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Gene Therapy In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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Imagine a monster, but not just any monster, a human monster. With legs and arms, who can walk and talk just like a normal human (because it is human). Or at least made out of dead human body parts. Living and breathing by having rotting skin and recycled lungs. Terrifying, right? The good news is that this monster is from the science fiction, gothic novel, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. So this monster is not real. Or is it? With today's bio-science and technology, themes and warnings from Frankenstein could be seen in real people anywhere. Scientists are developing more realistic Artificial Intelligence, installing cybernetic implants, building mechanical prosthetics, creating Genetically Modified Humans, and allows access to gene therapy …show more content…

A GMH is someone who has had their genetic code added to, taken away, replaced, or edited. They are more commonly known as Designer Babies because this process is done at infancy. Gene therapy isn’t often done at infancy. These treatments have the advantage of allowing the patient to pick desired traits, for example, the most common gene changes are getting different colored eyes or hair, to be taller, to remove baldness, to lessen pimples, increase fertility, lessen the male “aggressive behavior”, remove color blindness, lessen alcoholism, and to gain or remove chin dimples. They are also used to prevent, treat, or cure diseases, like cancers or heart diseases. The unhealthy cells are removed and edited to be healthy again and then put back into the body to reproduce more good cells. These procedures aren’t very dangerous to they could help most people, but most clinical trials weren’t successful. This is why GMH and gene therapy is still largely experimental. It’s also largely expensive. Only the upper class people are available to these tests. The theory of negativity is that the upper class people could genetically change themselves to be better in strength, looks, intelligence, etc, and continue to populate so. Then, when the lower class people die of, there will only be the next advanced generation to take over. This theory means that the human race would have enhanced capabilities which, depending on how it is thought about, could be a really good thing or a really bad thing. This is very similar to the novel Frankenstein because Dr. Frankenstein specifically chose the body parts he wanted, the bigger and stronger parts, to make his perfect monster. He is a big fan of chemical sciences as “From this day natural philosophy, and particularly chemistry, in the most comprehensive sense of the term, became nearly my sole occupation. I [Victor] read with ardour those works,

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