track of it a bit, so to return is to have this odd sense of coming into a world where so many things that were fictional 15 years ago are now taking place.

JB: You’ve chosen a very interesting and I think new form for this novel, which is to break down the conventional narrative into many different stores, some of which overlap, some of which are self-contained, and others which move forward and become the principle themes of the book. How did you conceive of this book, in formal terms?

MC: Well, I think there were two considerations that I had. One was that I was unable to overlook the structure of the genome as we are now starting to understand it, and how individual genes interact with other genes, or may seem to be silent, or we don’t really know what they do, or sometimes there are repetitions that are not clear to us, and it struck me as an interesting idea to try to organize the novel in that way, even though it’s not what one ordinarily does. The second thing that was driving me was the notion that there are a great many stories of interest in this area, and they’re all quite different in terms of the legal and ethical problems that are raised in the field, so I wanted to do a number of different stories.