Sunday, November 06, 2005
Evil Geniuses
In Swamp Thing (1982), the villain played by Louis Jourdan is amazed at the experiments taking place to combine plants and animals. This might give us a clue as to what is wrong with this idea in the first place. If an evil villain thinks it’s a good idea, then you know something must be wrong. Villains have no morals. They view everything and everyone as objects to be exploited for their own selfish ends. And they don’t do anything for the good of mankind. Sound like any corporations you know about?
Combining plants and animals was once unthinkable, of course. It’s funny when you look at the nefarious schemings of the bad guy and you say, "Gee, what’s the big deal? That’s fairly routine today." This is a technique that Mike Meyers has used effectively in his Austin Powers movies, where Dr. Evil’s schemings are continually anachronistic.
In Return of Swamp Thing (1989) the gene splicing experiments of Louis Jourdan et al. have produced a number of horrible monsters. While there is the giant leech man who has escaped and is terrorizing the swamp, most of the other monsters are kept out of sight, behind bars. When an evil genius creates men with elephants’ trunks, or creatures that go on rampages killing people, the sheriff comes knocking on his door to haul him off to jail. When today’s scientists create fish with human genes or transgenic crops that escape and contaminate organic crops, people come knocking on their doors to hand them more money for research. I don’t see people being fearful or appalled. Shouldn’t they be? Even a little?
Swamp Thing is entertainment. Some people treat biotechnology issues in much the same way, like fodder for tabloid newspapers or tabloid television. Unlike most tabloid subject matter however, from which we can remain detached, biotechnology enters our lives in the most intimate ways, in the food we eat. If you’re content to let someone else decide what you eat, and what kinds of novel genes it contains, fine. If you want to do most of that deciding yourself, then you probably should take a closer, more serious look at biotechnology. And you might want to eat organic, at least while it’s still around.
June 2001
Combining plants and animals was once unthinkable, of course. It’s funny when you look at the nefarious schemings of the bad guy and you say, "Gee, what’s the big deal? That’s fairly routine today." This is a technique that Mike Meyers has used effectively in his Austin Powers movies, where Dr. Evil’s schemings are continually anachronistic.
In Return of Swamp Thing (1989) the gene splicing experiments of Louis Jourdan et al. have produced a number of horrible monsters. While there is the giant leech man who has escaped and is terrorizing the swamp, most of the other monsters are kept out of sight, behind bars. When an evil genius creates men with elephants’ trunks, or creatures that go on rampages killing people, the sheriff comes knocking on his door to haul him off to jail. When today’s scientists create fish with human genes or transgenic crops that escape and contaminate organic crops, people come knocking on their doors to hand them more money for research. I don’t see people being fearful or appalled. Shouldn’t they be? Even a little?
Swamp Thing is entertainment. Some people treat biotechnology issues in much the same way, like fodder for tabloid newspapers or tabloid television. Unlike most tabloid subject matter however, from which we can remain detached, biotechnology enters our lives in the most intimate ways, in the food we eat. If you’re content to let someone else decide what you eat, and what kinds of novel genes it contains, fine. If you want to do most of that deciding yourself, then you probably should take a closer, more serious look at biotechnology. And you might want to eat organic, at least while it’s still around.
June 2001
