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Dangerous Knowledge
The pursuit of knowledge has always been human nature. In our history we have always tried to make newer and better things, there are always more improved cars being made, computers are getting smaller and smaller and of course faster. Same thing is happening to cell phones they are getting incredibly small. The question is when is this going to stop, where is the limit?
Scientist are by now able to clone sheep so humans can’t be far away. Like I said before when is this pursuit of knowledge going to stop, what time is it going to be enough? There is a lot of controversy surrounding this topic, is it really wrong to clone a human being? “Clones will be grown to produce spare parts for other people, or to be used for medical research. Thus, clones -- who will be, of course, human beings -- will be treated as disposable property, with fewer rights than any slave, bred and killed for the benefit of others.”(Jay Johnson) The professor of the University of Florida puts it in perfect words, human clones are going to be treated just like animals and even worst. Clones are going to be bread for only one purpose to give their owner anything he wants, if clones are going to be made there are going to be owners of actual humans. And when one person owns another person he can take from him what ever he likes, an arm, a leg, or a heart. All this is pretty unimaginable, but it is the future of cloning.
Evan two hundred years ago people were thinking how dangerous knowledge can be. Mary Shelly who wrote Frankenstein didn’t get her idea from a dream or a wild imagination but she got it from Dr. Darwin the famous scientist. “During one of these, various philosophical doctrines were discussed, and among others the nature of the principle of life… they talked about the experiments of Dr. Darwin who preserved a peace of vermicelli in a glass case till by some extraordinary means it began to move with voluntary motion. Not thus, after all, would life be given Perhaps a corpse would be reanimated.”(William A. Walling ) People of that era already knew that perhaps nothing could stop the progress of science. As a result of that Mary Shelley tried to show in her Novel Frankenstein how dangerous creating a human being can and will be.
Victor Frankenstein the doctor who created the Monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein attempted to surge beyond accepted human limits and accesses the secrets of life. As the Novel begins Walton a ship’s captain and the protagonist of the Novel finds Victor in front of his ship one day. Victor who seems very sick gets taken care by the sips crew. Walton who didn’t have a friend on the ship was glad that he had a companion, and this is when Victor starts to confess. “ Do you share my madness? Have you drunk also of the intoxicating draught? Hear me; let me reveal my tale, and you will dash the cup from your lips.”(Shelley 17) Victor then unfolds and tells Walton what had driven him to disaster. When he was seventeen he went to the University of Ingolstadt in Germany, at the University Victor met M Krempe a teacher of natural philosophy who tells him that his earlier studies on alchemists has been wasted, further souring Victor on the study of natural philosophy. He then attends a lecture in chemistry by a professor named Waldman. This lecture, along with a subsequent meeting with the professor, convinces Victor to pursue his studies in natural science. Victor attacks his studies in natural science with enthusiasm and because of his studying he ultimately ignores his social life and his family far away in Geneva. Since Victor forgot about his social life he made miraculous progress in his work. After several years of tireless work, he masters all that his professors have to teach him, and he goes one step further discovering the secret of life. “So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein�more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation. It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn.”(Shelley 4) Victors reference to himself in the third person illustrates his sense of fatalism; he is driven by his passion, unable to control it. It seems that Victor didn’t have a continence, he didn’t think for one moment what’s going to happen if he tries to play god. And that is essentially what he was doing, playing god.
Finally Victor had created a creature that he didn’t even name, which shows already how the creature is going to be treated and how clones of today’s age are going to be treated. “How can I describe my emotions to this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch with such infinite pains and care I endeavored to form,” (Shelly 56). Victor essentially couldn’t believe that his creation, which was meant to do good for humankind was so hideous. Immediately as he awoke out of his hunt for knowledge he realized what he had done, and out of total fear Victor ran away abandoning his creation. As the monster was left all alone it wanted to seek revenge on its creator, on the one creator who brought the misery and pain of being so repulsive, and being rejected by society. “I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.”(Shelly 78) The monster even thought of itself to be gruesome and disgusting, in the wake of this rejection, the monster swears to revenge itself against all human beings, his creator in particular Journeying for months out of sight of others; it makes its way toward Geneva. As he nears Geneva, the monster runs across Victors younger brother, William, in the woods. When William mentions that his father is Alphonse Frankenstein, the monster erupts in a rage of vengeance and strangles the boy to death with his bare hands. Justine Moritz gets executed for William’s murder even though the Monster did it. The monsters next victim was Victor’s good friend Henry Clerval, the monster kills Henry because of a broken promise from Victor, and the promise was that Victor would create the monster a female companion. Out of rage the monster still follows Victor and Kills his wife Elizabeth on their wedding night. This was a way for the monster to express its feelings, and they were so bad that only killing would justify the hatred inside of it.
But what if scientists actually clone a person, with real feelings and with real skin and with real flesh and blood? What kinds of emotions will that copy have? Are we going to treat it like the monster in Frankenstein? The same problem is going to occur with clones, just like it did with the monster going on a rampage in Frankenstein; we will have to fight a war with our selves. I think that we as a civilization wont profit from cloning but it will shoot us back to the Middle Ages. Like we all know the Middle Ages were a time of no progress, revolutions, and massacres. As the creature put it “I am malicious because I am hated,” (Shelley18). Similarly, I see cloning in the same view, cloning is a transgression against nature. Through the science of cloning, a clone can save a dying person but at the same time don’t we kill another person. “Clones will be basically used as tools that will aid handicapped people, or help cure people with defective cells by taking the clones newly copied cells and putting them into the ill person.”(Dr. James) It is said right here Clones will be used as tools for handicapped people. I know that that seem as a noble cause but we are talking about a human being and not about a tool that you can use and throw away as you please. These are the problems that are going to occur when we clone people. Naturally I don’t believe that the cloned people will give up and die for their original that easily, we will have many revolutions and many massacres just like we did in the Middle Ages since the clones will have feelings just like we do, and that is for because they are the exact copy of us.
Through all the suffering that Victor went through he had learned that knowledge is dangerous and that it can hurt and kill people, he also warns Walton, who is on a quest himself for knowledge, to the northernmost part of the earth where no foot has stepped on, that knowledge is a dangerous obsession and that it can ruin lives. Walton realizing this has stopped his exploration to the North Pole saving his entire crew. “ I see by your eagerness and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend… Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, that he who aspires to become greater than this nature will allow” (Shelley 110) Even though Victor loved Science and even though he had mad a breakthrough, chemically creating a human being, he admits that it was a disaster and that playing god, which is what he was doing, was a atrocious idea.
It is my opinion that no being on this planet has a right to chemically produce another being it would only cause disaster throughout the world. The same incident as in Frankenstein, is going to happen as soon as a human being is cloned, the person that clones it first clone will look at himself as a higher being. In France that already happened, where a colt leader, already thinking of himself as a god, claims to have cloned the first human being.
Whereas the cloning of humans may not produce a being like Victors creation, there is little doubt that society may react harshly to this new type of being. The expectations would be enlarged for the creation, which may lead to negative consequences for both the creation and society. Society would be forever changed once a creature was cloned. Maureen Noelle McLane, author of Literary Species writes about the drastic impact of the creation on the society in Frankenstein. “The monster is a problem both for himself and for Victor; more specifically, the monster forces what we might call the psychological re-mapping of the native human world.”(Mc Lane) The drastic changes that society could be forced to deal with could cause problems for the creature, but more so for society. Learning to deal with a being that knows it is the only creature not reproduced sexually would be difficult. The creature probably wouldn’t react as harshly as the monster in Frankenstein but it would cause definite mental problems. Learning to deal with the creature is not the only problem that society must accept. At the present time, if humans were to be cloned, many lives would be lost perfecting the procedure. John F. Killner director of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity in Bannockburn, Illinois notes; “the cloning of sheep had 77 failed attempts, including the death of some defective clones” (Bannockburn). The idea of having defective human clones dying is quite scary and inhuman.
No matter how advanced we get in the field of science cloning should never be an option. Cloning would just cause too much controversy, and once put into wheels it couldn’t be stopped. Similar to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein where the monster is hideous, and where the creator rejects the creature because of its repulsiveness. The creature of course mad at its creator ruins his life. Even though Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein is only a Novel it demonstrates that creating life and playing god can simply end in disaster. The results will be significantly bigger and worst when humans are being cloned. We as a cultivated civilization don’t need cloning to advance into the future.
Sources
http//azninja66.tripod.com/adm/popunder/tripod_popunder.html?member_name
http//www.ulib.iupui.edu/frankenstein/promise.html
http//www.uchile.cl/bioetica/doc/think.htm
http//www.flex.com/~nyogtha/shop.html
http//www.larta.org/LAVOX/ArticleLinks/8-10_bioethics.htm
http//www.pregnantpause.org/ethics/whyclone.htm
Clifs Notes, by Jeff Coghill
Mary Shelly, by William A. Walling
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
British Writers, by Leonard Wolf
Contemporary Literary Criticism, by David Perkins
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