Charles Baxter’s novel Blood Test tells the story of Brock Hobson, an insurance salesman, Sunday school teacher, and father of two troubled teenagers. He is a single dad who, most nights, makes meatloaf for dinner and, when the kids complain that its boring, he tells them it is nutritious. He and his ex-wife Cheryl and he have joint custody, but the kids like to stay with him because, he thinks, he is boring and predictable, the only boring and predictable thing in their lives. His son Joe is gay and troubled. His daughter Lena has a boyfriend, Pete, who is a sleepwalker, heavy metal aficionado, and horny as hell. So is she. His only rule is that they don’t keep everyone awake with their noisy sex. His wife left him for a subcontractor who cannot even fix a leaky roof. On page 1, we learn that Brock is having mysterious stabbing pains in his back and sides. “I don’t like doctors,” he thinks, “But sometimes they are unavoidable.” At the clinic, a “grim-faced nurse wearing a cheap rhinestone pin” takes his vital signs. The doctor asks a few questions, does a cursory exam, and says, “It’s probably diverticulitis and sciatica. “She had a brisk manner, as if I was her umpteenth patient of the day and medically uninteresting. If I had cancer, I might have been more intriguing.” Then, the action of the novel begins. She tells him about a new test they are offering, in partnership with a new biotech start up, Generomics, started by a bunch of Harvard and MIT grads (probably based on Knome, which was acquired by Tute, which was acquired by Pierian, which merged into, well, you get the idea…). The test that can predict the future using molecular biology and computer science. It is, she says, “somewhat secret.” She assures him, the company knows what they are doing. What do they do, he wants to know. “They get your entire genome, run it through a supercomputer, and then they digitize it and, you know, they have these algorithms…it predicts behavior, tells you what you’re going to do before you do it, based on the arrangements in your genetic structure.” The test costs “a couple thousand dollars” and is not covered by insurance. What the hell, Brock thinks, “I could buy this fortune cookie and find out my future then eat the cookie.”
His attitude seems similar to that of many people who sign up to have their genomes analyzed. As Richard Powers put it, explaining why he got his genome sequenced, “I had no idea what I was blundering into. But I figured I could start learning now about privacy and public good, research and entrepreneurship, risk and susceptibility—all the dangers of knowing the full story—or I could bump up against them later, along with the rest of unwitting humanity.”
A few weeks later, Brock returns for the results. He is greeted by “a youthful, bearded, bespectacled young fellow wearing a suit under a white smock,” business attired covered by a remnant of medical clothing. He is told that his genome is very unusual. What follows is the best satire of a doctor pretending to give an explanation to a patient but speaking in jargon that is meaningless, confusing, and anxiety producing. In the end, though, the Geronomics technician gives the bottom line, “It’s predicting criminal behavior on your part. Also, drug taking and anti-social tendencies.” For Hobson, it feels like the gloriously tressed Steven Pinker must have felt, after getting his genome sequenced, and finding that he carries a variant that predicts “a high risk of baldness.” He concluded that genomics is “more recreational than diagnostic.
The novel then explores some profound questions about predictive genomics and free will. Brock starts feeling as if, given his genome, he has no choice but to become a drug-taking, antisocial criminal. He begins to explore the possibilities inherent in becoming the person predicted by his genome, rather than the person he has always thought himself to be. It starts with simple shoplifting. After he gets away with his first heist (a set of pruning shears, from a discount hardware store), he thinks “I can do anything I want to. I can go wild. I have the perfect alibi. The mainframe predicted it. The blood test says, ‘this is you.’”
Then, the Sunday school teacher in Brock comes out. What, he wonders, does God think? There’s that commandment about not stealing, “but that was long ago, almost in prehistory, before the era of finance capital.”
The next chapter begins, “Crime is a slippery slope.” Like the television show The Good Place, this novel is deeply aware of current debates about the predictive value of genomics. It is astute about the tension between amoral modern science and puritanical ancient religion. Brock, himself, is an insurance salesman, deeply immersed in the actuarial science of prediction. He knows, and we know, and our knowledge is like a character in the novel, leading us as readers to both delight in Brock’s descent into amorality and to fear where it will lead. He begins to get in touch with his anger towards his ex-wife Cheryl and her obnoxious freeloading new lover. He realizes that his son is feeling suicidal, as many conflicted and closeted gay teens do, and that Cheryl is making it worse. He wants to kill his daughter’s boyfriend when he finds out that he is cheating on her. Throughout, we wonder what role the technicians from Geronomics play in Brock’s responses to the various crises that he faces. If a blood test tells you that you are going to murder somebody, do you have a choice?
I won’t spoil the ending of this brilliant comic novel. I’ll only say that, for anyone interested in the intersection of bioscience, venture capital, bioethics, and religion, the novel makes a rollicking good read. To find out if you’d like it, read the beginning, here. If you’ve worked in genomics, you’ll be hooked. I couldn’t put it down and laughed out loud at least a dozen times. Comedy is tragedy plus time.
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