Frankenstein's Monster by Mary Shelley was not the common Hollywood creation of a nasty being. It was a physically beautiful and erudite construction that went horribly bad due to the fact that it was a creation by a human being. A modern version of Prometheus and the consequences of messing around with nature.
The book was written on a holiday as a lark with other literary notables, all rich kids hanging out at their parent's expense, you know, Lord Byon, Percy Shelley and child wife Mary. They were called Romantics because they were rebelling against the intellectual main stream retroactively called the Age of Reason, you know, Newton and his gang inclusive of Mary's father William Godwin. This excercise was a fable to express the Romantics rejection of reason and science as they promoted the perfection of the human organism. Dr Herr Franksnstein was creating the perfect man and he did. Alas, that creation lived in and among humans and their society which inevitably corrupted it into a peverse perfection, a perfect buttheaded human. Not its fault? Not the good Doctor's fault?
So, why are we eating genetically"improved" GMO plants and animals without some idea of what will happen? Is that why an e-mail went out today about Frankenfish, or genetically engineered salmon? Will they jump up and bite our butts? Maybe not. But the cautionary tale by Shelley may be worth re-reading in its proper form.
