From the author of Stargate: SG-1 - City of the Gods The news is full of global warming speculation. The US government is under attack for its stance on greenhouse emissions yet in the background, away from the camera's eye, the real world is in decay. The Rhesus Factor is fiction, but it is up to the reader to determine just how much so, for all the issues are real the research and outcomes are happening now, yet no one seems to notice or care. Have we really reached the point of no return? Coupled with the latest scientific research conducted by Washington experts, this book is closer to fact than we realise and there is very little we can do to change the future. Marine engineer Kristin Baker advises the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu on environmentally sustainable development projects. After meeting US Navy Commander Nicholas Page, she discovers her unwitting role in the Exodus Project, a scheme to protect the West's interests in the face of global warming. But what neither know is that a stealth virus has quietly become a global pandemic; one that health authorities cannot stop. For this virus hasn't emerged from an African jungle or a remote Chinese province, it's come from within our own DNA. Welcome to The Rhesus Factor. The Rhesus Factor is terrifyingly plausible, for it not only could happen, it is happening. The extraordinary, rapid growth of the Homo sapiens population, coupled with its voracious appetite for planetary dominance and resource consumption, had put every measurable biological and chemical system on earth in a state of imbalance... With nearly 6 billion human beings already crowded onto a planet in 1994 that had been occupied by fewerthan 1.5 billion a century earlier, something had to give. That 'something' was Nature. -Laurie Garrett: The Coming Plague Cause and effect, and for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Those principles are commonplace and indisputable. The Rhesus Factor by Sonny Whitelaw demonstrates with painful clarity that we ignore cause and effect at our peril. Perhaps the most frightening book of recent years, Whitelaw's thriller builds an all too plausible scenario of what might happen should our ecosphere decide to apply an equal and opposite reaction to our actions. Fast-paced and grounded in solid research, the book charts not only the breakdown of ecosystems in the wake of global warming, but the breakdown of society that will be an inescapable result. It is precisely in the devastating detail of the wreckage of everyday life that the book is at its most explosive. While Joe Voter may dismiss global warming as a theory that doesn't affect him, the very real prospect of losing home, livelihood, educational facilities and medical care is bound to strike a chord. This potential for far-reaching political impact was only confirmed when a major US publisher refused to go ahead with The Rhesus Factor; opting to take a conservative stance after the controversy surrounding the movie release of The Day After Tomorrow. -Sabine C Bauer, PhD, MA, author of "Trial By Fire"