THE GENE TRAP

About the Book

Change is inevitable and it is coming to the modern world as it had for a thousand centuries. A mysterious force, hidden in the shadows of the cosmos, holds sway over the destiny of all living things, and the final chapter for mankind is about to be written. A superior species, borne of humans, is poised to assume dominion over the Earth. Enter The Gene Trap. This manuscript is the second in a series of techno-thrillers by Dr. Stephen Berberich. Similar in story line to a Michael Crichton novel, the book’s plot depicts the struggle of contemporary man in his effort to avoid the inexorable consequences of evolution. As the story unfolds, John Lynch and his girlfriend, Gigi Thompson, are on their way to Pittsburgh to begin their new careers, John as a medical intern and Gigi as geneticist at the prestigious Hawthorne Institute. Though they remain perplexed by the mysterious disappearance of their best friends, Peter Gault and Kate Donavon (main characters of Berberich’s first novel, No Known Species), John and Gigi find themselves consumed by the rigors of their new positions. The last thing they need is to be caught in a titanic struggle for human survival—a struggle that would pit them against Peter’s clan of mutants. Influenced by unexpected events, the couple is drawn into a sinister plot hatched by a worldwide cabal of intellectual elites who are determined to eliminate the gifted species. It is a move that could solidify mankind’s rightful place of primacy. Though the elite’s scheme seems flawless, unforeseen mistakes begin to occur. A deadly synthetic germ is accidently released into the biosphere, creating a plague the likes of which the world has never known. Worse yet, a deadly trap lurks within secret recesses of the human genome. It is genetic time bomb that will be detonated if scientists attempt to tinker with the essence of mankind’s DNA. The Gene Trap details the age-old struggle between the old and the new, with Gigi and John caught somewhere between the two worlds. The final act makes clear the meaning of the genesis cycle.

About the Author

Dr. Stephen Berberich is a retired interventional cardiologist with extensive training in the sciences. He is a graduate of Georgetown College and Georgetown Medical School. Dr. Berberich began an internship at the University of Pittsburgh and then moved on to a medical residency at Georgetown University Hospital. He finished his medical training with a cardiology fellowship at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. Dr. Berberich is the lead author on the first published review of Post Exercise Echocardiography. This test subsequently became one of the gold standards for the early detection of coronary artery disease. In 1974, Dr. Berberich moved from the Boston area, where he was chief of Cardiology at the Boston Naval Hospital, and came to southern California where he continued in the private practice of Cardiology until his retirement in 2004. Dr. Berberich is married and has three grown children. Just like Michael Crichton and Robin Cook, after 40 years in the fields of science and medicine, Dr. Berberich acquired the background that enabled him to explore the mind-bending possibilities suggested by Rebecca Cann’s seminal work on mitochondrial DNA and its relationship to the evolution of man. The novel comes as close to reality as Crichton’s “Jurassic Park” and Cook’s “Coma”.