Thirty years ago, Daniel Lahey, now chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Homeland Hospital in Baltimore, made a high-tech bargain with God. Now he must face the consequences of this deal as the medical world is thrown into disarray by unforeseen miracles and new diseases. Set in the near future, Michael Stern ’67’s debut thriller The Renaissance Gene interrogates the ethical issues of today’s culture wars. Stern is a senior investigator at the National Institutes of Health.