The Secrets Of The Human Body In Octavia Butler's Dawn

What would a world be like if the most basic human freedoms were stripped away from us? For example, what if the act of entering a romantic relationship with another human being was made impossible? Or perhaps reproduction becomes heavily regulated and any hopes of starting a regular family are shattered? Luckily, reality is free of dystopian-esque problems like these. The modern era has lead to advances far beyond computers and smartphones; Science has discovered ways to unlock the secrets of the human body, man’s most powerful tool. Octavia Butler’s Dawn explores many ways of thinking regarding the use of different aspects of the human body and the challenges faced by the surviving members of the human race. The cultural and societal norms for sex and reproduction were lost the day the nukes fell, and now they must decide …show more content…
This project was initiated by the United States in 1990 and ran until its completion in 2003. The purpose of this 13 year-long project was to uncover the secrets of a basic human genome(the entirety of the DNA in an organism). At its most basic level, the human genome contains a seemingly unlimited amount of information. The minds behind this research endeavored to discover and make sense of this information. As a result of this project, the scientific world has a much greater understanding of the building blocks of the human body and a greater capacity to treat diseases such as Alzheimer 's and AIDs. However, each genome is unique and anyone can contain a variation needed to fully understand a disease. This is what makes the genome so amazing, this certain combination of data makes up the entirety of you and only you. An individual’s “blueprints” to their existence should never be taken from them. In Dawn, Olivia Butler describes the reactions of humans who slowly lose everything that makes them