Month: September 2020

Genetic engineering is one of the most popular research fronts in modern medicine and biology. It’s in its infancy, with preliminary studies struggling to even select or splice the right genes. But previous genome work, a widening availability of the tools used to genetically modify organisms, and breakthroughs with CRISPR mean that, although it is reasonably safe (ethically speaking) now, the field’s semi-hypothetical ethics questions will become very real very soon.

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are controversial in public opinion, and carry much of the same rhetorical argument as vivisection. Scientists, for the most part, “side” with genetically modified organisms, noting them as mostly safe for small modifications, but fears about large-scale intervention by “Big Agra” (Monsanto and companies like it) and fears about excessive Western influence on GMO standards have degraded the image of these technological improvements. Just like with vivisection, fears about the potential of the technology run rampant. These are typically unsupported by reality, but like Dr. Moreau’s beastfolk, they capture public imagination. The ideas that large corporations want to kill the people and that vivisectors really want to cut up humans block progress.

Progress is poorly defined, but scientists use it as a motivator regardless. The “reckless expert scientist” places faith in the power of experiment, The New York Times, in its article about gene drives—one of the more promising and more alarming gene technologies—discusses this divide between the reckless expert scientist and the fretful uneducated public. Dr. Moreau plays the character of the reckless expert scientist, having been thrown out of society yet still pursuing mythical progress. Gene drives allow geneticists to insert genetically modified copies of an organism (mosquitoes for example) into a population and rapidly spread that gene across the population. Scientists and public health experts want to stop malaria by genetically modifying mosquitoes and releasing them into the West African wild. But fears about using this to sneak in harmful gene drives, “colonial medicine,” and wide ecological failure abound, paralleling fears about vivisectors and even dissectors. Their practitioners had some valid use cases for vivisections, and despite poor minimization of harm, made scientific breakthroughs similar in impact to erasure of malaria.

Rioting and unease about vivisection was much louder and direct than gene modification protests can likely become because gene modification is invisible, but new science remains poignant. Fears about gene modification transferring to humans largely correspond to fears about vivisection transferring to humans, although the line in the sand may be ultimately drawn differently. And the way that scientists shrug off risk and harm in the pursuit of experimental truth is equally frightening to a general public despite ethical regulations.

Sherlock Holmes is addicted to cocaine in the Sign of Four. He claims that he uses merely for a “mental stimulant,” which is probably partially true given Sherlock’s unusual psyche. ABC’s Elementary portrays Sherlock in a similar way: he’s a recovering addict who manages to stop drugs cold turkey, mostly from his father’s behest. The show uses drugs and medical imagery extensively in the development of Sherlock’s character. Dr. Watson, the voice of reason for Sherlock, is an ex-surgeon and Sherlock’s sober companion, meaning that the theme of Watson’s Sign of Four speech—asking Sherlock to care for his health—is repeated throughout the series. She puts the focus squarely on Sherlock’s internal struggle with a past that he wants to hide. This manifests in some of Sherlock’s unhealthy habits like refusing to sleep until a case is solved or refusing to play his violin or being mentally absent at group therapy meetings. Mental health, a subject mostly untouched by Doyle, is a common theme of Elementary.

But Elementary also tells stories about physiological health. Like in The Sign of Four, Elementary’s Sherlock follows story lines with poisoning and medical elements. Drugs are often the crux of the medical stories Sherlock investigates: a heroin poisoning of a bank’s executive meant to frame it as an overdose hints at the social elements of addiction and health. The Sign of Four also handles the social elements of health: both Major Sholto and Captain Morstan die in events directly connected to thefts of the treasure, and the original Sign of Four plan was motivated by Sholto’s self-inflicted poverty (gambling addiction). The framing of both stories in Sherlock’s cocaine “addiction” (I use quotes here because it isn’t exactly portrayed as such) clarifies health as a social image because Sherlock is mostly treated as well by his peers, being judged by the quality of his work in either story—the image of unhealthfulness brought on by cocaine isolated as a possible danger rather than a factor determining health on its own.