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Many of these advancements, such as reconstructive surgery, are able to solve health issues that were formerly untreatable. Changes like this, along with physical alterations like piercings and tattoos, are recognized by everyone today and serve to add to human individuality. However, many advancements have surfaced that alter the human form in a way which is far beyond what humans identify with. These procedures are often the manifestations of a doctor’s desire for experimentation, or a scientist’s artistic ambitions.
The emergence of these radical surgeries that change the human form transgress human identity.
When the human form is radically changed, humankind can no longer recognize this form as a part of it. As a consequence, assimilation and societal acceptance can become difficult for those who are affected by new medical experimentation. In the article “Dr. Daedalus” by Lauren Slater and the fictional gothic novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the creative aspirations of two doctors (Joe Rosen and Victor Frankenstein) focus on the mutilation of the human form and bring into question the repercussions of such advancements.
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Medical advancements are beneficial to humankind until these advancements become drastic transmutations of the human form and begin to change human identity.
These drastic transmutations of the human body are the incarnations of the imaginative experiments proposed by scientists. Advancements should benefit human health, not artistic desire. Both Victor Frankenstein and Joe Rosen experiment with the human form and toy with the image that humans recognize as their own. In “Dr. Daedalus”, it becomes evident that Dr.
Joe Rosen sees the human image as his canvas. Rosen is constantly proposing radical new ways of changing the human body with plastic surgery. He believes that his work is the “intersection of art and science” and the “intersection of the surgeon’s imagination with human flesh” (Slater 5). This article presents many of Rosen’s artistic dreams–such as lizard-men–and even more peculiar, humans with wings.
These dreams are not of life-changing procedures or revolutionary elixirs, but are quite obviously Rosen’s imaginative ambitions. In Frankenstein, Victor creates an abnormally large, eight-foot-tall being that was clearly a major change in the usual human form. While creating this being, Victor is excited about making a new species that would “bless [him] as its creator and source” and “many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to [him]” (Shelley 52). Apart from its scientific value, the creation of these beings was solely to satisfy Victor’s artistic wishes and his actions did not directly help the human race. These creative experiments tend to romanticize new medical procedures and do not have any real scientific value. When scientists attempt to use subjects as their canvases and treat medical advancements like art, it leads to severe societal ramifications.
One such societal ramification is tampering with the way the average human should look. Altering the human form that is recognized today changes what it means to be human. As mentioned before, small changes in the human image like tattoos are recognized by humans today and are harmless. However, major changes in the human form can be so drastic that subjects of these changes may no longer be considered human. In Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein attempts to make a being that is human-like, but is larger and from Victor’s own imagination. After Victor’s monster sees himself in a pool of water, he notes that he is “not even of the same nature as man”. The monster later curses Victor, saying that in comparison to man’s alluring image, the monster’s form is “a filthy type of [Victor’s], more horrid even from the very resemblance”.
The monster himself does not even consider himself human, due to his body that is ugly and disfigured when compared to humans. In “Dr. Daedalus”, Lauren Slater argues that odd bodily changes would “toggle us down the evolutionary ladder”. Primitive parts of archaic organisms, like wings, are parts of humans that left humankind’s genetic code long ago. Re-adding these parts, as proposed by Dr. Rosen, would make humans “what [they] once were phylogenetically: tailed [and] winged”. These traits are clearly inhuman. They do not match up with traits seen in modern humans, and because if this, they create something entirely different. An entirely different physical image leads to a different societal response. Drastic changes to the human form make assimilation difficult. For the patients of both Dr. Rosen and Victor Frankenstein, life in their respective time periods becomes troublesome. Discrepancies in their form and image elicit fear from those around them.
In Frankenstein, life for Victor’s monster becomes increasingly difficult as the monster attempts to become a member of society and connect with humans around him. Although the creature was supposed to be a magnificent manifestation of Victor’s dreams, the monster soon learned that he was “endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome”, and that he was “a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned”. After continuously trying to assimilate and become like the villagers whom he saw daily, it became apparent to the monster that the disfigured form he was in prevented others from accepting him as a human. In “Dr. Daedalus”, Joe Rosen drastically changes the facial structure of a man with face cancer, named Sweeny, in an attempt to make him look normal. Rosen used Sweeny’s stomach fat to rebuild his face, which was Rosen’s own experimental procedure.
Upon meeting him, Lauren Slater is taken aback by his appearance. After his surgery, Slater says that Sweeny “[looked] miserable” and had a “face beyond description”. His face had been disfigured even after the experimental surgery, with a puckered face and fat, oozing skin. Like the monster in Frankenstein, Sweeny is aware that he looks very different. It becomes apparent that Dr. Rosen’s radical procedure that satisfied his aspirations led to the mutilation of his patient’s face, making him different from other humans. Like the monster, this will make it hard for him to assimilate in society. These extreme changes to the human form make it extremely difficult for the subjects of these experiments to be accepted as humans and as a part of society.
Although most medical advancements today are valued and honored, not all advancements are favorable for humans. These experimental procedures of scientists and doctors simply satiate their fantasies, and often do no good to their victims and do little for medicine or science. Procedures like this corrupt the modern human image. The issues caused by these changes in the human image are reflected by the societal rejection received by subjects of these experiments. The scientists and doctors of today have a responsibility to moderate new medical advancements that are proposed. If they are not moderated, they could lead to the destruction of the lives of those who are subjected to these procedures, as well as humanity as a whole. Medical advancements are vital to the growth of humanity and move humans forward. Experiments that alter the human form also alter human identity, and in turn, move humanity backward.
Medical Advances In Today's Growing Technological World. (2022, May 23). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/medical-advances-in-today-s-growing-technological-world-essay
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