The Eden Prescription by Ethan Evers

The Eden Prescription. Ethan Evers. Createspace Publisher. October 2010. pb. 326 pages, ISBN #:9781439276556.

An unanswered question looms large in the minds and hearts of both cancer patients and those without but fearing this killer disease. Dr. Elliot Lindell is a scientist operating outside of the normal medical community. He's spent years coming up with a cocktail of unusual ingredients that include an acceptable cancer drug combined with Vitamin D, ginger, gingko, pomegranate, and other hard-to-access natural products. He's also a computer whiz who has invented a computer model that simulates the growth, division, and destruction of cancer cells upon reception of this new and successful cancer cocktail. Annika Guthrie is his brilliant assistant, a woman highly and idealistically motivated by the possibilities inherent behind a cure for this devastating disease.

This thriller story has drug companies vying for possession of the most effective drug and the formula for the most potent combination to do the job of destroying cancer cells. The money is their motive for obtaining what will finally constitutes a wonder drug for cancer patients. The plot thickens when bits of information leak to the right and wrong parties, and an international hunt ensues that includes attempts at theft and murder, actual murders, and faked murders. It turns out The Eden Project is an international finance group with powers and funding to accomplish anything from wars to blatant collapses of key financial countries, always geared to their own recovery and the surpassing of their own wealth and power wherever they operate.

The reader will be riveted to this tale in which victory begins to seem impossible and a confusing war of individuals and groups clash with increasing intensity to the point where the reader is unsure who is friend and who is foe. However, knowing that the bad guys lose doesn't stop one from furiously reading ahead to the striking end. Somehow in the midst of all the chaos or mayhem, one gently learns a lot about not only drugs and plants but also how cancer cells supposedly operate under varying conditions, what works at destroying parts of the cells, and what might be a more powerful, less destructive cure for those suffering from the actual disease.

Speculation is rife on what could possibly happen to the medical community if a cure for cancer were ever found, of the making and unmaking of fortunes, of those who use science in a faithful, humanitarian, professional way and those who do the severe opposite. The Eden Prescription is a sometimes too repetitive but constantly thrilling read about what perhaps lies ahead in the future for anyone and everyone involved with finding a prescription cure for all, with implications larger than longer life for all.