Bioengineer's Role In Oryx And Crake

“It is a simple fact that many, if not most, of today’s modern medical miracles would not exist if experimental animals had not been available to medical scientists. It is equally a fact that, should we as a society decide the use of animal subjects is ethically unacceptable and therefore must be stopped, medical progress will slow to a snail’s pace. Such retardation will in itself have a huge ethical ‘price tag’ in terms of continued human and animal suffering from problems such as diabetes, cancer, degenerative cardiovascular diseases, and so forth.”

The central ethical dilemma of many of the films and stories we looked at this semester hinged on the question of whether or not man should employ his knowledge of genetics and science to engineer or revive a species that had become extinct, usually due to natural processes. As a science major myself, it was interesting to explore these themes and the scenarios presented in each individual piece of literature. Questionable ethics run rampant in stories such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Jurassic Park. “None but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements of science. In other studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there

Life extensions are critically dependent on futuristic medical advancements. However, a strong noble compass is needed to ensure scientific advancements do not cross moral ethics of life. Brave New World, written by Aldous Huxley, and the movie Gattaca, directed by Andrew Niccol, propose technologically advanced societies that challenge ethical and moral views. Although Brave New World and Gattaca relate in genetic discrimination, they differ in technology’s powers and limits, as well as the resiliency of the human spirit.

Rachel Carson had received several attacks by chemical and agricultural industries due to her book “Silent Spring”, where she explained the consequences to the environment and human health of using pesticides. She was being accused of radical and unqualified scientist, who wanted to keep alive all the insects that spread diseases in humans and plants. She was described as being hysterical woman and her work as junk science. However, if we read who was Rachel Carson, the arguments are misguided. Rachel Carson was an outstanding scientist and science

It illustrates the struggle between morals and advancing science. The scientists should not need to get permission to use the cells of a human being if the research uses cells because scientists use their research to learn more about the world, use their research to help society maintain their health, and it may give the public hope for a solution. For instance, cells

It seems like every few month scientists make the next breakthrough in combining technology and human biology. More and more things that only existed in science fiction like mutants and biological enhancements have become reality. But unlike other improvement in our society, the concept of human engineering has become an issue of ethics. As this reality human engineering draws closer-everyone from scholars to

These essays perform extremely well in multiple areas of writing, such as their control of prose, their explanations of the effects of the rhetorical techniques and why the rhetorical techniques were chosen in the first place. For example, in essay 3, the author explicitly describes how Douglas Johnson appeals to the reader’s emotions by writing that his technique makes “the reader draw a parallel between himself or herself and the embryo that emphasized how every human begins life.” The author of the essay then goes on to explain why this was technique was chosen and connects it back to the purpose which reminds the reader of the essay’s argument. Additionally, these essays are structured in the organized MEL-con format, creating cohesiveness within their arguments and an overall flow to their writing. Overall, these essays succeed in rhetorically analyzing and tying together Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the articles on stem cell research.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood is a science fiction novel set in a dystopian future where humans have largely been eliminated by a plague and replaced by a genetically engineered, superior human. The protagonist, Jimmy (or Snowman as he calls himself), is a human who was friends with the scientist who developed the genetically engineered humans and the plague that wiped out the rest of humanity. While talk about gene-spliced animals is prevalent, the novel also deals with human corruption in society: the separation of the rich and poor, the destruction of the environment, and the degradation

Ethics throughout science are very controversial as they are the model of distinguishing between right and wrong throughout all aspects of research. Throughout Honeybee Democracy and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks we are given an insider’s perspective into the ethics, or the lack there of, regarding the ongoing research and the researchers conducting it. Although the books cover very different subject matter, there are divisions of their research and within their individual ethics that are almost indistinguishable.

Seven months before the publish of Escape from Spiderhead, the first artificial life was created in US. Unlike Dolly the sheep, this is not the kind of artificial life from cloning but is created out of nothing but an “an entirely synthetic genome that was constructed from chemicals in the laboratory” (Sample). This finding has caused great reaction from the public and doubtlessly the experiment was challenged with “morality” and “playing god”. It is not difficult to image that there must be people who jump out and shout for their worries of any possible uncontrolled cases. According

Human society always attempts to better itself through the use of technology. Thus far, as a species, we have already achieved much: mastery of electronics, flight, and space travel. However, the field in which the most progress is currently being made is Biology, specifically Genetic Engineering. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, humanity has taken control of reproduction and biology in the same way that we have mastered chemistry and physics. Efficiency drives the entire goal of society, leading to the creation of an assembly-line process.

Often times, authors of many sorts search for ways to connect their personal writing to ideas that the modern reader can comprehend; they wish to provide a speck of familiarity. Thomas C. Foster explains in How to Read Literature Like a Professor, “We want a new novel to be not quite like anything we’ve read before. At the same time, we look for it to be sufficiently like other things we’ve read so that we can use those to make sense of it” (58). However, sometimes that sense of familiarity is not a good one, as displayed in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. Many of her themes have been dramatized to receive the desired reaction out of her readers. However, when these themes are thought upon by one who has dutifully read How to Read Literature Like a Professor, the fictional lines begin to blur into reality. Set in the near future, Oryx and Crake is an expertly created dystopian fiction that contains a plethora of political messages with the ability to be applied to the

Adjacent to Stocks optimism stands C. Ben Mitchell who feels “deeply [troubled] about bioenhancement technologies, whether they are reproductive, genetic, neurological, or prosthetic technologies.”

Fast forwards two hundred years and the science (or lack thereof) depicted is almost indistinguishable, a revolutionary new process called CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) is allowing science to edit the human genome almost at will. With the announcement of US scientists creating the first genetically modified embryo, an outburst of ethical debate has arisen. While they are certainly not the first (a Chinese division won the achievement in 2015), this achievement was created through the CRISPR process.

Deeply entrenched within society is the idea that we are continually advancing and developing in all sorts of ways, but mainly for the benefit of human vitality. In Oryx and Crake, one of the experiments the scientists and researchers focuses on is their pigoon project, where they can “grow an assortment of foolproof human-tissue organs in transgenic knockout pig hosts” (22). The pigs are genetically modified by inserting human cells into them so they can internally reproduce the same organs as humans do, and are also inserted with spliced genes to “fend off attacks by