The idea for Drift goes back to college. At the time, I wasn’t studying genetics or medicine in any formal way, but I was paying attention. I noticed conversations emerging around genetic anomalies, unexplained conditions, and birth defects that seemed to be appearing more frequently. Most explanations pointed to better diagnostics, improved reporting, and broader screening. Those explanations made sense. They still do. But even then, it felt incomplete.

If improved detection were the whole story, I wondered, why did the patterns feel uneven? Why did certain communities, environments, and histories seem to carry heavier burdens than others? The question stayed with me long after the lectures ended and the textbooks closed.

Drift began as a short story, more of a thought experiment than a narrative. It was my way of exploring a theory that wasn’t medical or academic, but human. What if we were missing something quieter? Something cumulative. Something rooted not just in DNA, but in how we treat land, how we bury our dead, how environments absorb history, and how consequences unfold slowly enough to escape notice.

That early version of Drift was speculative, restrained, and intentionally unresolved. It asked questions without offering answers. Over time, though, the story refused to stay small. As I returned to it, I realized the science alone wasn’t what mattered most. What mattered was how people live with uncertainty. How families respond when something feels wrong but cannot be named. How societies process responsibility when causation stretches across generations.

This book became an opportunity to expand the idea beyond theory and into lived experience. To explore not just what might be happening, but what it feels like when the ground beneath our assumptions shifts. Drift became as much about grief, denial, and accountability as it is about science. It examines how we respond when evidence accumulates slowly, when no single action can be blamed, and when the cost is shared — unevenly — across time and place.

At its core, Drift isn’t an argument. It’s an invitation to look again. To sit with discomfort. To consider that progress and consequence often arrive together, and that understanding one without the other leaves us blind to both.

That question I had in college — the sense that something was missing — never really went away. This book is my attempt to give it shape.