Marker by Robin Cook

Physician Robin Cook is a writer of medical thrillers that focus on current technological and/or ethical issues.



Genetic tests for a variety of medical conditions are available to individuals who are at increased risk based on family history or ethnic background. With the completion of the human genome project, Cook explores medical insurance issues related to genetic markers--hence the title.


In this instance an intelligent pathologist notices a pattern of unexpected cases of healthy young adults in the hospital morgue to be autopsied. Soon she has amassed a cohort of cases.



Health insurance is based on pooling risk within specified groups. Since markers have been mapped throughout the human genome, risk can now be determined. "Marker" deals with the negative impact of the ability to predict illness. When confidentiality is breached and the information is obtained or otherwise falls into the wrong hands, patient care could be compromised.

Cook provides an exciting read and thought-provoking content.

Meet the Author: David Downing Wednesday, October 17th at 7pm at the High Library

Professor David C. Downing from Elizabethtown College’s Department of English, has written a popular history of dissent in the South during the Civil War, titled A South Divided. Documenting the numerous examples of exceptions to the “myth of the Solid South,” Downing shows that there were regions as well as individuals in the South that did not agree with the Confederate stance of separation from the Union. One region seceded from Virginia to form an entirely new state, West Virginia. Other examples discussed are of individuals or groups leaving the South to fight for the Union side. Downing states that roughly 200,000 black and 100,000 whites crossed the battle lines to fight for the North. This latter category of dissidents included a regiment of cavalry, the “First Alabama, USA.”

In a very readable prose style, this is an engaging book that helped clarify for me the context and meaning behind the first stanza of Robbie Robertson’s classic song about the Civil War, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down:

Virgil Caine is the name and I served on the Danville train

‘Til Stoneman’s cavalry came and tore up the tracks again

In the winter of ’65, we were hungry, just barely alive

By May the tenth, Richmond had fell,

it’s a time I remember oh so well.

One of the little written about causes regarding the Confederacy’s collapse, and the accuracy behind the lyrics above, can be found in A South Divided.

Peter DePuydt