frankenstein ethics essay

Latest Issue

The majestic cell

How the smallest units of life determine our health

Recent Issues

Psychiatry’s new frontiers Hope amid crisis
AI explodes Taking the pulse of artificial intelligence in medicine
Health on a planet in crisis
Real-world health How social factors make or break us
Molecules of life Understanding the world within us
All Articles
The spice sellers’ secret
‘And yet, you try’
Making sense of smell
Before I go
My favorite molecule
View all Editors’ Picks
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Infectious Diseases
View All Articles

Why Frankenstein matters

Frontiers in science, technology and medicine

By Audrey Shafer, MD

Illustration by Michael Waraksa

w18 Illustration for story on why Frankenstein still matters

“Clear!” At some point during medical education and practice, every physician has heard or given this command. One person — such as a closely supervised medical student — pushes a button to deliver an electric shock and the patient’s body jerks. The code team, in complex choreography, works to restore both the patient’s cardiac rhythm and a pulse strong enough to perfuse vital organs.

After a successful defibrillation effort, team members do not have time to dwell on the line crossed from death to life. It is even difficult to focus on the ultimate goal: to enable the patient to leave the hospital intact, perhaps to grasp a grandchild’s — or grandparent’s — hand while crossing the street to the park.

Despite these dramatic hospital scenes, many scientists, doctors and patients balk at any mention of the words Frankenstein and medicine in the same breath. Because, unlike the Victor Frankenstein of Mary Shelley’s novel, the reanimators at a hospital code have not toiled alone in a garret; assembled body parts from slaughterhouses, dissecting rooms and charnel houses; or created an entirely new being. Nonetheless, in this bicentennial commemorative year of the book’s publication, it is not only germane, but important to consider the impact of this story, including our reactions to it, on the state of scientific research today.

Shelley’s Frankenstein has captured the imaginations of generations, even for those who have never read the tale written by a brilliant 18-year-old woman while on holiday with Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Dr. John Polidori amid extensive storms induced by volcanic ash during the so-called year without a summer. Mary Shelley (her name was Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin at the time) was intrigued by stories of science such as galvanism, which she would have heard through her father’s scientist (then called natural philosopher) friends.

With Frankenstein , Shelley wrote the first novel to forefront science as a means to create life, and as such, she wrote the first major work in the science fiction genre. Frankenstein, a flawed, obsessed student, feverishly reads extensive tomes and refines his experiments. After he succeeds in his labors, Frankenstein rejects his creation: He is revulsed by the sight of the “monster,” whom he describes as hideous. This rejection of the monster leads to a cascade of calamities. The subtitle of the book, The Modern Prometheus , primes the reader for the theme of the dire consequences of “playing God.”

Mary Shelley photo and photo of Frankenstein novel

A framework for examining morality and ethics

Frankenstein is not only the first creation story to use scientific experimentation as its method, but it also presents a framework for narratively examining the morality and ethics of the experiment and experimenter. While artistic derivations, such as films and performances, and literary references have germinated from the book for the past 200 years, the current explosion of references to Frankenstein in relation to ethics, science and technology deserves scrutiny.

Science is, by its very nature, an exploration of new frontiers, a means to discover and test new ideas, and an impetus for paradigm shifts. Science is equated with progress and with advances in knowledge and understanding of our world and ourselves. Although a basic tenet of science is to question, there is an underlying belief, embedded in words like “advances” and “progress,” that science will better our lives.

Safeguards, protocols and institution approvals by committees educated in the horrible and numerous examples of unethical experiments done in the name of science are used to prevent a lone wolf like Victor Frankenstein from undertaking his garret experiments. Indeed, it is amusing to think of a mock Institutional Review Board approval process for a proposal he might put forward.

But these protections can go only so far. It is impossible to predict all of the consequences of our current and future scientific and technologic advances. We do not even need to speculate on the potential repercussions of, for example, the creation of a laboratory-designed self-replicating species, as we can look to unintended consequences of therapies such as the drug thalidomide, and controversies over certain gene therapies. This tension, this acknowledgment that unintended consequences occur, is unsettling.

Illustration of what researcher Luigi Galvani called animal electricity.

Science and technology have led to impressive improvements in health and health care. People I love are alive today because of cancer treatments unknown decades ago. We are incredibly grateful to the medical scientists who envisioned these drugs and who did the experiments to prove their effectiveness.

As an anesthesiologist, I care for patients at vulnerable times in their lives; I use science and technology to render them unconscious — and to enable them to emerge from an anesthetized state.

But, as the frontiers are pushed further and further, the unintended consequences of how science and technology are used could affect who we are as humans, the viability of our planet and how society evolves. In terms of health, medicine and bioengineering, Frankenstein resonates far beyond defibrillation. These resonances include genetic engineering, tissue engineering, transplantation, transfusion, artificial intelligence, robotics, bioelectronics, virtual reality, cryonics, synthetic biology and neural networks. These fields are fascinating, worthy areas of exploration.

‘Frankenstein’ is not only the first creation story to use scientific experimentation as its method, but it also presents a framework for narratively examining the morality and ethics of the experiment and experimenter.

We, as physicians, health care providers, scientists and people who deeply value what life and health mean, cannot shy away from discussions of the potential implications of science, technology and the social contexts which give new capabilities and interventions even greater complexity. Not much is clear, but that makes the discussion more imperative.

Even the call “Clear!” and the ritual removal of physical contact with a patient just about to receive a shock is not so “clear,” as researchers scrutinize whether interruptions to chest compressions are necessary for occupational safety — that is, it may be deemed safe in the future for shocks and manual compressions to occur simultaneously.

We need to discuss the big questions surrounding what is human, and the implications of those questions. What do we think about the possibility of sentient nonhumans, enhanced beyond our limits, more sapient than Homo sapiens? Who or what will our great-grandchildren be competing against to gain entrance to medical school?

Studying and discussing works of art and imagination such as Frankenstein , and exchanging ideas and perspectives with those whose expertise lies outside the clinic and laboratory, such as artists, humanists and social scientists, can contribute not just to an awareness of our histories and cultures, but also can help us probe, examine and discover our understanding of what it means to be human. That much is clear.

Audrey Shafer, MD

Audrey Shafer, MD, is a Stanford professor of anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine, the director of the Medicine and the Muse program and the co-director of the Biomedical Ethics and Medical Humanities Scholarly Concentration. She is an anesthesiologist at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System.

Email the author

The Ethical Interest of Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus : A Literature Review 200 Years After Its Publication

Original Research/Scholarship
Published: 12 June 2020
Volume 26 , pages 2791–2808, ( 2020 )

Cite this article

Irene Cambra-Badii ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1233-3243 1 , 2 ,
Elena Guardiola ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8002-1415 3 &
Josep-E. Baños ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8202-6893 1 , 3

3403 Accesses

3 Citations

1 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Two hundred years after it was first published, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the modern Prometheus remains relevant. This novel has endured because of its literary merits and because its themes lend themselves to analysis from multiple viewpoints. Scholars from many disciplines have examined this work in relation to controversial scientific research. In this paper, we review the academic literature where Frankenstein is used to discuss ethics, bioethics, science, technology and medicine. We searched the academic literature and carried out a content analysis of articles discussing the novel and films derived from it, analyzing the findings qualitatively and quantitatively. We recorded the following variables: year and language of publication, whether it referred to the novel or to a film, the academic discipline in which it was published, and the topics addressed in the analysis. Our findings indicate that the scientific literature on Frankenstein focuses mainly on science and the personality of the scientist rather than on the creature the scientist created or ethical aspects of his research. The scientist’s responsibility is central to the ethical interest of Frankenstein; this issue entails both the motivation underlying the scientist’s acts and the consequences of these acts.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save.

Get 10 units per month
Download Article/Chapter or eBook
1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
Cancel anytime

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Scheme based on: Moher D, Liberati A, Tetzlaff J, Altman DG, The PRISMA Group. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: The PRISMA Statement. PLoS Med 2009;7:e1000097. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed1000097

The Perfect Organism: The Intruder of the Alien Films as a Bio-fictional Construct

Explore related subjects.

Artificial Intelligence

Banerjee, S. (2011). Home is where mamma is: Reframing the science question in Frankenstein. Women's Studies . https://doi.org/10.1080/00497878.2011.527783 .

Article Google Scholar

Barns, I. (1990). Monstrous nature or technology?: Cinematic resolutions of the “Frankenstein Problem”. Science as Culture . https://doi.org/10.1080/09505439009526278 .

Bell, R., & Lederman, N. (2003). Understandings of the nature of science and decision making on science and technology based issues. Science Education . https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.10063 .

Bishop, M. (1994). The “making” and re-making of man: 1. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and transplant surgery. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 87 (12), 749–751.

Google Scholar

Brem, S., & Anijar, K. (2003). The bioethics of fiction: The chimera in film and print. American Journal of Bioethics . https://doi.org/10.1162/15265160360706787 .

Burgess, M. (2014). Transporting Frankenstein: Mary Shelley's mobile figures. European Romantic Review . https://doi.org/10.1080/10509585.2014.902902 .

Campbell, C. (2003). Biotechnology and the fear of Frankenstein. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics . https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963180103124048 .

Chambers, T. (2018). On cute monkeys and repulsive monsters. Hastings Center Report . https://doi.org/10.1002/hast.930 .

Childress, J. F., & Beauchamp, T. L. (2001). Principles of biomedical ethics . New York: Oxford University Press.

Cohen, J. (2018). How a horror story haunts science. Science . https://doi.org/10.1126/science.359.6372.148 .

Davies, H. (2004). Can Mary Shelley's Frankenstein be read as an early research ethics text? Medical Humanities . https://doi.org/10.1136/jmh.2003.000153 .

de La Rocque, L., & Texeira, L. A. (2001). Frankenstein, de Mary Shelley, e Drácula, de Bram Stoker: gênero e ciência na Literature. História, Ciências, Saúde—Manguinhos . https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-59702001000200001 .

Djerassi, C. (1998). Ethical discourse by science-in-fiction. Nature . https://doi.org/10.1038/31088 .

Doherty, S. (2003). The 'medicine' of Shelley and Frankenstein. Emergency Medicine . https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1442-2026.2003.00483.x .

Fairclough, M. (2018). Frankenstein and the “Spark of Being”: Electricity, animation, and adaptation. European Romantic Review . https://doi.org/10.1080/10509585.2018.1465701 .

Finfgeld-Connett, D. (2014). Use of content analysis to conduct knowledge-building and theory-generating qualitative systematic reviews. Qualitative Research . https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794113481790 .

Fischer, J. (2014). What kind of ethics?—How understanding the field affects the role of empirical research on morality for ethics. In M. Christen, C. van Schaik, J. Fischer, M. Huppenbauer, & C. Tanner (Eds.), Empirically informed ethics: Morality between facts and norms. Library of ethics and applied philosophy (Vol. 32). New York: Springer.

Gaylin, W. (1977). The Frankenstein Factor. The New England Journal of Medicine, 297 , 665–667.

Genís Mas, D. (2016). The sleep of (scientific) reason produces (literary) monsters or, how science and literature shake hands. Mètode, 6 , 14–20.

Ginn, S. (2013). Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Exploring neuroscience, nature, and nurture in the novel and the films. Progress in Brain Research . https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-63287-6.00009-9 .

Goswami, D. (2018). “Filthy creation”: The problem of parenting in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities . https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.20 .

Goulding, C. (2002). The real Doctor Frankenstein? Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine . https://doi.org/10.1177/014107680209500514 .

Graneheim, U. H., Lindgren, B.-M., & Lundman, B. (2017). Methodological challenges in qualitative content analysis: A discussion paper. Nurse Education Today . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2017.06.002 .

Greenshields, W. (2018). Frames, vanishing points and blindness: Frankenstein and the field of vision. Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities . https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.18 .

Hammond, K. (2004). Monsters of modernity: Frankenstein and modern environmentalism. Cultural Geographies . https://doi.org/10.1191/14744744004eu301oa .

Harrison, G., & Gannon, W. (2014). Victor Frankenstein's Institutional Review Board Proposal, 1790. Science and Engineering Ethics . https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-014-9588-y .

Haste, H. (1997). Myths, monsters, and morality: Understanding 'antiscience' and the media message. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 22 (2), 114–120.

Haynes, R. (2003). From alchemy to artificial intelligence: Stereotypes of the scientist in western literature. Public Understanding of Science . https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662503123003 .

Haynes, R. (2014). Whatever happened to the “mad, bad” scientist? Overturning the stereotype. Public Understanding of Science . https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662514535689 .

Hellsten, I. (2000). Dolly: Scientific breakthrough or Frankenstein's Monster? Journalistic and Scientific Metaphors of Cloning. Metaphor and Symbol . https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327868MS1504_3 .

Holmes, R. (2016). Science fiction: The science that fed Frankenstein. Nature . https://doi.org/10.1038/535490a .

Jochemsen, H. (2006). Normative practices as an intermediate between theoretical ethics and morality. Philosophia Reformata . https://doi.org/10.1163/22116117-90000377 .

Kakoudaki, D. (2018). Unmaking people: The politics of negation in Frankenstein and Ex Machina. Science Fiction Studies . https://doi.org/10.5621/sciefictstud.45.2.0289 .

Koepke, Y. (2018). Lessons from Frankenstein: narrative myth as ethical model. Medical Humanities . https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2017-011376 .

Koren, P., & Bar, V. (2009). Science and it’s images—Promise and threat: From classic literature to contemporary students’ images of science and “the Scientist”. Interchange . https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-009-9088-1 .

Krippendorff, K. (2013). Content analysis. An introduction to its methodology . London: Sage.

Lacefield, K. (2016). Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the Guillotine, and Modern Ontological Anxiety. Text Matters . https://doi.org/10.1515/texmat-2016-0003 .

Laplace-Sinatra, M. (1998). Science, gender and otherness in Shelley's Frankenstein and Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation. European Romantic Review . https://doi.org/10.1080/10509589808570051 .

Lederman, N. (1992). Students' and teachers' conceptions of the nature of science: A review of the research. Journal of research in science teaching . https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.3660290404 .

Mackowiak, P. (2014). President's address: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, and the dark side of medical science. Transactions of the American Clinical and Climatological Association, 125 , 1–13.

Mccurdy, H. (2006). Vision and leadership: The view from science fiction. Public Integrity, 8 (3), 257–270.

Mellor, A. (2001). Frankenstein, racial science, and the yellow peril. Ninet Century Contexts . https://doi.org/10.1080/08905490108583531 .

Micheletti, S. (2018). Hybrids of the romantic: Frankenstein, olimpia, and artificial life. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte . https://doi.org/10.1002/bewi.201801888 .

Miller, G., & McFarlane, A. (2016). Science fiction and the medical humanities. Medical Humanities . https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2016-011144 .

Mitra, Z. (2011). A science fiction in a gothic scaffold: A reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 3 (1), 52–59.

Moreno, J. (2018). From Frankenstein to Hawking: Which is the real face of science? The American Journal of Bioethics . https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2018.1461468 .

Nagy, P., Wylie, R., Eschrich, J., & Finn, E. (2018a). Why Frankenstein is a stigma among scientists. Science and Engineering Ethics . https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-017-9936-9 .

Nagy, P., Wylie, R., Eschrich, J., & Finn, E. (2018b). The enduring influence of a dangerous narrative: How scientists can mitigate the Frankenstein myth. The Journal of Bioethical Inquiry . https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-018-9846-9 .

Nowlin, C. (2018). 200 years after Frankenstein. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine . https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2018.0054 .

Oakes, E. (2013). Lab life: Vitalism, Promethean Science, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, 16 (4), 56–77.

O'Neill, R. (2006). “Frankenstein to futurism”: Representations of organ donation and transplantation in popular culture. Transplantation Reviews . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trre.2006.09.002 .

Pheasant-Kelly, F. (2018). Reflections of Science and Medicine in Two Frankenstein Adaptations: Frankenstein (Whale 1931) and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Branagh 1994). Literature and Medicine . https://doi.org/10.1353/lm.2018.0016 .

Prinz, J. J. (2014). Where do morals come from?—A plea for a cultural approach. In M. Christen, C. van Schaik, J. Fischer, M. Huppenbauer, & C. Tanner (Eds.), Empirically informed ethics: Morality between facts and norms. Library of ethics and applied philosophy (Vol. 32). New York: Springer.

Pulido Tirado, G. (2012). Vida artificial y literatura: Mito, leyendas y ciencia en el Frankenstein de Mary Shelley. Tonos digital: Revista electrónica de estudios filológicos, 23 , 1–17.

Reginato, V., Claramonte Gallian, D. M., & Marra, S. (2018). A Literature na formação de futuros cientistas: Lição de Frankenstein. Educacao e Pesquisa . https://doi.org/10.1590/S1517-9702201610157176 .

Reich, W. T. (1978). Encyclopedia of bioethics . New York: Free Press.

Robert, J. S. (2018). Rereading Frankenstein : What if Victor Frankenstein had actually been evil? Hastings Center Report . https://doi.org/10.1002/hast.933 .

Sariols Persson, D. (2011). L'enfant monstre, le monstre enfant. Enfances et Psy . https://doi.org/10.3917/ep.051.0025 .

Schreier, M. (2012). Qualitative content analysis in practice . London: Sage.

Schroll, M., & Greenword, S. (2011). Worldviews in collision/worldviews in metamorphosis: Toward a multistate paradigm. Anthropology of Consciousness . https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1556-3537.2011.01037.x .

Severino, S., & Morrison, N. (2013). Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus: A psychological study of unrepaired shame. Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling: Advancing Theory and Professional Practice through Scholarly and Reflective Publications . https://doi.org/10.1177/154230501306700405 .

Stern, M. (2006). Dystopian anxieties versus utopian ideals: Medicine from Frankenstein to the visible human project and body worlds. Science as Culture . https://doi.org/10.1080/09505430500529748 .

Syrdal, D. S., Nomura, T., Hirai, H., & Dautenhahn, K. (2011). Examining the Frankenstein Syndrome. In B. Mutlu, C. Bartneck, J. Ham, V. Evers, & T. Kanda (Eds.), Social robotics. ICSR 2011. Lecture notes in computer science (Vol. 7072). Berlin: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25504-5_13 .

Szollosy, M. (2017). Freud, Frankenstein and our fear of robots: Projection in our cultural perception of technology. AI and Society . https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-016-0654-7 .

Trichet, Y., & Marion, E. (2014). Le corps, son image et le désir du scientifique dans la fiction cinématographique. Cliniques Mediterraneennes . https://doi.org/10.3917/cm.090.0255 .

Turney, J. (1998). Frankenstein’s footsteps: Science, genetics, and popular culture . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

van den Belt, H. (2009). Playing God in Frankenstein’s footsteps: Synthetic biology and the meaning of life. Nanoethics . https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-009-0079-6 .

van den Belt, H. (2018). Frankenstein lives on. Science . https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aas9167 .

Villacañas, B. (2001). De doctores y monstruos: la ciencia como transgresión en Dr. Faustus, Frankestein y Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Asclepio, 5 , 10. https://doi.org/10.3989/asclepio.2001.v53.i1.177 .

Weber, R. P. (1990). Basic content analysis . Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Book Google Scholar

Westra, L. (1992). Response: Dr. Frankenstein and today's professional biotechnologist: a failed analogy? Between Species, 8 (4), 216–223.

Williams, C. (2001). “Inhumanly brought back to life and misery”: Mary Wollstonecraft, Frankenstein, and the Royal Humane Society. Women’s Writing . https://doi.org/10.1080/09699080100200190 .

Download references

The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Experimental and Health Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

Irene Cambra-Badii & Josep-E. Baños

Bioethics Chair, Universitat de Vic–Universitat Central de Catalunya, Vic, Spain

Irene Cambra-Badii

School of Medicine, Universitat de Vic–Universitat Central de Catalunya, Casa de Convalescència, Dr. Junyent 1, 08500, Vic, Spain

Elena Guardiola & Josep-E. Baños

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Josep-E. Baños .

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Research involving human participants and/or animals

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cambra-Badii, I., Guardiola, E. & Baños, JE. The Ethical Interest of Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus : A Literature Review 200 Years After Its Publication. Sci Eng Ethics 26 , 2791–2808 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-020-00229-x

Download citation

Received : 14 October 2019

Accepted : 30 May 2020

Published : 12 June 2020

Issue Date : October 2020

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-020-00229-x

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Literature analysis
Feature films
Find a journal
Publish with us
Track your research

Log in using your username and password

Search More Search for this keyword Advanced search
Latest content
Current issue
BMJ Journals

The current, popular view of the novel Frankenstein is that it describes the horrors consequent upon scientific experimentation; the pursuit of science leading inevitably to tragedy. In reality the importance of the book is far from this. Although the evil and tragedy resulting from one medical experiment are its theme, a critical and fair reading finds a more balanced view that includes science’s potential to improve the human condition and reasons why such an experiment went awry. The author argues that Frankenstein is an early and balanced text on the ethics of research upon human subjects and that it provides insights that are as valid today as when the novel was written. As a narrative it provides a gripping story that merits careful analysis by those involved in medical research and its ethical review, and it is more enjoyable than many current textbooks! To support this thesis, the author will place the book in historical, scientific context, analyse it for lessons relevant to those involved in research ethics today, and then draw conclusions.

GAfREC, Governance Arrangements for Research Ethics Committees
IRB, institutional review board
REC, research ethics committee
Frankenstein
scientific experimentation
research ethics

https://doi.org/10.1136/jmh.2003.000153

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request permissions.

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

↵ Page numbers after quotations in the novel are those in the Penguin Classic edition.

Linked Articles

Letter Can Frankenstein be read as an early research ethics text? I Bamforth Medical Humanities 2004; 30 106-106 Published Online First: 06 Dec 2004.

Read the full text or download the PDF:

The World of Philosophy

Aug 8, 2021

Frankenstein Ethics

The other moral in Frankenstein and how to apply it to human brains and reanimated pigs Some neurology experiments — such as growing miniature human brains and reanimating the brains of dead pigs — are getting weird. It's time to discuss ethics. SCOTTY HENDRICKS

Two bioethicists consider a lesser known moral in Frankenstein and what it means for science today.

We are still a ways from Shelley's novel, but we are getting closer.

They suggest that scientists begin thinking of sentient creations as having moral rights regardless of what the law says.

Compared to what we see in science fiction, most of our major advances in modifying organisms are actually rather dull. For example, despite being deemed "Frankenfoods," genetically modified crops are typically changed in simple ways that make them hardier and easier to grow. We are still a long way from approaching the work of Dr. Frankenstein. However, we are getting closer all the time. And exactly what we should do in the event that we create an organism with moral standing remains the subject of some debate. Because of this, Dr. Julian Koplin of the University of Melbourne Law School and Dr. John Massie of The Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne wrote a paper discussing a lesser known ethical lesson of Frankenstein and how it might be applied to some of our more cutting-edge experiments — before we find ourselves asking what to do with artificially created sentient life.

The other moral in Frankenstein

The moral of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein that most people are familiar with is, "Don't play God," or some variation of that theme. Most film and television versions of the story follow this route, perhaps most notably in the famous 1931 film adaptation starring Boris Karloff as the monster. This take on the ethical lesson of Frankenstein may be more useful than the broad warning against hubris, as modern science is getting ever closer to creating things with sentience.

However, Shelly's work covers many themes. One of them is that the real moral failure of Victor Frankenstein was not in creating his creature but in failing to meet or even consider the moral obligations he had to it. Thus, your pedantic friend who notes, "Frankenstein is the name of the doctor, not the monster," is both annoying and correct. Frankenstein never bothered to name his creature after bringing it into the world.

That's not the only thing Frankenstein failed to give the creature. The authors explain: "...the 'monster' had at least some degree of moral status — which is to say, he was the kind of being to which we have moral obligations. Frankenstein refused to recognize any duties towards his creation, including even the modest duties we currently extend towards nonhuman research animals; Frankenstein denied his creature a name, shelter, healthcare, citizenship, or relationships with other creatures of its kind. In so doing, Frankenstein wronged his creation."

The Creature, as the monster is sometimes known in the novel, differs greatly from how most films depict him — uncoordinated, stupid, and brutish. He learns to speak several languages, references classic literature, and reveals that he is a vegetarian for ethical reasons. Before he spends his time devising a complex revenge plot against his creator, his primary desire is for companionship. He is also quite sensitive. Even if he is not entitled to the same moral standing as other humans, it seems intuitive that he has some moral standing that is never recognized. This take on the ethical lesson of Frankenstein may be more useful than the broad warning against hubris, as modern science is getting ever closer to creating things with sentience.

Brain experiments are getting creepy and weird

One area of experimentation is the creation of human brain organoids that provide simplified, living 3D models of the brain. These organoids are grown with stem cells over the course of several months and are very similar to certain parts of the cortex. Scientists are doing this in their effort to better understand the brain and its associated diseases. While it is unlikely that we have created anything complex enough to achieve consciousness, many researchers maintain that it is theoretically possible for an organoid to become conscious. Some experiments have already produced tissues that are light sensitive , suggesting at least a limited capacity for awareness.

In a turn toward a more literal reading of Shelley, a team of Yale scientists reanimated pig brains and kept some of them alive for 36 hours. While these revived brains neither were attached to pig bodies nor exhibited the electrical signals associated with consciousness, the study does raise the possibility that such a thing could be done. Other experiments seem to be based more on The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells, including one in which monkeys were modified to carry a human gene for brain development. These monkeys had better short-term memory and reaction times than non-modified monkeys. Where do we go from here? The authors do not propose that we stop any particular research but instead consider the problem of moral standing. We should decide now what duties and moral obligations we owe to a sentient creature before the problem is literally looking us in the face. While it is true that animal research is tightly regulated, nobody seems to have planned for reanimated pigs or monkeys with human-like intelligence. Though ethics reviews of experiments likely would catch the most egregious experiments before they venture into the realm of Gothic horror, they might miss a few things if we do not engage in some bioethical reflection now. The authors suggest that we take two points from Frankenstein to guide us in drawing up new ethical standards: First, we should consider anything we create as existing on a moral plane no matter what the current regulations state. Exactly where a particular creature might fall on the moral spectrum is another question. (For instance, a reanimated pig brain does not have the same moral standing as a human being.)

Second, they remind us that we must try to avoid holding prejudice toward any moral beings that look or act differently than we do. In the novel, Dr. Frankenstein recoils in horror almost instinctively at what he created with monstrous results (no pun intended). We must be willing to consider atypical beings as potentially worthy of moral standing no matter how strange they may be.

Finally, they advise that every manipulated organism be treated with respect. This might be the most easily applied — had Victor Frankenstien respected the graves he looted to create his monster, none of the misfortune that followed would have befallen him.

Frankenstein Reflects the Hopes and Fears of Every Scientific Era

The novel is usually considered a cautionary tale for science, but its cultural legacy is much more complicated.

An illustration of a nude person sitting on the floor while another flees the room.

The bicentennial of Frankenstein started early. While Mary Shelley’s momentous novel was published anonymously in 1818, the commemorations began last year to mark the dark and stormy night on Lake Geneva when she (then still Mary Godwin, having eloped with her married lover Percy Shelley) conceived what she called her “hideous progeny.”

In May, MIT Press will publish a new edition of the original text, “annotated for scientists, engineers, and creators of all kinds.” As well as the explanatory and expository notes throughout the book, there are accompanying essays by historians and other writers that discuss Frankenstein ’s relevance and implications for science and invention today.

It’s a smart idea, but treating Frankenstein as a meditation on the responsibilities of the scientist, and the dangers of ignoring them, is bound to give only a partial view of Shelley’s novel. It’s not just a book about science. Moreover, focusing on Shelley’s text doesn’t explore the scope of the Frankenstein myth itself, including its message for scientists.

This is one of those stories everyone knows even without having read the original: Man makes monster; monster runs amok; monster kills man. It may come as a surprise to discover that the creator, not the creature, is called Frankenstein, and that the original creature was not the shambling, grunting, green-faced lunk played by Boris Karloff in the 1931 movie but an articulate soul who meditates on John Milton’s Paradise Lost . Such misconceptions might do little justice to Shelley, but as the critic Chris Baldick has written, “That series of adaptations, allusions, accretions, analogues, parodies, and plain misreadings with follows upon Mary Shelley’s novel is not just a supplementary component of the myth; it is the myth.”

In any case, the essays in the MIT edition have surprisingly little to say about the reproductive and biomedical technologies of our age, such as assisted conception, tissue engineering, stem-cell research, cloning, genetic manipulation, and “ synthetic human entities with embryo-like features ”—the remarkable potential “organisms” with a Frankensteinian name.

That feels like a missed opportunity. Frankenstein is still frequently the first point of reference for media reports of such cutting-edge developments, just as it was when human IVF became a viable technique in the early 1970s. The “Franken” label is now a lazy journalistic cliché for a technology you should distrust, or at least regard as “weird”: Frankenfoods, Frankenbugs. The “wisdom of repugnance,” the phrase coined by the U.S. bioethicist Leon Kass and which informed the decision of the George W. Bush administration to pose drastic restrictions on federally funded stem-cell research in 2001, harked back directly to Mary Shelley’s novel.

Let’s be in no doubt: Frankenstein is one of the most extraordinary achievements in English literature. It’s not flawlessly written, the construction is sometimes awkward—yet it is a profound and unsettling vision, deeply informed about the science and philosophy of its day. That it was written not by an established and experienced author but by a teenager at a very difficult period in her life feels almost miraculous. It’s in fact those troubled circumstances and those flaws that have helped the book to persist, to keep on stimulating debate, and to continue attracting adaptations and variations—some good, many bad, some plain execrable.

It’s too often suggested—some of the commentaries in the MIT edition repeat the idea—that Frankenstein is a warning about a hubristic, overreaching science that unleashes forces it cannot control. “Victor’s error is failing to think harder about the potential repercussions of his work,” writes the bioethicist Josephine Johnston. To Mary Shelley’s biographer Anne Mellor, the novel “portrays the penalties of violating Nature.” This makes it sound as though the attempt to create an “artificial person” from scavenged body parts was always going to end badly: that it was a crazy, doomed project from the start.

But Mary Shelley takes some pains to show that the real problem is not what Victor Frankenstein made, but how he reacted to it. “Now that I had finished,” he says, “the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” He rejects the “hideous wretch” he has created, but nothing about that seems inevitable. What would have happened if Victor had instead lived up to his responsibilities by choosing to nurture his creature?

One might answer that the result would have been a pretty dull and short novel. But I’m not so sure. Imagine the story of Victor struggling to have the creature accepted by a society that shunned it as vile and unnatural. We would then be reading a book about social prejudice and our preconceptions of nature—indeed, about the kind of prospect one can easily imagine for a human born by cloning today (if such as thing were scientifically possible and ethically permissible). The moral and philosophical landscape it might have explored would be no less rich.

That Victor did not do this—that he spurned his creation the moment he had made it, merely because he judged it ugly—means that, to my mind, the conclusion we should reach is the one that the speculative-fiction author Elizabeth Bear articulates in the new volume. It is for Victor’s “failure of empathy and his moral cowardice,” Bear says—for his overweening egotism and narcissism—that we should think ill of him, and not because of what he discovered or created.

Mary Shelley, however, gives her readers mixed messages. What she shows us is a man behaving badly, but what she seems to tell us is that he is tragic and sympathetic. All of her characters think so well of “poor, dear Victor” that we’re given pause. Even Robert Walton, the ship’s captain who finds Victor pursuing his creature in the Arctic and whose letters describing that encounter begin and end the book, sees in him a noble, pitiable figure, “amiable and attractive” despite his wrecked and emaciated state. Frankenstein’s only critic is his creature.

This could be seen as a rather exquisite piece of authorial artifice, an early example of the unreliable narrator. It seems more likely to me that Shelley herself wasn’t clear what to make of Victor. In her revised edition of 1831, she emphasized the Faustian aspect of the tale, writing in her introduction that she wanted to show how “supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.” In other words, it was preordained that the creature would be hideous, and inevitable that its creator would recoil “horror-stricken.” That wasn’t then a character failing of Victor’s.

This idea invites the interpretation that Mellor offers in the new edition: “Nature prevents Victor from constructing a normal human being: His unnatural method of reproduction spawns an unnatural being, a freak.”

She sees this as a feminist interpretation (Nature being, in her view, feminine and inviolable), I feel that to the extent that Shelley’s book supports a feminist reading, it is not this, and to the extent that one might draw this interpretation, it is not a feminist one. To condemn Victor for violating “Mother Nature” with his “unnatural being” seems plain disturbing in the 21st century. Certainly it bears out the complaint of the British biologist J. B. S. Haldane in 1924:

There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god. But if every physical and chemical invention is a blasphemy, every biological invention is a perversion.

By accepting that Victor’s work is inherently perverted and bound to end hideously, Mellor’s accusation leaves us wondering what exactly is meant by “unnatural.” Which real-life interventions are guaranteed to produce a freak? Might that be so with IVF, as its early detractors insisted? Is it the case for so-called “three-parent babies” made by mitochondrial transplantation, a misleading term apparently invented for the very purpose of insisting on its unnaturalness? Would the first human clone be the next “unnatural freak,” if ever that technology becomes possible and desirable?

“Unnatural” is not a neutral description but a morally laden term, and dangerous for that reason: Its use threatens to prejudice or shut down discussion before it begins.

There’s something of this rush to judgment also in the commentary of Charles Robinson, the Frankenstein scholar who introduces the new annotated text. Speaking about the evils released from Pandora’s box by Prometheus’s brother Epimetheus in Greek myth—Shelley subtitled her novel “The Modern Prometheus”—Robinson says that such terrible consequences of careless tampering are reflected in “the pesticide DDT, the atom bomb, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl,” and the British government’s allowing a stem-cell scientist to perform genome editing “despite objections that ethical issues were being ignored.”

But each of these modern developments in fact involved a complex and case-specific chain of events, and incurs a delicate balance of pros and cons. Some, such as the Chernobyl nuclear accident, had rather little to do with the intrinsic ethics of the underlying technology, but were a consequence of particular political and bureaucratic decisions. To imply that they unambiguously show a lack of foresight (Epimetheus’s name means “afterthought”) or indeed of responsibility on the part of the scientists whose work made them possible would be to cheapen the discourse and to evade the real issues.

The decision on genome editing, meanwhile—presumably this refers to the granting of a license by the U.K. Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority for gene-editing of very early stage, non-viable embryos—supports medical research that might, among other things, help to reduce rates of miscarriage. Such work will never be free of ethical objections raised by those opposed to all research on human embryos. Without a doubt, Frankenstein asks challenging questions about research like this that touches on interventions in human life. But to suggest that it warns us to abjure such work doesn’t do Mary Shelley justice.

What, then, does the story of Victor Frankenstein’s doomed and misguided quest have to tell us about modern science in general, and technological intervention in life in particular? I think that, to find an answer, we needn’t try too hard to discern Shelley’s own intentions. Her text arose not out of a conscious desire to tell a moral tale—not, at any rate, one about science—but literally out of a nightmare. In her preface to the 1831 edition she described how the “ghastly image” of a “pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together” came to her as she tried to sleep after listening to conversations between Byron and Percy Shelley deep into the night, concerning the “principle of life.”

That retrospective account surely included some embellishment, but it seems fair to accept Shelley’s assertion that “my imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me.” The impact and enduring fascination of her novel depend on the author not having worked too hard to impose a meaning on the “ghastly image” she dreamed, to resolve the conflicts that it evoked in her, or to maintain a consistent attitude as she reworked her book.

So we can draw Luddite conclusions if that’s what we look for, just as we can read into the text Shelley’s fears about childbirth, her frustration and anger at her father’s rejection, political worries about the destructive potential of the inchoate mob, or an examination of male terror of female sexual and procreative independence.

But it surely matters at least as much now not just what Frankenstein is about but what the Frankenstein myth is about—what as a culture we have made of this wonderful, undisciplined book, whether that is Hollywood’s insistence that the artificial being be a stiff-limbed quasi-robotic mute or more contemporary efforts to tell a story that is sympathetic to the creature’s point of view. Frankenstein , after all, was never intended as an instruction manual to the bioethicist or the engineer. It is better seen as a catalyst, even an agent provocateur , that lures us into disclosing what we truly hope and fear.

The ambiguity of the book is an essential feature of myth, and all modern myths come from a similar fertile lack of authorial control. That isn’t a failing. Everyone loves a well-crafted story, but those crafted partly by the unconscious and delivered to us misshapen and unfinished hold a particular potential to be reanimated, time after time, to fit and to dramatize the anxieties of the age. Like Victor, we make Frankenstein in our own image.

About the Author

Save citation to file

Email citation, add to collections.

Create a new collection
Add to an existing collection

Add to My Bibliography

Your saved search, create a file for external citation management software, your rss feed.

Search in PubMed
Search in NLM Catalog
Add to Search

The Ethical Interest of Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus: A Literature Review 200 Years After Its Publication

Affiliations.

1 Department of Experimental and Health Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.
2 Bioethics Chair, Universitat de Vic-Universitat Central de Catalunya, Vic, Spain.
3 School of Medicine, Universitat de Vic-Universitat Central de Catalunya, Casa de Convalescència, Dr. Junyent 1, 08500, Vic, Spain.
4 Department of Experimental and Health Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain. [email protected].
5 School of Medicine, Universitat de Vic-Universitat Central de Catalunya, Casa de Convalescència, Dr. Junyent 1, 08500, Vic, Spain. [email protected].
PMID: 32533445
DOI: 10.1007/s11948-020-00229-x

Two hundred years after it was first published, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, the modern Prometheus remains relevant. This novel has endured because of its literary merits and because its themes lend themselves to analysis from multiple viewpoints. Scholars from many disciplines have examined this work in relation to controversial scientific research. In this paper, we review the academic literature where Frankenstein is used to discuss ethics, bioethics, science, technology and medicine. We searched the academic literature and carried out a content analysis of articles discussing the novel and films derived from it, analyzing the findings qualitatively and quantitatively. We recorded the following variables: year and language of publication, whether it referred to the novel or to a film, the academic discipline in which it was published, and the topics addressed in the analysis. Our findings indicate that the scientific literature on Frankenstein focuses mainly on science and the personality of the scientist rather than on the creature the scientist created or ethical aspects of his research. The scientist's responsibility is central to the ethical interest of Frankenstein; this issue entails both the motivation underlying the scientist's acts and the consequences of these acts.

Keywords: Ethics; Feature films; Frankenstein; Literature analysis; Science; Scientist.

PubMed Disclaimer

Publication types

Search in MeSH

LinkOut - more resources

Full text sources.

Citation Manager

NCBI Literature Resources

MeSH PMC Bookshelf Disclaimer

The PubMed wordmark and PubMed logo are registered trademarks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Unauthorized use of these marks is strictly prohibited.

Help & FAQ

Introduction: Frankenstein, Race and Ethics

Research output : Contribution to journal › Editorial › peer-review

At the Frankenstein @ 200 colloquium, March 2019, Princeton University (sponsored by a David Gardner Grant), Professors John Bugg (Fordham University) and Adam Potkay (The College of William and Mary) presented papers addressing the topic, ‘Teaching Frankenstein: Race, Ethics, and Pedagogy’. My introduction sets the stage for their now evolved articles. John Bugg’s ‘Teaching Frankenstein and Race’ takes up the problems of turning this conjunction into an allegory, a gesture in the first reviews, and persisting in critical discussion. Adam Potkay takes up a related conjunction, pressed into a conditional logic: the foundation of happiness on virtue (the classical tradition), or the reverse, the foundation of virtue on happiness (social and material contingencies). Bugg’s story wends through critical and reception history to the classrooms of the twenty-first century; Potkay traces a genealogy of race and happiness into Richard Wright’s midcentury novel of racial trauma, Native Son.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	12-21
Number of pages	10
Journal
Volume	34
Issue number	1
DOIs
State	Published - Jan 2 2020

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Literature and Literary Theory
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
US Declaration of Independence
racialized differentials
reception history
rejected daughters
rejected sons

Access to Document

10.1080/09524142.2020.1761110

Fingerprint

Happiness Medicine and Dentistry 100%
Injury Medicine and Dentistry 33%
Gesture Medicine and Dentistry 33%
Richard Wright Arts and Humanities 25%
Critical discussion Arts and Humanities 25%
Conditional Logic Arts and Humanities 25%
Racial Trauma Keyphrases 25%

T1 - Introduction

T2 - Frankenstein, Race and Ethics

AU - Wolfson, Susan J.

PY - 2020/1/2

Y1 - 2020/1/2

N2 - At the Frankenstein @ 200 colloquium, March 2019, Princeton University (sponsored by a David Gardner Grant), Professors John Bugg (Fordham University) and Adam Potkay (The College of William and Mary) presented papers addressing the topic, ‘Teaching Frankenstein: Race, Ethics, and Pedagogy’. My introduction sets the stage for their now evolved articles. John Bugg’s ‘Teaching Frankenstein and Race’ takes up the problems of turning this conjunction into an allegory, a gesture in the first reviews, and persisting in critical discussion. Adam Potkay takes up a related conjunction, pressed into a conditional logic: the foundation of happiness on virtue (the classical tradition), or the reverse, the foundation of virtue on happiness (social and material contingencies). Bugg’s story wends through critical and reception history to the classrooms of the twenty-first century; Potkay traces a genealogy of race and happiness into Richard Wright’s midcentury novel of racial trauma, Native Son.

AB - At the Frankenstein @ 200 colloquium, March 2019, Princeton University (sponsored by a David Gardner Grant), Professors John Bugg (Fordham University) and Adam Potkay (The College of William and Mary) presented papers addressing the topic, ‘Teaching Frankenstein: Race, Ethics, and Pedagogy’. My introduction sets the stage for their now evolved articles. John Bugg’s ‘Teaching Frankenstein and Race’ takes up the problems of turning this conjunction into an allegory, a gesture in the first reviews, and persisting in critical discussion. Adam Potkay takes up a related conjunction, pressed into a conditional logic: the foundation of happiness on virtue (the classical tradition), or the reverse, the foundation of virtue on happiness (social and material contingencies). Bugg’s story wends through critical and reception history to the classrooms of the twenty-first century; Potkay traces a genealogy of race and happiness into Richard Wright’s midcentury novel of racial trauma, Native Son.

KW - Abjection

KW - Frankenstein

KW - Mary Shelley

KW - Native Son

KW - US Declaration of Independence

KW - ethnicity

KW - racialized differentials

KW - reception history

KW - rejected daughters

KW - rejected sons

KW - slavery

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85087568455&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85087568455&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/09524142.2020.1761110

DO - 10.1080/09524142.2020.1761110

M3 - Editorial

AN - SCOPUS:85087568455

SN - 0952-4142

JO - Keats-Shelley Review

JF - Keats-Shelley Review

200 Years of Frankenstein: Mary Shelley’s Masterpiece as a Lens on Today’s Most Pressing Questions of Science, Ethics, and Human Creativity

By maria popova.

A teenage girl grieving the death of her infant daughter is sitting on the almost unbearably beautiful shore of a Swiss mountain lake. Her own mother, a pioneering feminist and political philosopher , has died of complications from childbirth exactly a month after bringing her into the world. Her philosopher father has cut her off for eloping to Europe with her lover — a struggling poet, whom she would marry six months later, after the suicide of his estranged first wife.

Mary Shelley (August 30, 1797–February 1, 1851) is just shy of her nineteenth birthday. She and her lover — Percy Bysshe Shelley — are spending the summer with Percy’s best friend, the poet Lord Byron, whose wife has just left him and taken custody of their infant daughter, Ada Lovelace . One June evening, Lord Byron proposes that the downtrodden party amuse themselves by each coming up with a ghost story. What Mary dreams up would go on to become one of the world’s most visionary works of literature, strewn with abiding philosophical questions about creativity and responsibility, the limits and liabilities of science, and the moral dimensions of technological progress.

The year is 1816. Decades stand between her and the first working incandescent light bulb. It would be more than a century before the Milky Way is revealed as not the whole of the universe but one of innumerable galaxies in it. Photography is yet to be invented; the atom yet to be split; Neptune, penicillin, and DNA yet to be discovered; relativity theory and quantum mechanics yet to be conceived of. The very word scientist is yet to be coined ( for the Scottish mathematician Mary Somerville ).

Against this backdrop and its narrow parameters of knowledge barely imaginable to today’s vista of scientific understanding, Mary Shelley unleashed her imagination on Lord Byron’s challenge and began gestating what would be published eighteen months later, on the first day of 1818, as Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus . Its message is as cautionary as it is irrepressibly optimistic. “The labours of men of genius,” this woman of genius writes, “however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.”

Two hundred years later, Arizona State University launched The Frankenstein Bicentennial Project — a cross-disciplinary, multimedia endeavor to engage the people of today with the timeless issues of science, technology, and creative responsibility posed by Shelley’s searching intellect and imagination. As part of the celebration, MIT Press published Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds ( public library ) — Shelley’s original 1818 manuscript, line-edited by the world’s leading expert on the text and accompanied by annotations and essays by prominent contemporary thinkers across science, technology, philosophy, ethics, feminism, and speculative fiction. What emerges is the most thrilling science-lensed reading of a literary classic since Lord Byron’s Don Juan annotated by Isaac Asimov .

Editors David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert, who consider Shelley’s masterwork “a book that can encourage us to be both thoughtful and hopeful” and describe their edition as one intended “to enhance our collective understandings and to invent — intentionally — a world in which we all want to live and, indeed, a world in which we all can thrive,” write in the preface:

No work of literature has done more to shape the way humans imagine science and its moral consequences than Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus , Mary Shelley’s remarkably enduring tale of creation and responsibility… In writing Frankenstein, Mary produced both in the creature and in its creator tropes that continue to resonate deeply with contemporary audiences. Moreover, these tropes and the imaginations they engender actually influence the way we confront emerging science and technology, conceptualize the process of scientific research, imagine the motivations and ethical struggles of scientists, and weigh the benefits of scientific research against its anticipated and unforeseen pitfalls.

It is almost impossible to imagine what the world, the everyday world, was like two centuries ago — a difference so profound it seeps into language itself. With this in mind, the editors offer a thoughtful note on their choice of referring to Doctor Frankenstein’s creation as “the creature” (rather than daemon , which Shelley herself uses, or monster , as posthumous criticism often does). In consonance with bryologist Robin Wall Kimmerer’s insight into how naming confers dignity upon life , they write:

It is worth pointing out that the way we now use the word creature ignores a richer etymology. Today, we refer to birds and bees as creatures. Living things are creatures by virtue of their living-ness. When we call something a creature today, we rarely think in terms of something that has been created, and thus we erase the idea of a creator behind the creature. We have likewise lost the social connotation of the term creature, for creatures are made not just biologically (or magically) but also socially.

This nexus of the scientific and the social at the heart of Shelley’s novel comes alive in a lovely companion to the annotated edition: Reanimation! — a seven-part series of animated conversations with scientists by science communication powerhouse Massive , exploring the prescient questions embedded in Shelley’s novel — questions touching on the nature of consciousness, the evolution and definition of life, the ethics of genetic engineering, the future of the human body and artificial intelligence.

In the first film — which calls to mind Freeman Dyson’s assertion that “a new generation of artists, writing genomes as fluently as Blake and Byron wrote verses, might create an abundance of new flowers and fruit and trees and birds to enrich the ecology of our planet” — BBC science communicator Britt Wray and ecologist and biologist Ben Novak echo poet Denise Levertov’s lament about our tendency to see ourselves as separate from nature through the lens of genetic engineering and synthetic biology:

I’m really hoping that synthetic biology as a whole can drive a different appreciation — a different definition and relationship — of what we see to be nature. For years, we have peddled this notion that humans are separate entities from nature — there’s the arrogance that humans are somehow divinely above nature and we’re the caretakers of the world and we can do whatever we want with it. But there really hasn’t been a universal realization that we are nature.

Perhaps the central animating question of Shelley’s novel is what she termed “the nature of the principle of life” — that curious island of being amid the vast cosmic ocean of nonbeing. This is what theoretical physicist Sara Imari Walker and exoplanetary scientist and astrobiologist Caleb Scharf consider in the second film, exploring the nature and definition of life on Earth and beyond, and what we mean by intelligence when we speak of intelligent life:

We’ve really thought about life as being a binary phenomenon — something is alive or it’s not… In the context of origins of life, that’s really critical, because you want to talk about the transition between nonliving things and living things… [But] life in general is actually a process that occurs across multiple scales, and you can talk about a cell in my body being alive or you can talk about me being alive and you can also… go up in scale and maybe think about societies as being alive. That’s one of the things that’s really interesting about life… it has this kind of hierarchical structure where you have many layers of organization. […] We might be able to understand more universal properties of life based on organizational principles — [not] just focusing on the things life is made of, but how it is organized. That’s [why] reductionism has been hard in biology — because we always try to separate out these scales and treat them separately. But [in reality] you have ordered processes and dynamics across multiple scales — that really is the intrinsic indicative process of life.

In the third film, philosopher and cognitive scientist David Chalmers and comparative neuroscientist Danbee Kim examine the nature of consciousness — a philosophical inquiry that occupied Plato , entered the realm of science through William James’s pioneering writings , and has been the subject of another lovely animation by Massive:

Trying to go directly from the cells to behavior is not going to be possible. Why? Because there are actually several levels of organization in between them. If you start with the cell, then the next level of organization would be a circuit. And how does the nervous system as an organ interact with other organs in the body? And then, after that, is the organism and all the movements produced by an organism. But that still isn’t behavior, because behavior is something that arises when you have goals for your movements and the only way for you to really pick or even decide a goal is not in a vacuum — it has to be within your environment: What other creatures, what other organisms, do you have to coordinate with in order to exist in your immediate local physical space? […] It’s this interplay between brains, bodies, and the world that, in the end, allows us to develop these goals… and the development of those goals is what I would call cognition .

In the fourth film, molecular biologist Kate Krueger and paleoanthropologist and archaeologist Genevieve Dewar consider the common human impulse for transformation, which undergirds both our most primitive Stone Age tools and our most advanced gene editing technologies:

Once we see the development of culture and social interactions, we actually see for the first time our species being able to step outside of and above biological evolution. […] It’s very rare that humans like to sit still and do nothing and maintain stasis. While we love what we know and we do want to maintain it, I think all of us would love to make the world a more interesting place and a more useful place, and be able to do more things and climb higher and move faster. This is also part of our nature — the desire to create and to grow and to change.

In the fifth film, engineer and ethicist Braden Allenby and biomedical engineer Conor Walsh contemplate the widening gap between our technological capabilities and our wisdom, and consider how the abiding philosophical question of what it means to be human is changing in the era of CRISPR and wearable robotics:

When you start to get a much more rapid change in technology, particularly technology that affects the human… you begin to get human as a process. The idea of human that we have is already changing much more rapidly than we know, but the process of human has simply accelerated. It continues, and we remain human.

In the sixth film, historian and philosopher of science Margaret Wertheim , neuroscientist and AI researcher Daniel Baer, and engineer and ethicist Branden Allenby reflect on our perpetually evolving definition of and ethical parameters around what constitutes intelligence and what makes an intelligence “artificial”:

I suspect that we are not going to think we see a conscious machine even when they are running the planet… We have an extraordinary ability as humans — as soon as we offload something to machines that has to do with our cognition, we call it simple and it’s obviously not part of intelligence. [For example], the first people who were called computers were in fact very highly trained mathematicians, many of them women , who did systemic mathematical solutions for very complex equations for things like ballistics… and they were regarded as extremely intelligent. That lasted until TI came up with the first calculator and then, suddenly, we decided that mathematical calculations weren’t part of being intelligent. So my suspicion is that we already have machines that, to at least first degree, are AI.

In the seventh and final film, BBC science communicator Britt Wray, theoretical physicist Sara Imari Walker, and paleoanthropologist and archaeologist Genevieve Dewar examine what may be the overarching philosophical concern of Shelley’s masterwork — the God complex with which we wield our tools and regard their creations, and the interplay between fear and curiosity indelible to all innovation and to every leap of science:

What makes Homo sapiens special and different is their ability to innovate on the fly, come up with new ideas and new ways of doing things, [and] learn from the mistake of others and communicate rapidly… to build upon the mistakes of the past.

Complement Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds with philosopher Joanna Bourke’s synthesis of three centuries of ideas about what it means to be human and Maya Angelou’s arresting message to humanity in the golden age of twentieth-century scientific breakthrough, then visit Massive for more animated conversations with leading scientists about some of the most exciting frontiers of science and the most morally complex questions of our time.

— Published June 14, 2018 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2018/06/14/frankenstein-science-mit-massive/ —

www.themarginalian.org

PRINT ARTICLE

Email article, filed under, animation books culture mary shelley philosophy science, view full site.

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy . (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)

Open access
Published: 23 February 2021

Frankenstein; or, the modern Prometheus : a classic novel to stimulate the analysis of complex contemporary issues in biomedical sciences

Irene Cambra-Badii ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1233-3243 1 ,
Elena Guardiola 2 &
Josep-E. Baños 2

BMC Medical Ethics volume 22 , Article number: 17 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

22k Accesses

4 Citations

4 Altmetric

Metrics details

Advances in biomedicine can substantially change human life. However, progress is not always followed by ethical reflection on its consequences or scientists’ responsibility for their creations. The humanities can help health sciences students learn to critically analyse these issues; in particular, literature can aid discussions about ethical principles in biomedical research. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the modern Prometheus (1818) is an example of a classic novel presenting complex scenarios that could be used to stimulate discussion.

Within the framework of the 200th anniversary of the novel, we searched PubMed to identify works that explore and discuss its value in teaching health sciences. Our search yielded 56 articles, but only two of these reported empirical findings. Our analysis of these articles identified three main approaches to using Frankenstein in teaching health sciences: discussing the relationship between literature and science, analysing ethical issues in biomedical research, and examining the importance of empathy and compassion in healthcare and research. After a critical discussion of the articles, we propose using Frankenstein as a teaching tool to prompt students to critically analyse ethical aspects of scientific and technological progress, the need for compassion and empathy in medical research, and scientists’ responsibility for their discoveries.

Frankenstein can help students reflect on the personal and social limits of science, the connection between curiosity and scientific progress, and scientists’ responsibilities. Its potential usefulness in teaching derives from the interconnectedness of science, ethics, and compassion. Frankenstein can be a useful tool for analysing bioethical issues related to scientific and technological advances, such as artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and cloning. Empirical studies measuring learning outcomes are necessary to confirm the usefulness of this approach.

Peer Review reports

In the last two centuries, scientific discoveries and technological innovations in biomedical sciences have improved the lives of most human beings immensely. However, education in the health sciences often fails to analyse the myriad consequences of scientific and technological advances from a bioethical point of view. In part, this failure derives from the compartmentalization of higher education. Bioethics is classified as a branch of moral philosophy, which is considered to lie in the sphere of the humanities rather than in the sphere of science and technology, and health sciences education largely ignores the humanities [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ]. Moreover, traditional teaching methods like lectures are poorly suited to teaching issues related to bioethics, such as compassionate care or appropriate relationships among health professionals, patients, and society, which require active pedagogical techniques that help students develop critical thinking skills and problem-solving competences [ 7 , 8 ].

Literature can help students appreciate the complexity of biomedical scenarios and improve their understanding of illness [ 9 ]. Various authors have suggested that literature can enhance future health professionals’ reflective thinking and improve their ability to analyse biomedical issues scientifically and honestly [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ].

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the modern Prometheus , published in 1818, is one of the most influential works in the history of English literature. It has influenced scientific thinking [ 17 , 18 ] and has become a modern myth [ 17 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 ]. Its value lies not only in its literary qualities, plot, and characters, but also in its reflective focus and compassionate approach to the character of Frankenstein’s creature [ 25 ].

Mary Shelley’s novel has come to be considered a canonical work. Its literary value and importance for science perdure today, more than 200 years after its first publication. Its place in the canon is ensured by its inclusion in educational curricula, especially in higher education [ 26 ], just as its place in popular culture is ensured by cinematic adaptations—especially James Whale’s (1931) and Kenneth Branagh’s (1994) versions, known worldwide. The current paper aims to examine the value of this work for ethicists and health sciences students, beyond popular culture or critical acclaim.

In a previous paper [ 27 ], we presented a content analysis of articles in the scientific literature that used the novel to discuss issues related to ethics, bioethics, science, technology, or medicine. We concluded that these articles focused mainly on Dr Frankenstein’s personality and scientific research rather than on ethical aspects related to his research or to the results of this research. Most of the papers analysed dealt with the importance of Frankenstein for reflecting science [ 17 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 ], scientists [ 20 , 32 ], the limits of scientific activity [ 22 , 24 , 33 ], and the need for peer review in research [ 32 , 34 ].

In the current article, we review the literature on Frankenstein in the medical humanities and health sciences and propose different ways that Shelley’s novel can be used in teaching future health professionals.

Searching PubMed using the term Frankenstein combined with ethics, bioethics, science, technology, medicine, education, and/or medical humanities yielded only two articles that reported empirical results about using the novel to teach health sciences. In the first, Koren and Bar [ 28 ] used a closed questionnaire, an essay, and a semi-structured collective interview about literary works including Frankenstein , The Physicists , Gulliver’s Travels , Jurassic Park , Faust , Microbe Hunters , Galaxies , and Wrinkles in Time to assess Israeli high-school students’ attitudes towards science and scientists. They found that Frankenstein was associated with the stereotypical “mad scientist”. In the interviews, a few students justified Frankenstein’s behaviour, but their ambivalent opinions were evident in sentences like “his intentions were relatively good to help the doctors and humanity afterwards he tried to fix it. But it was kind of too late.” (p.156).

In the second, Reginato et al. [ 1 ] used the field diary of a first-year biomedical sciences classroom in Brazil to evaluate the impact that reading and discussing Frankenstein had on their students in the context of a course that aimed to promote internal reflection about knowledge and the concept of science, responsibility and bioethics, and dehumanization in research. Students’ reflections focused mainly on two aspects: issues to be considered in science education beyond technical aspects, particularly the moral and ethical responsibility in research, and the influence of scientists’ actions in society.

Given the scarcity of research exploring the value of using Frankenstein in health sciences education, we sought to identify themes in the novel that would be of interest in this field and to develop ways that the novel could be exploited for teaching. Our critical analysis of the academic papers suggested three broad approaches: literature and science, bioethical dilemmas in research, and the need for empathy and compassion in medical care and research.

Literature and science through Frankenstein

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is usually classified in the science fiction genre because it provides a critical vision of the future resulting from technoscientific advances [ 35 ]. However, the term science fiction was not coined until a century after Shelley’s novel was published. Frankenstein might also fit in the fiction-about-science genre [ 20 ] or even the science-in-fiction genre [ 36 ], where scientific facts are plausibly incorporated into fictional narratives to probe ethical dilemmas that might otherwise be difficult to tackle. Regardless of how we classify it, two hundred years after its initial publication, Frankenstein continues to lend itself to a critical analysis of science, knowledge, and responsibility. We will explore the use of literature for teaching health science students through three approaches.

First, discussions about whether the novel fits better in the science fiction or science-in-fiction genre can tackle various questions: What is science fiction literature? What are the science fiction elements in Frankenstein ? What image of the future does the novel put forth? What other science fiction novels could be read together in the same context? (Answers to this question might include H. G. Wells’ The Island of Dr Moreau for considering human research or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World for analysing human values). What films could be used to explore science fiction? (Answers to this question might include Matrix to review the fear of the technology beyond human control or The Fly to analyse research on human subjects).

Second, it could be interesting to analyse the historical and scientific context in which Frankenstein was written and its connections to literary works and later scientific developments. Along these lines, learning about the author’s private life and the scientific sources that inspired the novel could also be interesting. In the summer of 1816, Mary Shelley stayed in Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva, with her lover and future husband, Percy Shelley, her step-sister, Jane Clairmont, and her lover, Lord Byron and his personal physician John William Polidori. Bad weather confined them to the villa, where they had long conversations that served as inspiration for the scenes of galvanism and resuscitation in the novel [ 37 ]. It is fascinating to explore the state of scientific knowledge in the early nineteenth century to see how recent discoveries and currents of thought were adapted and incorporated into the novel, including Volta’s experiments with electricity; Galvani, Aldini, Bichat, and Weinhold’s investigations into electricity in animals and human beings and the influence of vitalism; Erasmus Darwin and the voluntary motion of vermicelli in a glass case; the antecedents of the alchemy of Paracelsus, Agrippa, and Albertus Magnus; Halley's magnetic theories; and the chemical processes of Davy and Bichat, some of which are explicitly mentioned in Mary Shelley’s introduction to the novel, written in 1831 [ 22 , 23 , 31 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 ]. This approach shows the deep connections between the history and philosophy of science and bioethics and the health sciences. Learning about the scientific and sociohistorical context at the time the novel was written can help students understand the novel more deeply and gain insight into the relationships between the humanities and science. In this sense, it can be interesting to work not only with the content of the literary work, but also with the context in which it was created.

Third, Frankenstein can be used to discuss some issues in gender ethics in literature and science, beginning with its authorship and the circumstances of its publication. Mary Shelley’s name did not appear until the second edition of the novel, published in 1831. The first edition was published anonymously, and readers ascribed it to her husband, the romantic poet Percy B. Shelley, who had written the preface. Given the position of women in society at the beginning of the nineteenth century, in her preface of 1831, Mary Shelley took pains to explain how she was capable of producing a complete story without any help.

Gender roles and representations in the novel are also well worth analyzing. As previous researchers have pointed out, the novel seems to delimit two gender spheres: a masculine sphere that is scientific, ambitious, rational, active, and public, contrasting with a feminine one that is emotional, passive, and domestic [ 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 ]. Especially for teaching health science students, it can be interesting to discuss how the novel is narrated through the two male protagonists’ letters or diaries, while the female characters’ point of view is only intimated through two letters Elizabeth wrote to Victor before he created the creature. Not only is the human female perspective absent, however: the female creature, unlike her male counterpart, is not given the opportunity to discuss her plight in a monologue. To recover the voice of women, health science students can role play different scenarios incorporating the female characters’ views. Bibliographic searches about female scientists in Mary Shelley’s time can further enrich the discussion.

Finally, to discuss the relationship between literature and science, the narrative can be analysed in conjunction with other works and myths to explore the synergy between literature and science. The Frankenstein story has transcended the novel to become a modern myth [ 2 , 17 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 49 , 54 , 55 ], building on the representational force of Prometheus and the Christian myths found in the novel. The reference to the myth of Prometheus explicitly present in the title is obvious, but the Frankenstein story also has connections with the Golem myth, inviting reflection on differences between the animate and the inanimate and between the human and inhuman. Frankenstein can also be considered together with Goethe's Faust , a scientist with uncontrollable ambitions, and with Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , another paradigm of human duality. The characters and plots allow us to reflect on the limits of human behaviour, what is and what is not permissible in scientific research, and whether these bioethical limits are time-dependent or should never be violated.

Just as Frankenstein was inspired by earlier myths, the story can also inspire new myths. The novel could be considered a template for science narratives, a social construction that helps people make sense of science and conceptualize its social and technical implications [ 17 ]. Nagy et al. [ 19 ] refer to the Frankenstein myth’s association with bad or dangerous science as a stigma that continues to haunt scientists. Thus, it would be useful to study whether students could identify negative images of science and scientists in Frankenstein , in other works of fiction, and in history as well.

Bioethics dilemmas in research

Frankenstein is a good tool to examine the stereotype of the mad scientist [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 54 , 55 , 56 ]. This stereotype calls attention to the risks associated with unsupervised research and can shed light on the evolution of society’s perception of science and scientists. Consciously or unconsciously, this stereotype is related to considerations of the bioethical limits of scientific research and the dilemmas that stem from scientific discoveries and technological advances. Frankenstein can help spark debate and focus discussion about these topics in health sciences classes.

Interestingly, as Nagy et al. [ 19 ] point out, the word scientist is not mentioned in the novel, because when Frankenstein was written, there was no term to refer to people who were dedicated to science. Victor Frankenstein nevertheless acts like a scientist, experimenting to gain new knowledge. Thus, despite the lack of references to the scientific profession, Frankenstein illustrates the power that comes with knowledge (scientific in this case), and this is one of the “lessons” that other authors have ascribed to the novel [ 20 ]. As Victor Frankenstein says, “Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow” [ 57 ].

Shelley’s work can also be analysed in relation to concerns about scientific and technological advances, their impact on human life, and the bioethical limits of current research. Indeed, the word Frankensteinian , when applied to practices in health sciences, refers to the risk involved in transgressive actions carried out without adequate prior consideration. In a sense, this meaning was articulated with Gaylin's [ 18 ] Frankenstein factor , a construct referring to the fear of poorly understood technological sophistication and the apprehension that technology can change the “nature” of species. Indeed, the name Frankenstein has often been used pejoratively as a warning in such scientific controversies [ 17 , 33 ]. On the other hand, Frankensteinian is also used to refer to an attitude that values pure science or technology over reflection [ 58 ], a practice that is widespread not only in science, but also in education.

Names like “Frankenscience” [ 59 ], “Frankenfood” [ 60 ], or “Frankenstein syndrome” [ 61 , 62 ] create cultural frames for viewing scientific enterprises and procedures in very specific and visceral ways that imply premeditated actions to alter nature [ 31 , 63 , 64 ]. These terms have being applied as warnings against “playing God” in applying practices such as transplantations [ 49 ]; robots, androids, and artificial intelligence in general [ 65 , 66 ]; genetic engineering, gene therapy, or genomic editing with CRISPR-9 [ 24 , 31 , 67 ]; cloning [ 45 ]; and non-human bioengineered species [ 68 ].

Table 1 lists some papers that we consider especially useful for stimulating discussion about Frankenstein stigmas and current issues in science. Reflecting on these sources and some concrete case studies can help students appreciate the challenge of determining the limits and responsibilities of contemporary scientists in a variety of scenarios related to the fields mentioned above, as well as to others such as assisted reproductive technology, medical prolongation of life, use of organs and human tissues, the horizon of concern for eugenics [ 69 ], and the consequences that oppression and segregation have on human beings [ 20 , 70 ].

Health science students can compare the contents of these papers to Frankenstein’s story or choose a recent controversial scientific advance and analyse the bioethical limits that could be involved and possible connections with Frankenstein . Furthermore, they could consider whether these warnings are based on moral opinion or on scientific assertions, taking into account the specific social context [ 71 ] and predictions of how these issues might be viewed in the future, while bearing in mind that moral values might be temporal [ 72 ].

The debate about creating life and the morality of “playing God” could lead into lessons about scientific ambition and ethical responsibilities in scientific advances [ 22 ]. Beyond technical and moral questions, “it is the inherent nature of science to push boundaries, discover new things, and commit overreach” [ 19 ], and students need to learn the importance of constant review of research and of supervision and feedback from expert colleagues and the general public. It is important to remember that Frankenstein's work is hidden, not shared with others, and removed from society [ 29 , 48 ].

It can be useful to compare Frankenstein's acts and attitudes with those prescribed by current bioethical standards, principles, and guidelines for safe and ethical medical research. Although we must be cautious about judging the past based on current moral standards, this comparison can help students think about bioethics. They can identify the aspects of scientific research that were insufficiently protected in Frankenstein’s experiment and discuss the ethical dilemmas that biomedical advances imply for the present and future of humanity. They can also discuss to what extent views of events depend on the viewers’ perspective and the importance of historical context for bioethical principles. Table 2 summarizes a proposal for an activity relating Frankenstein to the bioethics of some fields of research.

The need for empathy and compassion in medical care and research

Beyond the distinction between human and non-human creatures, this approach could delve into the themes related to the creation of living beings and scientists’ responsibility for their creations, as well as these creatures’ place in society and how they should be cared for.

In the novel, only a blind man treats Frankenstein’s creature kindly, and the creature cannot understand why his creator and society reject him. The creature shows that he has emotions and explains his desire to be accepted. He articulates his need for the companionship of a creature like him, promising to disappear peacefully if Dr Frankenstein creates a female creature to live with him and vowing to wreak havoc if he does not. Dr Frankenstein has misgivings about this project and undertakes it reluctantly, out of guilt, only to renege on his promise and destroy this second creation before it is finished.

In addition to analysing scientists’ responsibilities toward their creations, this approach can be used to explore the doctor-patient relationship. Given that empathy is a complex phenomenon that involves the ability to experience and share others’ feelings [ 73 , 74 ] and compassionate care requires empathy for those who are suffering and efforts to alleviate their suffering [ 75 ], the novel can be used to discuss both of these concepts.

Frankenstein is an epistolary novel, so it allows us access into different memories as narrators change throughout the text although, as mentioned above, female voices are notably absent. Subjective, reflective, and perspectival memories are presented, but we must bear in mind which character is speaking in the novel [ 20 ]. The creature’s perspective can be an interesting point to discuss, especially his monologue about love and company.

Victor Frankenstein has difficulties manifesting empathy for the creature he has created and providing it with compassionate care; in fact, he does everything in his power to avoid these responsibilities, despite the creature’s obvious need for humane treatment. Some scenes in Kenneth Branagh’s (1994) film Frankenstein of Mary Shelley (e.g., the creature’s monologue and Victor Frankenstein’s response) illustrate this point masterfully. It is important for students to make the connection between the emotions evoked in the story and bioethical responsibility and to realise that bioethical responsibility is inseparable from empathy. Exchanging opinions about Frankenstein’s responsibilities as a scientist regarding the protection of the creature and society can help them make this connection, and examining the creature’s plight can help students understand three empathic abilities that they will have to develop in their careers as health professionals [ 76 ]: the ability to understand the patients’ situations (including their perspectives and feelings), the ability to communicate that they understand this situation, and the ability to use their understanding of the patient’s situation to improve on it.

Another approach is to have students prepare a debate in which they take the roles of the two characters, focusing on their emotions, needs, and responsibilities. The class can also reflect on situations where they felt cut off from their peers by any kind of discrimination or segregation, the prejudices in our society, and how they could change them.

Our approach underlines the importance of responsibility, bioethics, and compassionate care in health sciences. These themes can also lead to a discussion of attitudes toward science and bioethics from the point of view of aesthetics—the emotions they evoke, their utility or harmfulness, and their effects on society, the environment, and the family. These discussions are especially important for showing the connections between science and empathy through examining the different roles and situations in the story, for example, by discussing the relationship between scientific advances and Victor Frankenstein’s and the creature’s feelings and emotions. Table 3 summarizes some teaching objectives that can be considered when using Frankenstein as pedagogical tool.

Conclusions

Our earlier findings indicated that the scientific literature on Frankenstein focused mainly on science and the personality of the scientist rather than on the creature he created or on ethical aspects of his research [ 27 ]. The current paper explores how Frankenstein can be used to help health sciences students learn about bioethical issues through exploring the connections between science and literature, the need for bioethical limits, and how those limits relate to empathy and compassionate care.

Professionals and students of the health sciences need to assess advances in biomedical research from a critical bioethical viewpoint. The rapid advance of new technologies and their impact on human beings necessitate a sound bioethical analysis and deep reflection on scientists’ and healthcare professionals’ responsibilities in their implementation. The humanities, and especially literature, offer a powerful tool for reflection, since the characters and stories allow us to discuss current problems that have already appeared in completely different contexts and thus avoid focusing the debate exclusively on a specific contemporary situation.

Mary Shelley’s novel can be a good tool for analysing issues such as scientific research, the nature of science, and bioethical conflicts. Two centuries after its first publication, this literary work is far from being outdated or obsolete. It remains a valuable tool for reflecting on personal and social limits, the connection between curiosity and scientific progress, and the scientist’s responsibility in research.

We propose an active and participatory approach to learning based on exploration through questioning rather than on supplying ready-made answers. Frankenstein can reaffirm its value as a case study in teaching and expand the role of literary sources in the education of health sciences students. Future research should include studies to collect empirical evidence about the actual pedagogical effectiveness of this approach.

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

Reginato V, Gallian DMC, Marra S. A literatura na formação de futuros cientistas: lição de Frankenstein. Educ Pesqui. 2018;44(1):1–16.

Google Scholar

O’Neill D, Jenkins E, Mawhinney R, Cosgrave E, O’Mahony S, Guest C, Moss H. Rethinking the medical in the medical humanities. Med Hum. 2016;42(2):109–14.

Article Google Scholar

Moreno-Leguizamon C, Patterson J, Gomez RA. Incorporation of social sciences and humanities in the training of health professionals and practitioners in other ways of knowing. Res Humanit Med Educ. 2015;2:18–23.

Gallian DMC, Pondé LF, Ruiz R. Humanização, humanismos e humanidades: problematizando conceitos e práticas no contexto da saúde no Brasil. Rev Int Humanid Méd. 2012;1(1):5–15.

Macnaughton J. Medical humanities’ challenge to medicine. J Eval Clin Pract. 2011;17(5):927–32.

Halperin EC. Preserving the humanities in medical education. Med Teac. 2010;32(1):76–9.

Popil I. Promotion of critical thinking by using case studies as teaching method. Nurse Educ Today. 2011;31(2):204–7.

Gunn TM, Grigg LM, Pomahac GA. Critical thinking in science education: can bioethical issues and questioning strategies increase scientific understandings. JET. 2007;42(2):165–83.

Hawkins AH, McEntyre MC, editors. Teaching literature and medicine. New York: Modern Language Association; 2016.

Barber S, Moreno-Leguizamón CJ. Can narrative medicine education contribute to the delivery of compassionate care? A review of the literature. Med Humanit. 2017;43(3):199–203.

Baños JE, Guardiola E. Literature in medical teaching: the crucial importance of literature in the education of medical students. Mètode Sci Stud J. 2018;8:215–21. https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.8.10555 .

Orefice C, Baños JE, editors. The role of humanities in the teaching of medical students. Barcelona: Fundación Antoni Esteve; 2018.

Shapiro J, Nixon LL, Wear SE, Doukas DJ. Medical professionalism: what the study of the literature can contribute to the conversation. Philos Ethics Humanit Med. 2015;10:10.

Bolton G. Medicine and literature: writing and reading. J Eval Clin Pract. 2005;11:171–9.

Baños JE. El valor de la literatura en la formación de los estudiantes de medicina. Educ Med. 2003;6:93–9.

Lancaster T, Hart R, Gardner S. Literature and medicine: evaluating a special study module using the nominal group technique. Med Educ. 2002;36:1071–6.

Nagy P, Wylie R, Eschrich J, Finn E. The enduring influence of a dangerous narrative: how scientists can mitigate the Frankenstein myth. J Bioeth Inq. 2018;15(2):279–92.

Gaylin W. The Frankenstein factor. N Engl J Med. 1977;297:665–7.

Nagy P, Wylie R, Eschrich J, Finn E. Why Frankenstein is a stigma among scientists. Sci Eng Ethics. 2018;24(4):1143–59.

Koepke Y. Lessons from Frankenstein: narrative myth as ethical model. Med Humanit. 2019;45(1):27–36.

Haynes RD. Whatever happened to the “mad, bad” scientist? Overturning the stereotype. Public Underst Sci. 2016;25(1):31–44.

Holmes R. Science fiction: the science that fed Frankenstein. Nature. 2016;535(7613):490–2.

Ginn SR. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: exploring neuroscience, nature, and nurture in the novel and the films. Prog Brain Res. 2013;204:169–90.

van den Belt H. Playing God in Frankenstein’s footsteps: Synthetic biology and the meaning of life. Nanoethics. 2009;3(3):257–68.

Ferry-Danini J. A new path for humanistic medicine. Theor Med Bioeth. 2018;39:57–77.

Fishelov D. The indirect path to the literary canon exemplified by Shelley’s Frankenstein. CLC. 2016;18(2)

Cambra Badii I, Guardiola E, Baños JE. The ethical interest of Frankenstein; or, the modern Prometheus : a literature review 200 years after its publication. Sci Eng Ethics. 2020;26(5):2791–808.

Koren P, Bar V. Science and it’s images—promise and threat: from classic literature to contemporary students’ images of science and the scientist. Interchange. 2009;40(2):141–63.

Kupferschmidt K. The long shadow of Frankenstein. Science. 2018;359(6372):146–7.

Davies H. Can Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein be read as an early research ethics text? Med Humanit. 2004;30(1):32–5.

Hammond K. Monsters of modernity: Frankenstein and modern environmentalism. Cult Geogr. 2004;11(2):181–98.

Harrison G, Gannon WL. Victor Frankenstein’s institutional review board proposal, 1790. Sci Eng Ethics. 2015;21(5):1139–57.

Campbell CS. Biotechnology and the fear of Frankenstein. Camb Q Health Ethics. 2003;12(4):342–52.

Baños JE, Aramburu J, Sentí M. Biocinema: the experience of using popular movies with students of biology. J Med Movies. 2005;1:42–6.

Miller G, McFarlane A. Science fiction and the medical humanities. Med Humanit. 2016;42(4):213–8.

Djerassi C. Ethical discourse by science-in-fiction. Nature. 1998;393(6685):511–3.

Seymour M. Introduction. In: Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus. London: The Folio Society; 2004. p. ix-xviii

Micheletti S. Hybrids of the romantic: Frankenstein, Olimpia, and artificial life. Ber Wiss. 2018;41(2):146–55.

Pheasant-Kelly F. Reflections of science and medicine in two Frankenstein adaptations: Frankenstein (Whale 1931) and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Branagh 1994). Lit and Med. 2018;36(2):312–36.

López-Valdés JC. Del romanticismo y la ficción a la realidad: Dippel, Galvani, Aldini y «el moderno Prometeo». Breve historia del impulso nervioso [From Romanticism and fiction to reality: Dippel, Galvani, Aldini and “the Modern Prometheus”. Brief history of nervous impulse]. Gac Med Mex. 2018;154(1):105–10.

Genís MD. The sleep of (scientific) reason produces (literary) monsters or, how science and literature shake hands. Mètode. 2016;6:14–20.

Mackowiak P. President’s address: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, and the dark side of medical science. Trans Am Clin Climatol Assoc. 2014;125:1–13.

Severino S, Morrison N. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus: a psychological study of unrepaired shame. J Pastoral Care Counsel. 2013;67(4):1–10.

Pulido TG. Vida artificial y literatura: mito, leyendas y ciencia en el Frankenstein de Mary Shelley. Tonos. 2012;23:1–17.

Doherty S. The “medicine” of Shelley and Frankenstein. Emerg Med. 2003;15:389–91.

Goulding C. The real Doctor Frankenstein? J R Soc Med. 2002;95(5):257–9.

Williams C. «Inhumanly brought back to life and misery»: Mary Wollstonecraft, Frankenstein, and the Royal Humane Society. Womens Writ. 2001;8(2):213–34.

de La Rocque L, Texeira LA. Frankenstein, de Mary Shelley, e Drácula, de Bram Stoker: gênero e ciência na Literatura. Hist Cienc Saude Manguinhos. 2001;8(1):10–34.

Bishop M. The «makyng» and re-making of man: 1. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and transplant surgery. J R Soc Med. 1994;87(12):749–51.

Mellor AK. Frankenstein, Gender, and Mother Nature. In: Guston D, Finn E, Scott RJ, editors. Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds. Cambridge: The MIT Press; 2017. p. 239–44.

Laplace-Sinatra M. Science, gender and otherness in Shelley’s Frankenstein and Kenneth Branagh’s film adaptation. ERR. 1998;9(2):253–70.

Cross A. “Indelible impressions”: Gender and language in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Womens Stud. 1998;27(6):547–80.

London B. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, and the spectacle of masculinity. PMLA. 1994;108(2):253–67.

Haynes R. From alchemy to artificial intelligence: stereotypes of the scientist in western literature. Public Underst Sci. 2003;12(3):243–53.

O’Neill RD. “Frankenstein to futurism”: representations of organ donation and transplantation in popular culture. Transplant Rev. 2006;20(4):222–30.

Robert JS. Rereading Frankenstein: What if Victor Frankenstein had actually been evil? Hastings Cent Rep. 2018;48(6):21–4.

Shelley M. Frankenstein; or, the modern Prometheus. London: Colburn/Bentley; 1831. p. 39.

Reboul O. Les valeurs de l’education. In: Jacob A, dir. Encyclopédie universelle. Tome I: L’univers philosophique. Paris: PUF; 1989.

Turney J. Frankenstein’s footsteps: science, genetics, and popular culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; 1998.

Hellsten I. Dolly: scientific breakthrough or Frankenstein’’s monster? Journalistic and scientific metaphors of cloning. Metaphor Symb. 2000;15(4):213–21.

Syrdal DS, Nomura T, Hirai H, Dautenhahn K. Examining the Frankenstein syndrome. In: Mutlu B, Bartneck C, Ham J, Evers V, Kanda T, editors. Social robotics. ICSR 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 7072. Berlin: Springer; 2011. p. 125–34.

Rollin BE. The Frankenstein syndrome: ethical and social issues in the genetic engineering of animals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1995.

Book Google Scholar

Hellsten I, Nerlich B. Synthetic biology: building the language for a new science brick by metaphorical brick. New Genet Soc. 2011;30(4):375–97.

Cohen J. How a horror story haunts science. Science. 2018;359(6372):148–50.

Szollosy M. Freud, Frankenstein and our fear of robots: projection in our cultural perception of technology. AI Soc. 2017;32:433–9.

Mazlish B. The man–machine and artificial intelligence. Stanf Humanit Rev. 1995;4(2):21–45.

van den Belt H. Frankenstein lives on. Science. 2018;359(6372):137.

Westra L. Response: Dr. Frankenstein and today’s professional biotechnologist: a failed analogy? Between Species. 1992;8(4):216–23.

Nowlin C. 200 years after Frankenstein. Perspect Biol Med. 2018;61(3):430–49.

Kakoudaki D. Unmaking people: the politics of negation in Frankenstein and Ex Machina. Sci Fict Stud. 2018;45(2):289–307.

Jochemsen H. Normative practices as an intermediate between theoretical ethics and morality. Philosophia Reformata. 2006;71(1):96–112.

Prinz JJ. Where do morals come from?—A plea for a cultural approach. In: Christen M, van Schaik C, Fischer J, Huppenbauer M, Tanner C, editors. Empirically informed ethics: Morality between facts and norms Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol. 32. New York: Springer; 2014.

de Waal FB. Putting the altruism back into altruism: the evolution of empathy. Annu Rev Psychol. 2008;59:279–300.

Hall J, Schwartz R. Empathy present and future. J Soc Psychol. 2019;159(3):225–43.

Chochinov HM, Hassard T, McClement S, Hack T, Kristjanson LJ, Harlos M, Sinclair S, Murray A. The patient dignity inventory: a novel way of measuring dignity related distress in palliative care. J Pain Symptom Manag. 2018;36:559–71.

Mercer SW, Reynolds WJ. Empathy and quality of care. Br J Gen Pract. 2002;52(Suppl):S9-12.

Download references

Acknowledgements

No funding.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Chair in Bioethics, Centre d’Estudis Sanitaris I Socials (CESS), Universitat de Vic – Universitat Central de Catalunya, Carrer Miquel Martí i Pol, 1, 08500, Vic, Spain

Irene Cambra-Badii

School of Medicine, Universitat de Vic – Universitat Central de Catalunya, Vic, Spain

Elena Guardiola & Josep-E. Baños

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors made substantial contributions to the present manuscript. ICB and EG searched the literature and analysed the documents, establishing major categories for the teaching approaches. JEB contributed to data analysis and data interpretation. ICB wrote the first draft, which was then reviewed and discussed by all authors. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Irene Cambra-Badii .

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate, consent for publication, competing interests.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Cambra-Badii, I., Guardiola, E. & Baños, JE. Frankenstein; or, the modern Prometheus : a classic novel to stimulate the analysis of complex contemporary issues in biomedical sciences. BMC Med Ethics 22 , 17 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-021-00586-7

Download citation

Received : 27 November 2020

Accepted : 16 February 2021

Published : 23 February 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-021-00586-7

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Health sciences
Science fiction
Frankenstein
Scientists’ responsibility

BMC Medical Ethics

ISSN: 1472-6939

General enquiries: [email protected]

Home / Essay Samples / Literature / Frankenstein / The Theme Of Ethics: “Frankenstein” By Mary Shelley

The Theme Of Ethics: "Frankenstein" By Mary Shelley

Category: Literature
Topic: Frankenstein , Mary Shelley

Pages: 2 (691 words)

Downloads: -->

--> ⚠️ Remember: This essay was written and uploaded by an--> click here.

Found a great essay sample but want a unique one?

are ready to help you with your essay

You won’t be charged yet!

Their Eyes Were Watching God Essays

Catcher in The Rye Essays

Brave New World Essays

Metamorphosis Essays

The Giver Essays

Related Essays

We are glad that you like it, but you cannot copy from our website. Just insert your email and this sample will be sent to you.

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Your essay sample has been sent.

In fact, there is a way to get an original essay! Turn to our writers and order a plagiarism-free paper.

samplius.com uses cookies to offer you the best service possible.By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .--> -->

Why Frankenstein matters

A framework for examining morality and ethics

The Ethical Interest of Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus : A Literature Review 200 Years After Its Publication

Cite this article

Access this article

Similar content being viewed by others

The Perfect Organism: The Intruder of the Alien Films as a Bio-fictional Construct

Author information

Corresponding author

Ethics declarations

Research involving human participants and/or animals

Additional information

Rights and permissions

About this article

Share this article

Log in using your username and password

You are here

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Linked Articles

Read the full text or download the PDF:

Frankenstein Ethics

Recent Posts

Frankenstein Reflects the Hopes and Fears of Every Scientific Era

About the Author

Save citation to file

Add to My Bibliography

The Ethical Interest of Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus: A Literature Review 200 Years After Its Publication

Similar articles

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources

Introduction: Frankenstein, Race and Ethics

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Access to Document

Other files and links

Fingerprint

200 Years of Frankenstein: Mary Shelley’s Masterpiece as a Lens on Today’s Most Pressing Questions of Science, Ethics, and Human Creativity

www.themarginalian.org

PRINT ARTICLE

Frankenstein; or, the modern Prometheus : a classic novel to stimulate the analysis of complex contemporary issues in biomedical sciences

Literature and science through Frankenstein

Bioethics dilemmas in research

The need for empathy and compassion in medical care and research

Conclusions

Availability of data and materials

Acknowledgements

Author information

Contributions

Corresponding author

Ethics declarations

Additional information

Rights and permissions

About this article

Share this article

BMC Medical Ethics

The Theme Of Ethics: "Frankenstein" By Mary Shelley

Related Essays