Engineering Life
- Mainly Bioengineering - altering a living organism using engineering principles, or its subset Genetic Engineering - altering a living organism through direct manipulation of their DNA. Also includes cloning and reproductive technologies.
- Speculation on the nature of humanity and its boundaries. Bioengineered humans for example - suppose you crossed humans with cats, and left the human brain intact. Would they still be human, even with tails or cat instincts? How would they be classified - as hybrids? How would society treat them?
- What is the responsibility of the creators? What are the ethics?
- What are the practical considerations? What is the legal status of a clone, for instance? Is is the same as the progenitor (the donor of the DNA)? How does it affect inheritance? Law? Property?
- This is a trope that is very relevant to dilemmas in today’s world; and a topic where ethics tend to lag behind tech. Which makes me wish that more legislators and people in power would read science fiction where many of these issues and dilemmas have been thoroughly discussed and possible solutions proposed.
Strange case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (also Classic)
Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells (also Classic)
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (also Classic)
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