While occasionally spackled with a few names--Susan Sontag, da Vinci--and professing to a certain seriousness one could question (is not Mr. Leonard the Esalen Meister of Education and Ecstasy and The Ultimate Athlete, p. 697) this is essentially mad-scientist-feature-creature stuff about a test tube culture which could change our ""Whole culture . . . beyond control. Growing to death."" That's the short-lived message after a pregnant girl, the tenth one, regresses into a primate (looking like a chimpanzee in one paragraph; a gorilla the next) in a ""reverse-evolute of acromegaly."" Faster than you can learn the word, laboratory foreman Reardon, a man of good will if very lustful impulses, senses that these ten victims have been inoculated against German measles, informs his new young chief, Marshall, and only later learns that Marshall has been dabbling with wild cards and bad genes. Finally Reardon is forced to kill Marshall and there's a 100 mph chase on superhighways and subways appended. The book has a certain rude readability factor but you'll want to hang on to your stomach if it's still there.