Content area
Full Text
ABSTRACT Looking back over the essays in this collection, as well as the two-hundred-plus years since Frankenstein was conceived and published, this postscript asks us to recall that Mary Shelley's own life experiences, especially childbirth, were sources for her story, even as it incorporated many other ingredients from her milieu. And today, the possibilities for creating artificial life that Frankenstein reflects on and prefigures so vividly are echoed directly in much bioscience. Shelley's tale haunts our minds when we learn of the development of the Non-Invasive Prenatal Diagnosis, which can genetically scan a pregnant woman's blood to make detailed predictions about her fetus, and especially CRISPR technology, which could be used to edit the genes of a human embryo. More than Victor Frankenstein did with his creation, we must take responsibility for both the intended and the unintended consequences of human germline engineering. KEYWORDS: fears about childbirth; Non-Invasive Prenatal Diagnosis; CRISPR; gene editing; DNA sequencing; bioethics
I THINK THAT MARY SHELLEY would have been thrilled to know that, just over two hundred years after its inception, her "hideous progeny" has gone forth and prospered, as the insightful essays in this special issue fully document. As we know, on the night of June 16, 1816, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin gave birth to one of the enduring myths of modern civilization, the narrative of the scientist who singlehandedly creates a new species, a humanoid form that need not die. This narrative has become the myth of modern science, the master narrative for the ways in which human attempts to control and improve the workings of Nature can have unintended and even monstrous consequences. For as Shelley's Creature says to Victor Frankenstein, "You are my creator, but I am your master;-obey!"1
Why was this myth born on this night? As Gillen D'Arcy Wood reminds us in his essay in this special issue, the eruption of the Indonesian volcano Tambora (also called Tamboro) in April 1815 caused 1816 in Europe to be the "Year without a Summer" and forced the Shelley-Byron entourage to remain indoors during the freezing weather. They then decided to compete in a ghost-story contest that inspired at least three of the participants to write, although only John Polidori and Mary Shelley actually produced stories worthy...