Reference no: EM133488092
The Frankenstein Syndrome
"When the Gods are angry with you, they grant your wishes." - Oscar Wilde
What was the name of Frankenstein's monster? Do you remember? Such thinking often comes to mind when the subject of genetic engineering and cloning arises, it's "that Frankenstein thing." When Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley penned her novel in 1818, little did she know how prophetic her tale about good and evil, and a creation that destroys its creator, would be. In 1984, D. F. Glut published a five-hundred-page volume entitled The Frankenstein Catalogue. This definitive piece of work, to my astonishment, listed over 2,666 works about Frankenstein, including 145 editions of Mary Shelley's novel! Why, I asked, has so much been written about Frankenstein? The answer, perhaps, lies in the uneasiness we feel in the deep regions of our souls when humankind tinkers with what nature has created. Like vintage dialogue from horror movies of long past, our inner voices remind us: "There are certain things humans were not meant to do," and genetic engineering and cloning, to many, are just such areas. This fear derives from the earliest biblical scripture, describing Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Perhaps we fear the human tendency to screw things up, as reflected in a government poll revealing that 46 percent of the public believes "we have no business meddling with nature." What do you think? Such a view derives from public perception that there is far too much horror awaiting us at the hands of the same science and technology monster that unleashed the atomic bomb. The tabloids cater to the Frankenstein anxiety in all of us, spewing out weekly tales of environmental carnage, ozone wreckage, and freaks of nature, brought on by ill-conceived tinkerings with what should only be the pre-serve of God. The Challenger space disaster, environmental havoc, and AIDS are all misguided human experiments, the tabloids say. Is there some middle ground for humankind, science, and progress?