Product Description

What could the Shroud of Turin, a conservative Southern senator, and an entrepreneurial researcher have in common? Here politics, religion and bioscience collide in the latest novel from the master of the medical thriller.

Senator Ashley Butler is a quintessential demagogue whose support of traditional American values includes a knee-jerk reaction against virtually all biotechnologies. When he’s called on to chair a sub-committee introducing legislation to ban new cloning technology, the senator views it as a keystone to his political future. As a consequence, Dr Daniel Lowell – inventor of a technique that will take stem-cell research up to the next level – sees a barrier being raised before his biotech start-up.

These seemingly opposite personalities may clash during the Senate hearings, yet the two men share a common failing. Butler’s hunger for political power far outstrips his genuine concern for the unborn; while Lowell’s pursuit of massive personal wealth and celebrity overrides any real considerations for his patients’ well-being.

Further complicating their confrontation is the confidential news that Senator Butler has developed Parkinson’s disease – which leads the senator and the researcher into a Faustian pact. But in attempting to utilise Lowell’s new technology prematurely, the therapy leaves the senator with the horrifying effects of temporal lobe epilepsy – causing seizures of the bizarrest order.

Taken straight out of tomorrow’s headlines, Seizure is a cautionary tale for this age when new biotechnological discoveries are pulling us ever further into a promising yet frightening new world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #232181 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

About the Author

A bestselling author for many years, Robin Cook has written twenty-one previous novels. Originally practising in Boston, he now lives and works in Florida.

Customer Reviews

Not bad, but terrible ending
I was terribly disappointed with Cook's last book - Shock, so I was expecting better things from this one and initially I was very pleased. The plot developed and I thought it was going along nicely. I was a bit suprised that it was again centred on the infamous Wingate Clinic from Shock, but hey..if the story was OK..who cared?
I won't expand on too much of the plot...you can read the blurb on the jacket, but the ending is terrible. It's almost as though Cook got fed up and just ended it!! There were SO many unanswered questions, questions that he himself had gone out of his way to build in to the story, the brother and the New York mob, the authorities reaction to the whole procedure, the implications for the Wingate Clinic... the list goes on.
Mr Cook, if you're not going to complete your novels, then don't publish them!
I have all of Cook's books and they seem to have gone downhill since the ludicrous Abduction.
My advice, if you hanker after the Cook of old...pick up some of the novels of Michael Palmer to see what you have been missing!!

NOT AS BAD AS THE LAST ONE, BUT ALMOST !
The story doesn't grab you the way his earlier novels did. It's superficial and doesn't have the depth of detail which we came to expect from Mr Cook.

For a book entitled " Seizure " it doesn't even cover this until the last couple of chapters. The sloppy medical procedure on not having the right equipment to minimise the risk of a seizure following a medical procedure to the brain was not believable ! Although I am not a medical person I don't think the book covered the subject of epileptic seizures in a very realistic or constructive fashion. It would be more likely to frighten you into having a seizure !

The majority of the book was more about the protagonists gread and ego's.

I wouldn't recommend this book and am seriously considering not buying any more.

very disappointing
I agree completely with John Corbett who has also left a review on this book. What a disappointment! In addition to what Mr Corbett says, there is soooooo much medical jargon that I found myself just glossing over pages. I used to love Robin Cook and he is one author who I always look forward to publishing a new book however next time he has a new book out I shall wait till I can buy it 2nd hand. Come on Robin, don't let us down again.