Das Geheimnis des Lebens
Genetic biologist KATHARINA KLUGE, short-listed for a Nobel Prize, has realized the dangers inherent in cloning. Appointed to the "National Ethics Council" by the German government, her job is to supervise the creation of a catalog of guidelines. To work on it undisturbed, Katharina withdraws to a vacation home. There she is attacked by masked men who force her to eat sleeping pills # apparently to fake a suicide. But with her last remaining strength, Katharina manages to vomit, and to drive to the police. They are skeptical about her story, and when the corpse of Katharina's husband and her two daughters are discovered at the house, together with a farewell note signed by her announcing that she could not answer for the consequences of her work and had therefore decided to kill herself and her family, it is clear to the police that far from being the victim, Katharina was actually the perpetrator. Katharina escapes, resolving to find out who has her family on their conscience and to prove her innocence. She gets an important clue from her friend and colleague ADAM, who rejected a job offer with the firm Gentech shortly beforehand because he could not reconcile himself ethically with their unreasonable request to clone a human being. Maybe the unscrupulous firm was also behind the attack on Katharina? She then discovers that the firm has recruited a genetic researcher named Dr. OLIVERI, who is highly unpopular with the scientific establishment. When Katharina confronts the scientist in his clinic in Southern Italy, he reveals his hybrid plan to her: using bloodstains on the Shroud of Turin, he intends to resurrect Jesus, for the salvation of humanity. Oliveri was the man behind the murder of Katharina's family, and he sneers at her cynically, telling her that she was the person who actually laid the foundations of his work # and that she could even make use of the findings now to resurrect her own family as well. Katharina only just manages to escape with her life, and then with Adam's help she manages to bring Oliveri's evil dealings to light and prove her innocence. At her family's graveside, however, Katharina is aware of the temptations involved in genetic research # because she now possesses the knowledge she would need to reproduce her own children...
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