SCIENCE FICTION AND BIOSAFETY
Paccelli José Maracci Zahler
1. INTRODUCTION
Science is developed through the accumulation of knowledge obtained from observation of Nature, tests in laboratories or in the field, and form researchers training.
For many centuries, one thought that Nature was immutable and it would thus remain as a gift of God. However, ten thousand years ago, observing the plants cycle of life, human beings started to practice the agriculture, selecting species which are important for feeding, such as wheat, rice and corn.
Agriculture settled man in the field, provided the appearance of communities, the domestication of animals and the development of new techniques which objectives were increasing the production crops and the amount of cultivated land. Then, irrigation appeared the construction of dams started, ploughs substituted sticks and hoes, and ceramic objects were employed to store food.
Throughout the years, findings on genetics, soil chemistry, and vegetal biology were incorporated to agriculture, particularly in the last century.
In a letter written in 1844, Charles Darwin said: “I have already read piles of books about Agriculture and Horticulture, and I never ceased to collect facts. Finally, some flashes of light arise, and I am also convinced (oppositely to my former opinion) that species are not (and it is the same as confessing a crime) immutable”.
Starting from the publishing of «The Origin of Species», Nature has been studied from an evolutionary point of view, and it triggered a revolution in knowledge.
Nowadays, science gives a new step by applying genetic engineering and molecular biology knowledge to the development of genetically modified organisms.
All this scientific and technological advance was experienced not only by agriculture but also by medicine through the appliance of genetically modified cavies, recombined vaccines and genetic therapy; by astronomy which, through Hubble telescope, is able to take pictures of planetary systems on distant galaxies; the improvement of telecommunications, and the increasing of space travels, transforms radically the way human beings regard the world and their future, reflecting on their behaviour and artistic expression, particularly on science fiction literature.
2) SCIENCE FICTION LITERATURE
Literary art is a social phenomenon which expresses itself by the moment man is conscious about his social group, sharing with them his anguish and his objectives, finally documenting his epoch (Amora, 1992). According to (Figueiredo, 1941), it is an instrument to know about the relationship between man and the universe, based on intuition, that is, the creation of a supra-reality, employing the singular and profound data from the artist’s intuition.
In this sense, science fiction literature was able to happen only because of the transformations resulting from scientific development. As progress made possible transforming the environment during a normal lifetime, what had not happened previously, it became clear that progress was going to go on quickly and it opened new horizons to fantasy (Schoederer, 1989) and creativity.
The truly creator work is inner intuition and the elaboration of a work of art with an emotionally charged image. Materialising it externally is, in Aldrich’s opinion (1976), a matter of technical ability and an essential part, either of the inner expression creative act, or the finished work of art, which is brilliant under the creative mind inner light.
Plato used to say that some objects perceptible to common senses make us wonder about them because they are unusual, enigmatic. In order to awake sensibilities, and to make people wonder about the proposed theme, the artist/writer runs over studies to fuse fact and fiction in a same dramatic script, expressing the human situation of a final irrational reality, constituting a run-away mechanism, a relief, or an imprisonment, a fear. Thus, the works of art that mark people can be explained.
The first science fiction works versed about space travels, particularly to the Moon, and visits by extraterrestrial beings to the Earth. It is possible to mention, out of the precursors: Plutarch (50-125 AD), Luciano de Samosata (125-200 AD), Ludovic Ariosto, Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) and Voltaire (1694-1778). However, the works of Julio Verne (1828-1905) and H.G. Wells (1886-1946) are considered by consensus as those presenting the characteristic elements of modern science fiction as it has been developed in the XX century.
The adaptation of science fiction tales and novels to the movies, comics and television has boasted the popularisation of this genre. Some examples of these works are the following: The first men on the Moon, War of Worlds, The day the Earth stopped, Flash Gordon, Stars War, Monkeys Planet, Stars Journey, and 2001: a Space Odyssey.
Science fiction has also explored telepathy (Foundation, by Isaac Asimov) parapsychology (Eternal Night House, by Scanners), medicine (Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley), and genetic experiences (Dr. Moreau Island, by H.G.Wells).
Frankenstein’s story was first presented in the movies in 1910, directed by H. Searle Dawley. In the story, a doctor manages to give life to a monster built from parts of several corpses.
Artificial insemination was discussed in the film Alraune (1918), that received another title (Mandragora) in its second movie version in 1928. It is the story of a scientist that, employing artificial insemination between a criminal and a prostitute, creates a human without soul (Alraune), who grows up without feelings, and all men who have contact with her.
In 1942, the director Harry Ladman brought to the movies The man without soul, telling the story of a scientist who transforms monkeys in humans.
In Dr. Moreau’s Island, an adaptation from H.G. Wells book produced in 1976, a scientist carries out genetic experiences between men and animals in an island in the middle of the ocean.
More recently, Robin Cook in his book (Mutation) creates a new version for Frankenstein myth, setting it into the present epoch, and proposing a reflection about the improper use of genetic engineering.
The plot is focused on Dr. Victor Frank, a gynaecologist and bio-molecular engineer who wants to have a child with his sterile wife. In order to achieve it, he decides to use his own sperm and an ovule of hers. But he does not stop at this point; he manipulates the embryo to create an exceptionally gifted being. However, what he will actually create, is a monstrous mutant creature which will sow horror and panic.
3) PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING
As it was seen literary art express the relation between man and the social group one belongs, through author’s intuition and, the closer it is to reality, the more it touches people.
A classic example of the statement above is the adaptation of H.G. Wells’ Wars of Worlds to a radio program, which antecedents will be told subsequently.
Mars planet has fascinated mankind since the origin of Astronomy, and its red colour has always been associated to blood, wounds, danger, death, and war, having received from the Sumerian the name of Nergal god of war, destruction and death.
Greek baptised it Ares - god of war, substituted later by Mars for the Roman, this last name remaining until present days.
Mars has always been considered as a planet with destructive influence on the Earth, that is, whenever it shone in the sky, there would be a war. For many centuries, it was considered a bad omen planet.
Due to its proximity to the Earth, it has always been a very studied planet, mainly from 1860 on.
In 1863, the Italian astronomer Pietro Angelo Secchi (1818-1878) had tried to draft Mars surface and he observed some narrow sections, which he denominated «channels». Astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli (1835-1910) also mapped them. Immediately, it was thought that they were artificial, and thus built by intelligent beings.
The astronomer William Henry Pickering (1858-1938) called «oasis» the crossing points of these «channels».
In 1892, the French astronomer Nicolas Camille Flammarion (1842-1925) published Mars Planet where he talked about a Martian civilisation, which constructed channels.
One out of the main defenders of the idea of an advanced civilisation in Mars was the American astronomer Percival Lowell (1855-1916). He published Mars in 1894, where he defended the theory of a planet, which was becoming dry slowly, but was kept alive through great irrigation processes, visible from Earth through vegetation in it borders, and inhabited by an intelligent civilisation.
Collecting all existing information in his epoch, the English writer H.G. Wells (1866-1946) published in 1897, first as series of magazines, and, the next year as a book, The War of Worlds, where he combined the view of Mars presented by Lowell with the Earth’s situation twenty years before, when the main European potencies had divided Africa in colonies, where the natives had no privileges for they were regarded as inferior, primitive, and barbaric. Thus, if Martians were better developed scientifically than Europeans, they could treat them the same way Europeans did to Africans.
According to Asimov (1982), The War of Worlds was the first interplanetary story involving Earth because, until then, all narratives portrayed space visitors as pacific observers. Together with other authors’ scientific fiction stories which used the same theme, it came to convince public in general that there was intelligent and dangerous life in Mars. This story was adapted by Orson Welles and broadcast by the radio in October 30th 1938.
In this version, the landing site was New Jersey and the events were narrated, as realistic as possible, with news bulletins, ocular witnesses and local direct transmissions.
Those who followed the program since the beginning knew it was fiction. The others believed it was real and panic was widespread in the «landing site» neighbourhood. As a consequence, Orson Welles had to present a public apology.
This reinforces the words of one of Umberto Eco’s character’s, Mr. Garamond, in his The Pendulum of Foucault. He says: “The authors, even those who are edited, copy among themselves, one gives as testimony the other’s speech and all use as a decisive proof a iambic phrase.” In general, “they say exactly the same thing. They confirm themselves among themselves, thus, they are true” and most people at all get convinced of it.
Recently, an argument was raised about « the face of Mars surface», supposedly sculpted by an extinct civilisation, whose existence was known by American government authorities which would have hidden this information from public in general. It was proved, later, that it was an optical illusion caused by the effect of sunlight on the sand.
4) SCIENCE FICTION AND BIOSAFETY
A tendency to alarm and panic is being shown about the commercial use of genetically modified organisms and its derived products, following the same logic of The War of Worlds’ dramatisation.
In Mutation, there is a doctor, Robin Cook, post-graded in Harvard and an author known world-widely, who has already another book published, Cromossome 6, where he tells about genetic manipulation and animals cloning in the African jungle, with no ethic criteria, carried out by scientists graded at the best universities of the world; and such experiences can lead to the creation of hybrids between men and animals.
For unversed people, the «authority argument» prevails. If a doctor writes about the dangers of employing biotechnology in such a dramatic way, there is something illicit behind it, regardless that governments and international organisms have been setting limits to the use of genetic engineering techniques through legislation and biosafety rules.
A chain reaction of speculations goes on; wondering about the possible harmful effects to human and animal health of the use of genetically modified organisms. This can be classified as “common and dangerous fallacies of logic and rhetoric”, presented by Sagan (1996), as an «argument of adverse consequences» and « appeal to ignorance».
5) CONCLUSION
Despite all efforts undertaken to provide wide spread and transparency to decisions about biological safety on the employment of genetically modified organisms and their derived products for the healing of diseases, industrialisation, and human and animal consumption, as well as the setting of ethical limits to its production, the scepticism about its real benefits to mankind continues.
This feeling of uncertainty is picked-up by the intuition of the authors of science fiction and transformed into a workmanship of art identified with the current time, influencing the public perception about the role of the new technology and generating insecurity about the future.
It is the art moving with the sensitivity of the people and making them to reflect on the discussed subject.
6) References
Aldrich, V. C. 1976. Filosofia da Arte. Zahar, Rio de Janeiro. 141p.
Amora, A. S. 1992. Introdução à teoria da literatura. Cultrix, São Paulo. 149p.
Asimov, I. 1982. Marte. Francisco Alves, Rio de Janeiro. 154p.
Cook R. 1996. Mutación. Plaza &James, Barcelona. 303p.
Eco, U. 1996. O Pêndulo de Foucault. Record, Rio de Janeiro. 620p.
Figueiredo, F. de. 1941. Últimas aventuras. Empresa A Noite, Rio de Janeiro. 314p.
Sagan, C. 1997. O mundo assombrado pelos demônios. Companhia das Letras, São Paulo. 442p.
Schoereder, G. 1986. Ficção Científica. Francisco Alves, Rio de Janeiro. 340p.
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