Science today has accomplished more breakthroughs than humans have ever dreamed possible in reality. However, with these new scientific discoveries come responsibility and new questions arise relating to moral and ethical issues. Many of the issues that we hear about today concerning cloning and stem cell research are probably the same ones that Victor Frankenstein failed to reflect on when creating his "creature." In the 1800's when the general public was first introduced to Frankenstein, these ideas were just discussed. Now as we enter a new age in science, not only do these issues need to be discussed, but also closely examined since what used to be fiction is now fact.
So what is it about the idea of cloning that draws us to try to accomplish this task? Even before technology increased, people were always trying to push the boundaries of human ability. Maybe it is the power to produce replicated life, or to give animation to an inanimate object. In the novel, Victor was amazed with the power he had discovered. "When I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I hesitated a long time concerning the manner in which I should employ it. Although I possessed the capacity of bestowing animation, yet to prepare a frame for the reception of it, with all its intricacies of fibers, muscles, and veins, still remained a work of inconceivable difficulty and labor" (Shelley 36).
Although I"m sure that when Shelley was writing her novel, she was unsure of how close to future science she would come. When creating Frankenstein in the 1800's, the story and the idea of bringing in inanimate object to life or even to create new life artificially was something of science fiction or just plain impossible. The methods discussed for creating artificial life in the book are somewhat different from the methods used today in scientific practice. So just how do we create cloned life? According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the process is not as extreme as someone might think.
