Frankenstein and the Science of Cloning

Frankenstein and the Science of Cloning

Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” tells a story about a young man by the name of Victor Frankenstein and his pursuit to create life. Esther Schor describes Victor as “a man of science”(Schor 87). Victor Frankenstein attempts to travel beyond accepted human limits at the college of Ingolstadt, and access the secret of life, or as what he would call the elixir of life. Victor demonstrates this by creating a monster, not quite realizing fully how dangerous his creation would end up. Cloning is the science of recreating life by scientists in their laboratories. I believe Victor’s creation of life and scientist use of cloning is unethical.

The purpose of cloning can have both a positive and negative way of appealing ideas to people. To understand the purpose of cloning one must know the exact meaning. Merriam-Webster defines cloning as “making a copy of”, as in making a copy of a human being. The negative aspect of human cloning consists of universal fear, repulsion, and ethical rejection by a variety of religious, political, and philosophical perspectives that would not normally find themselves in agreement. Hatred toward anything associated with replicating human’s branches off from the belief that by intervening in traditional reproductive processes, science is entering into the inappropriate territory of creating life. David Rorvik states, “This might be bad. Mankind, in my view, was already and increasingly beset by a sense of rootlessness and unreality … To some weary time-travelers, cloning might be a heavy blow, heralding the irreversible approach- if not the actual realization-of the synthesized, plasticized, carbon-copied Man”(Rorvik 26-27). Ian Wilmut, a genetic scientologist who cloned the first mammal in 1996 which was a sheep feels that human cloning is inhumane by saying, “As I will discuss, there are no proposed reasons for copying a person that I find ethically acceptable”(Wilmut 33). The positive outlook on human cloning technology is expected to result in several amazing medical breakthroughs. Scientists may be able to cure cancer if cloning leads to a better understanding of cell differentiation. Theories also exist about how cloning may lead to a cure for heart attacks, a revolution in cosmetic surgery, organs for organ transplantation, and predictions about how cloning technology will save thousands of lives. Though there may be some positive ideas about cloning it remains unethical in the minds of many people.

The death of Victor’s mother triggered his ambition to create life. I believe Victor’s desire to create life is his way of coping with his mother’s death. When Victor began gathering ideas about how he would create the perfect form of man he failed to realize the risk he was taking. Susan Lederer states, “In her novel, Mary Shelly described how the young Victor Frankenstein exercised “infinite pains and care” in selecting beautiful features for the lifeless thing he had endeavored to form. Despite this care, he produced a hideous, living “abortion,” a monster, rather than a well-formed human creature”(Lederer 21). I think the monster turned out to be an awful creation from Victor using all types of decaying body parts from a variety of people, which made the monster, look frightening with every body part stitched on. Once Victor brought the creature to life the first person he saw was Victor. The basic instinct of a person being born gives the impression the first person they see are their parents. Victor failed to acknowledge the monster’s need for love, which corrupted the monster to hate Victor and take away everyone Victor loved. The creature later learns that “The paradox of his origin and nature will be resolved by another piece of writing: Frankenstein’s lab journal, which substitutes for myths of creation a literal account of the monsters manufacture, a “disgusting” tale of an “accursed origin” by which the Monster discovers that he has indeed been created in another’s image, but as a “filthy type”. The “godlike science” has led him to discover of his origins in Victor Frankenstein’s “unhallowed arts””(Brooks 595-596).

Playing God must be a popular thing to do for scientist. That is what Victor Frankenstein did and what cloning scientist are trying to accomplish. The scientist will find out just like Victor that having the knowledge to create life is