Physical and Genetic Mutilation One person dies each minute from cancer. Cancer, among other diseases caused by genetic mutation, can potentially be prevented by scientific gene manipulation. Ten percent of the cases of cancer in the United States are caused by genetics, not environmental or physical factors. So if doctors can manipulate the gene pool before birth in an unborn child, would that be an ethical thing to do? There are similar moral and ethical dilemmas in the book The Island of Dr. Moreau, written in 1896, and in our society today.
In the book, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Moreau physically alters and performs vivisection on the bodies of conscious animals. He takes body parts from different animals and sews them together to create a new hybrid organism. The hybrid creatures he builds are “animals carven and wrought into new shapes,” (Wells, 72). Dr. Moreau has an obsession with trying to create the perfect human, similar to how genetic mutation works today in our society. He states that “there is something in the human form that appeals to the artistic turn of mind more powerfully than any animal shape …show more content…
Moreau, and in our society today. In the book, Dr. Moreau performs vivisection on the animals of the island for his own amusement and interest. But Moreau does not realize the dreadful, depressed, and often frightening hybrid creatures he is creating. He cannot know what kind of monster he will create during his experiments. In society today, the ability to perform genetic manipulation has the potential to turn into something used to change the looks and physical abilities of an unborn child. That child that the parents decided to genetically manipulate could have been the next Albert Einstein, but they would never know because they altered that child’s genetics before they were even born. We as a society cannot know the implications of genetic engineering and
In the book, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Moreau physically alters and performs vivisection on the bodies of conscious animals. He takes body parts from different animals and sews them together to create a new hybrid organism. The hybrid creatures he builds are “animals carven and wrought into new shapes,” (Wells, 72). Dr. Moreau has an obsession with trying to create the perfect human, similar to how genetic mutation works today in our society. He states that “there is something in the human form that appeals to the artistic turn of mind more powerfully than any animal shape …show more content…
Moreau, and in our society today. In the book, Dr. Moreau performs vivisection on the animals of the island for his own amusement and interest. But Moreau does not realize the dreadful, depressed, and often frightening hybrid creatures he is creating. He cannot know what kind of monster he will create during his experiments. In society today, the ability to perform genetic manipulation has the potential to turn into something used to change the looks and physical abilities of an unborn child. That child that the parents decided to genetically manipulate could have been the next Albert Einstein, but they would never know because they altered that child’s genetics before they were even born. We as a society cannot know the implications of genetic engineering and