Robin Cook (not to be mistaken with the late Robin Finlayson Cook, the UK leader of the House of Commons who resigned from his post as a sign of protest over the US Iraqi invasion supported by former Prime Minister Tony Blair) is a medical doctor who cleverly uses his experience in his profession to write best-selling medical thrillers, often depicting sinister ethical transgressions in the field of medicine and health.His latest novel, Foreign Body is essentially more of the same stuff. This time, he weaves a tale involving the rapidly developing industry of Medical Tourism.
The setting is New Delhi, India. India is a country with many very qualified medical specialists and also numerous well-equipped private hospitals on par with hospitals in the west. Medical Tourism has enabled patients from wealthier countries (e.g. USA, UK, Middle Eastern countries, etc) to undergo surgery/procedures at a fraction of the cost in their home countries. The Indian government, realising this potential in uplifting India's economy, has also been actively promoting this industry. They also promote the excellent results, low mortality and morbidity rates to potential customers.
This has got the private medical and health care people in the USA rather ticked as they are slowly but surely losing their customers (ooops, I mean patients) to India.
In order to discredit the Indian medical tourism industry, a very diabolical machinery has been put in place to 'muck up' India's good statistics. In other words, these bad guys go to great lengths to kill patients who have recently underwent surgery, make it look like an accident and then have this news blasted all over the media via a CNN insider.
Enter Jennifer Hernandez, a New York Hispanic medical student at UCLA. While casually watching TV, she hears that someone bearing her grandmother's name (Maria Hernandez) has died from a hip surgery in a hospital in New Delhi, India. She have always known that her grandmother has been contemplating hip surgery but has been holding back because of the cost it would incur.
A quick call to the hospital assured her that her grandmother was fine. But another call from the same hospital told her the bad news. She was told her grandmother died of a heart attack. this puzzled her as her granny was given the all-clear by a prominent cardiologist. Granny, however did have a history of irregular heart beats (arrhythmia) but that has been attributed to a cold remedy and no more arrhythmia's appeared after she stopped the offending medication.
She goes to India to find the hospital authorities are pressing for her to decide whether she wants the body to be cremated or embalmed. Later 3 more deaths with similar circumstances occur. She gets real suspicious and calls up her husband-and-wife forensic pathologist friends who make a beeline to India.
Want to know more? Read the book yourself, then.
The book starts off well, only to lose momentum somewhere halfway through. Perhaps too much of the plot is revealed in the beginning, so what happens in the rest of the book becomes a bit expected.
This is not Dr Cook's best novel but is still a fairly enjoyable read.
Ciao!
Enjoy your weekend, folks!
Amir Fuad.
Picture: Entrance to the Secret Radiology Lounge
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