Frankenstein Coming Back to Life?

By: Sara Nigro

The infamous novel Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley in 1818 but almost 200 years later, the moral of the story is still relevant to our present day. From the monster that the main character Victor Frankenstein created, morality is a subject very much in question in this novel. The lesson that Shelley explains in Frankenstein is that it is morally wrong to "play God" and attempt to create new living creatures/genetically modify individuals. An example of this issue becoming more frequent in our present day, is the plan of a disabled man to have the first ever head transplant. This procedure has been very well thought out and if all goes as planned, a barrier of what is moral and what is not, will be broken and science is then almost limitless.

The idea of these "morals" is that everything happens for a reason and humans are created a certain way by God, so once we perform one operation, all of these morals could be lost. Although we have/will soon have the technological advancements to change the way we look, cure illnesses/diseases, and even choose the genetic traits of our babies(designer babies), many are against overusing our technology due to their ethics and beliefs about what could happen if we started to choose our traits or fix our bodies. Would we overpopulate because people are living longer if not forever? Would there become a divide between the weaker and stronger designer babies that some humans could afford or wanted to pick out while others thought it was too expensive or put their ethics first? Of course there are many concerns about starting these scientific advancements, but there are also reasons that people are for this new change. One of the most common reasons is that through changing your body, or using 3D printing, lives could be saved and salvaged and this is obviously a very powerful motive due to the fact that it is driven by love or hope which is extremely influential.

There are worries about the difficulties that we as a society could face today, but Mary Shelley's novel is still often used as comparison. In the story the monster that was created was unattractive, ran away, and then killed several people. But the actions that he took weren't the main issue, the real problem was Victor Frankenstein's inability to control the creature that he had created and it started to ruin his life by filling him with guilt and sorrow as well as making him ill. Additionally it ruined the lives of others as well such as William who was murdered by him and Justine who was killed due to her accusation of the murder. The plot thoroughly explains the difficulties that could be faced if science is taken to the next level.Two centuries later humans continue to use this book as a reference and in some ways a warning about the dangers of science and the technology that we have that could create new things or destroy everything.