Jurassic Park / Парк Юрского периода. Майкл Крайтон

uman life: our medical care, our food, our health, our entertainment, and our bodies. Nothing will ever be the same again. It’s going to change the face of the planet.

      When, in 1953, two young researchers in England, James Watson and Francis Crick, deciphered the structure of DNA, this was a triumph of the human spirit, of the centuries-old quest to understand the universe in a scientific way. It was expected that their discovery would be used to the greater benefit of mankind.

      Yet thirty years later research in molecular genetics had become a vast, multibillion dollar industry.

      In April 1976 Robert Swanson, a rich industrialist, and Herbert Boyer, a biochemist at the University of California founded a commercial company to exploit Boyer’s gene-splicing techniques. Their new company, Genentech, quickly became the largest and most successful of the genetic engineering start-ups. Suddenly everyone wanted to become rich. New companies were founded almost weekly, and scientists from universities went there to exploit genetic research and make money. By 1986, at least 362 scientists, including 64 in the National Academy, sat on the boards of biotech firms.

      This shift in attitude actually was very significant. In the past, pure scientists took a snobbish view of business. They saw the pursuit of money as intellectually uninteresting, suited only to shopkeepers. And to do research for industry, even at the prestigious Bell or IBM labs, was only for those who couldn’t get a university appointment. Thus the attitude of pure scientists was fundamentally critical toward the work of applied scientists, and to industry in general. So there were independent university scientists free of industry ties, who could discuss the problems at the highest levels.

      But that is no longer true. There are very few molecular biologists and very few research institutions without commercial interests. The old days are gone. Genetic research continues, at a more furious pace than ever. But it is done in secret, and in haste, and for profit.

      In this commercial climate, a company named International Genetic Technologies, Inc., of Palo Alto, arose and went bankrupt. It created the genetic crisis that went nearly unnoticed. After all, InGen conducted its research in secret; the actual incident occurred in the most remote region of Central America; and fewer than twenty people were there to witness it. Of those, only a handful survived, and they were willing to discuss the remarkable events that lead up to those final two days in August 1989 on a remote island off the west coast of Costa Rica.

      Prologue:

      The Bite of the Raptor

      The tropical rain fell like wall, splashed on the ground in a torrent. Roberta Carter sighed, and stared out the window. From the clinic, she couldn’t see the beach or the ocean beyond. This wasn’t what she had expected when she decided to spend two months as a visiting physician in the village on the west coast of Costa Rica.

      She had been in the village now for three weeks. And it had rained every day.

      Everything else was fine. She liked the isolation of the place and the friendliness of its people. Costa Rica had one of the twenty best medical systems in the world, and even in this remote coastal village, the clinic was well maintained and supplied. Her paramedic, Manuel Aragon, was intelligent and well trained. Bobbie was able to practice a level of medicine equal to what she had practiced in Chicago.

      But the rain! The constant, unending rain!

      Across the examining room, Manuel cocked his head. “Listen,” he said.

      “Believe me, I hear it,” Bobbie said.

      “No. Listen.”

      And then she caught the rhythmic thumping of a helicopter which burst low through the ocean fog and roared overhead, circled, and came back. She saw the helicopter swing back over the water, near the fishing boats. It was looking for a place to land.

      Bobbie wondered what was so urgent that the helicopter would fly in this weather. The helicopter settled onto the wet sand of the beach. Uniformed men jumped out, and flung open the big side door. She heard frantic shouts in Spanish. They were calling for a doctor. She ran up to the helicopter.

      “I’m Dr. Carter,” she said.

      “Ed Regis. We’ve got a very sick man here, doctor.”

      “Then you better take him to San Jose,” she said. San Jose was the capital, just twenty minutes away by air.

      “We would, but we can’t get over the mountains in this weather. You have to treat him here.”

      Bobbie trotted alongside the injured man as they carried him to the clinic. He was a kid, no older than eighteen. She lifted the blood-soaked shirt and saw a big slashing rip along his shoulder, and another on the leg.

      “What happened to him?”

      “Construction accident,” Ed shouted. “He fell.”

      The kid was pale, unconscious. Bobbie bent to examine the wounds. A big tearing laceration ran from his shoulder down his torso. At the edge of the wound, the flesh was shredded. A second slash cut through the heavy muscles of the thigh. Her first impression was that his leg had been ripped open.

      “Tell me again about this injury,” she said.

      “I didn’t see it,” Ed said. “They say the backhoe dragged him.”

      “Because it almost looks as if some big animal mauled him,” Bobbie Carter said. Like most emergency room physicians, she could remember in detail patients she had seen even years before. She had seen two maulings. One was a two-year-old child who had been attacked by a Rottweiler dog. The other was a circus attendant who had been attacked by a Bengal tiger. Both injuries were similar. There was a characteristic look to an animal attack.

      “Mauled?” Ed said. “No, no. It was a backhoe, believe me.” Ed licked his lips as he spoke. He was acting as if he had done something wrong.

      She bent lower, probed the wound with her fingertips. If an earth mover had rolled over him, there would be dirt in the wound. But there wasn’t any dirt, just a slippery, slimy foam. And the wound had a strange odor, a kind of rotten stench, a smell of death and decay. She had never smelled anything like it before.

      “How long ago did this happen?”

      “An hour.”

      Bobbie Carter turned back to the injuries. Somehow she didn’t think she was seeing mechanical trauma. It just didn’t look right. No soil in the wound, and no crush- injury. Mechanical trauma of any sort – an auto injury, a factory accident – almost always had some component of crushing. But here there was none. Instead, the man’s skin was shredded – ripped – across his shoulder, and again across his thigh.

      It really did look like a maul. On the other hand, most of the body was unmarked, which was unusual for an animal attack. She looked again at the head, the arms, the hands. She felt a chill when she looked at the kid’s hands. There were short slashing cuts on both palms, and bruises on the wrists and forearms. She had worked in Chicago long enough to know what that meant.

      “All right,” she said. “Wait outside.”

      “Why?” Ed said, alarmed. He didn’t like that.

      “Do you want me to help him, or not?” she said, and pushed him out the door and closed it on his face. She didn’t know what was going on, but she didn’t like it. Manuel hesitated. “I continue to wash?”

      “Yes,” she said. She reached for her little photo camera. She took several snapshots of the injury. It really did look like bites, she thought. Then the kid groaned, and she put her camera aside and bent toward him. His lips moved, his tongue thick.

      “Raptor,” he said. “Lo sa raptor.”

      At those words, Manuel froze, stepped back in horror.

      “What does it mean?” Bobbie said.

      Manuel shook his head. “I do not know, doctor. ‘Lo sa raptor’ – no es espanol.”

      “No?” It sounded to her like Spanish. “Then please continue to wash him.”

      “No,