"Cook" Books

I recently read Godplayer and Hades factor (Robert Ludlum). As a kid, I maintained a record of all the books  that I had read + a small summary. I stopped the register when i was in Std. 8th. So, when my roomy challenged me to name 5 Robin Cook's books that I had read, I was at loss. Wiki stepped in to help, and soon I had a list of the books that I had read: Acceptable Risk, Abduction, Mutation, Harmful Intent, and more recently Godplayer. (There is one more that I remember, which doesnt match any book in Wiki's list: One about a untested medicine to stop nausea in pregnancy, but led to deformed foetuses.) I wish there were likes of Shelfari when I was a kid and would read A LOT.

Medical Thrillers, at one point, can really scare you into not taking medicines at all. Infact the heroine of Acceptable Risk makes a statement that she was always wary of psychosomatic drugs, and in future will be more careful. In Hades factor, a pandemic is caused by spreading a live virus through antibiotics. Acceptable Risk deals with the researchers literally unleashing the "wild" side in them thanks to a fungus. Harmful intent had a fatal chemical in anaesthetics. Mutation talks of a genetically-made-super-smart kid, who kills other potentially super-smart kids. In a similar setting, the doctor playing God in Godplayer kills patients who he thinks are better off dead. Reminds me of I, Robot.
In comparison, Abduction offers a possibility of a goody-goody world some twenty thousand leagues under the sea. In this world, you can chose the traits you want to be born with in your next birth. You can have your organs transplanted with as-efficient-as-live-tissue machines etc.

Medicines are chemical miracles. If you are sceptical about how a small dose can work wonders, think about the naturally occurring minuscle quantity of hormones that regulate our chemical balance. One could also check the "mg"s of the active substance in a pill..it rarely exceeds 500 mg. But malicious entities try to wring maximum profits from them. Repacking old expired medicines is not unheard of. Medical thrillers explore the far cruel side of Med-men. Infact sometimes I fear that wrongdoers may get "inspired" by Med-thriller plots. Robin Cook acquaints readers with moral and social issues of medicine, but I sincerely hope that Med-thrillers not elucidate a "slippery slope to murder".