In her new novelBaby X, a thriller, bioethics journalist Kira Peikoff deftly explores the timely issue of making babies by way of advanced selection and cell manipulation. She also taps into “science fiction” in a way that reminds readers of the oxymoronic nature of the term: science is not fiction, and fiction is not science, but when subjects are timely and significant – as in, in vitro fertilization, genetic programming, artificial intelligence – fiction can red flag technology by suggesting how good intentions, say, to ward off hereditary disease, might be subverted by corrupt power moguls who would market so-called desirable traits to wealthy clients, including fans out to steal celebrity cells by way of saliva, blood or mucus, and whose DNA would be converted into sperm or eggs, and frozen until a desired time.
In Baby X a secret lab, called The Vault, does just that. It’s an underground bio-cell storage facility in a remote part of the California desert, defended with a bomb. The FBI is investigating the rogue network, but it lacks significant leads. The Vault reflects the work of its two brilliant innovators --one, the supremely clever Mason Brown who has drifted into vengeful pathology; the other his former partner and lover, Ember Ryan, now intent on thwarting his evil machinations. When she appears in the novel, she has already made a name for herself as a bio-tech security guard, working now for the world’s most famous pop star -idol, Trace Thorne. But what went wrong when Quinn, a pregnant stranger, approaches them announcing that she is the surrogate for Thorne’s baby?
The setting of Baby X seems to be around the mid-2050s. It takes only 30 minutes to get from Newark to CA by supersonic jet. People live in relatively good health until about 110. Frozen embryos and monitored parental selections have mostly replaced having babies by sexual intercourse and adoption. Peikoff, who has been writing about “transformative developments in the life sciences,” shows – and warns - that critical attention should be paid now to what is possible. What she does not explore but what she no doubt has been following in the news is growing concern about the advancement and availability of bio-medical inventions for political reasons and the increasing loss of privacy and self-control.
In Baby X clinics that expedite reproductive experiments don’t care about the fallout of discrimination that goes on behind closed doors. In the form of “Selection” that includes manipulating gender, race, psychological, and physical traits. “There’s no legal standard, no transparency, no accountability,” as Lily, one of the novel’s three main characters, says. Lily is apparently the child of old fashioned intercourse, a lower-class “Unforeseen,” with unknown baggage, and is mocked for that reason.
Surprisingly, Baby X begins as if it were a romance for the 30’s something crowd , full of pop culture references and electronic communication. The prose is straight-forward serviceable, the plot a bit confusing as each of the three main women protagonists is given her own back story and different current problems. But then . . . their lives come together, and the novel turns into a suspense tale about IVG – in vitro gametogenesis. Stick with it – important issues emerge. The near future is not that far away.
