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Correspondence to Dr Yvette Koepke, Department of English, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND 58202, USA; [email protected]
As we reflect on the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1818, the work’s hold on the popular imagination shows no signs of waning. Three major motion pictures were released in the past 3 years. A mainstay of classrooms as well as theatres, Frankenstein has never been out of print. In fact, ever-more-rapid development in medicine and science continues to increase the novel’s relevance and its utility as a shorthand for ethical critique. In 2016, a piece in Engineering and Technology asked, “Frankenstein Redux: Is Modern Science Making a Monster?”1 Frankenstein’s Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech’s Brave New Beasts surveys the myriad genetically engineered animals that have been developed.2 Experiments with artificial intelligence and monkeys have recently been labelled ‘Frankenstein science’, as have mice head transplants and injections with fetal cells. A 2011 report of The Academy of Medical Sciences thus acknowledges the “Frankenstein fear” that "medical research which creates ‘humanised’ [transgenic] animals is going to generate ‘monsters’" (p. 72), and further that “scientists are possessed of a certain hubris, a false belief in their own powers and their own rights to exercise them in pursuit of their own projects, hence abusing their capacities without proper consideration of the consequences” (p. 73).3
‘Frankenstein’ has become a term enabling the ready expression of critique that serves, at the same time, to foreclose sustained, thoughtful ethical deliberation. Broadly speaking, media coverage sensationalises and simplifies ethical issues in science, packaging them in terms of dilemmas—two opposed, competing options. i 4 More specifically, trends in general cultural understanding sensationalise the novel while minimising its complexity and significance. The shock value of ‘Frankenstein’ sells, but what is it selling? ‘Frankenstein’ designates an iconic Halloween monster or a horror film, having been featured in over 50 movies. If the story is considered science fiction and therefore implausible, uninformed or superstitious; if Doctor Frankenstein is viewed as evil or a ‘mad scientist’; if his creation is a shambling green hulk most akin to supernatural monsters like vampires, then it is easier to dismiss the story as fantastic and symbolic, and easier to believe that we can...