Course description

Frankenstein – the Creation of Human Life

Most people link Frankenstein with Jimmy Whale’s films of the same name, made in black and white in the 1930s. Here, a frightening monster is created by a bright young scientist from the body parts of recently dead people. In this way, Dr. Frankenstein puts together a stronger and, supposedly, more intelligent being than humankind and brings him to life with electricity generated by a lightning storm.

But Frankenstein was based on a much older novel by Mary Shelley, daughter of the most famous early feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft (writer of ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’ in 1791). Does this novel sound like a piece of science fiction or horror story? Well, in many ways, it is, but the questions it raised in its time were disquieting ones because they upset the idea that life comes only from God.

Besides, on top of all that, by 1818, when Mary Shelley published her novel, there had been huge progress made very speedily in our understanding of the physical and social worlds.

Here are just a few examples. Adam Smith set out the laws governing supply and demand and the economy’s ability to regulate prices without government playing with it – in other words, how capitalism works! Then, Jeremy Bentham, a philosopher, described the importance of institutions like hospitals, old people’s homes, orphanages, prisons, mental hospitals and many more. These had never existed on a large scale before but now were built all over the country. And Humphry Davy, a British chemist, discovered many new elements. In fact, in his lifetime, he found twelve – or 20% of the total number known at that time, including magnesium, chlorine, sodium and calcium. But let’s not forget James Hutton, who described how mountains came to exist – they were pushed up by heat and pressure from within the Earth. The unschooled Mary Anning was discovering dinosaurs and understood what these were and meant for the age of the planet. What is more, John Dalton had theorized about the existence of atoms. In America, Benjamin Franklin was trying to attract and store electricity from lightning rods. In the political sphere, in 1789, the French Revolution overthrew and executed the King and established a republic, for the people and made up of the people. No more kings, no more class! And all this in half a lifetime! It seemed as if nothing was too difficult for humankind. Everything might be possible!

In the middle of this chaotic and fast-changing world, in 1816, Mary Shelley’s lover and later husband, the great English Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron, their friend, were in Switzerland on holiday. They were not able to go out, because the weather was so bad. So, they decided to have a contest as to who could write the best horror story just to while away their time. Eventually, the idea for ‘Frankenstein’ occurred to Mary Shelley in a dream. … or so she said.

If you watch the film based on the novel, ‘Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’, you will notice that the scientist, Victor Frankenstein, talks about creating a man who will never get ill, is physically of superhuman strength and can be made more intelligent than we are. This brings up many questions, which critics at the time also mentioned, about the rights and wrongs of playing with God’s creation. One called the book “horrible and disgusting”. And when it was discovered that the author was a young woman, the reaction was even stronger with a critic saying that she had forgotten what was suitable for her sex.

Now, in case all this seems like a history or literature lesson, let’s leap forward to modern times and discuss how scientists and politicians have actually tried to create a more intelligent and stronger human race using different methods. In the late 19^th century, Charles Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, believed that the ‘survival of the fittest’ could be applied to human evolution. He coined the term, ‘eugenics’, for this science. From the UK, it travelled to Canada, the USA, much of Europe, Japan and many other countries, where ‘undesirable’ groups were stopped from reproducing – sometimes by forced sterilization. The idea was that the mentally handicapped, for instance, would not pollute the gene pool and so the population would become more intelligent. The Nazis then applied these ideas to ethnic groups they did not like: gypsies, Jews and Slavs, but also to homosexuals, those with Communist politics, the physically handicapped and so on. Hitler did not stop at sterilization though: he gassed his victims, as they were either a burden to society or harmed it.

Even today, Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, has argued that if we can breed animals and plants to grow healthier and faster (to feed our growing population), then why not breed people with innate abilities, like running fast or composing music?

Another development that has politicians, clerics and social activists arguing these days is genetic modification. Here, the DNA of an organism is improved either by destroying unwanted elements or by inserting new DNA into it. This DNA can be made by copying that of the organism or by creating an artificial version.

Paul Berg, the American geneticist, was able in 1972 to introduce DNA from two different species into a single molecule. By 1978, molecules could be modified to produce insulin in diabetic patients and, since 1994, food has been altered genetically to improve different characteristics. The first example of this was a tomato which had a longer shelf life and so did not go bad so quickly – it meant less waste and, so, lower costs.

In 1996, a sheep called Dolly was born in a laboratory in Scotland, cloned from a single cell of another animal. Dolly lived for nearly seven years, had six lambs of her own, and died of causes unrelated to cloning. Her lambs all lived more than nine years. The experiment has since been repeated many times in larger numbers with greater success.

But why do experiments to create life at all? What advantage is there to be gained from it? The answer is clear to parents with children born with terrible diseases or handicaps. By cutting faulty DNA from their systems while they are still in the mother’s womb and replacing it with healthy chromosomes, we can ensure that babies are born healthy and so much unnecessary suffering is prevented.

In the case of crops, we can grow bigger vegetables which are resistant to disease and can be grown faster, meaning more crops each year. The same is true of animals: fatter cows, sheep and chickens for our dining tables. In short, we can feed an ever growing global population more easily with genetically modified (GM) plant and animal species.

So, why all the fuss? Surely, this is an unparalleled good. Well, not according to activists who complain that seeds from GM food cannot be used to grow more crops the next year. Instead, the farmer has to buy new seeds all over again. This makes agricultural companies much more powerful than they ever were before, as they have complete control over seed prices.

Next, those opposed to GM food also argue that we cannot know the long-term effects of eating it. These days, girls become sexually mature at eight or nine years old in countries where GM products are widely available, long before they are emotionally and mentally ready to reproduce. Could this be because their parents live on GM diets? Has the food in some way altered their genetics? We cannot be sure, of course.

But perhaps the most compelling arguments bring us back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. If humankind can create life, what is God’s role in the world? And do we want a world where we can modify DNA before the birth of a child? Couldn’t this lead us to creating races of people too stupid but only too happy to do menial jobs, like cleaning the streets, without ever complaining about their destiny? Might we not create a super class of superior beings, like Adolf Hitler’s master race? What will then happen with democracy? Science may be neutral but politics is not!

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