Now They are Literally Dr Frankensteins! By Brian Simpson
The concept of "bodyoids"—living human bodies grown from stem cells, engineered to lack sentience or consciousness— has been promoted as presenting a bold vision for addressing critical bottlenecks in medical research, drug development, and organ transplantation:
However, a critique of this idea reveals striking parallels to the hubris and ethical recklessness embodied in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Far from being a neutral scientific solution, the bodyoid proposal risks veering into a modern-day Frankensteinian nightmare, where the pursuit of progress blurs the line between innovation and monstrosity.
At its core, the bodyoid idea involves creating human-like entities—alive, with human DNA, yet stripped of what makes us human: awareness, thought, and feeling. This mirrors Dr. Victor Frankenstein's ambition to animate lifeless matter, bypassing natural processes to fashion a being in his own image. Like Frankenstein, proponents of bodyoids aim to master life itself, using pluripotent stem cells and artificial wombs as their tools. But where Frankenstein's creature awoke with a tormented consciousness, bodyoids are deliberately designed to be mindless—a supposed ethical safeguard that instead raises a chilling question: Are we creating life, or merely a grotesque parody of it? The act of sculpting a human form, only to hollow out its essence, smacks of the same arrogance that drove Frankenstein to defy nature, with little regard for the unintended consequences.
The proposal frames bodyoids as an ethical win—reducing animal suffering, saving human lives, and sidestepping the moral quagmire of sentient experimentation. Yet this justification feels like a veneer over a deeper ethical rot. Frankenstein, too, rationalised his work as a noble quest for knowledge, only to unleash horror. Bodyoids may lack sentience, but their creation still commodifies human biology in a way that's disturbingly reductive. Growing bodies as spare parts, organs on demand, tissues for testing, turns the human form into a resource to be harvested, echoing Frankenstein's scavenging of graves for raw materials. The consent issue (whose cells are used?) is a practical concern, but the bigger problem is the precedent: if we normalise engineering human-like entities for utility, what stops us from sliding toward exploiting the vulnerable or redefining personhood for convenience?
Frankenstein's downfall wasn't just his creation—it was his failure to foresee its impact. Bodyoids, too, carry risks that their advocates gloss over. Can we truly guarantee they'll remain non-sentient? What if trace consciousness emerges, undetected, in these "mindless" bodies? The science is uncertain—embryo models and artificial gestation are uncharted territory—and the stakes are high. A bodyoid that suffers silently would be a moral catastrophe, far worse than the animal testing it aims to replace. Even if they stay brainless, their existence could warp societal norms. Frankenstein's creature was shunned as an abomination; bodyoids might desensitise us to the sanctity of life, blurring lines between human and object in ways that erode empathy or dignity for the living.
There's an undeniable visceral recoil to the bodyoid concept, much like the revulsion Frankenstein's stitched-together creation inspired. The image of headless, soulless human forms maturing in artificial wombs—grown not for life but for dissection—evokes a laboratory gothic horror. Proponents argue this unease is subjective, a hurdle to overcome for progress. But that discomfort isn't mere sentimentality; it's a signal of something fundamentally misaligned. Frankenstein's monster was hideous not just in form but in what it represented: a violation of natural order. Bodyoids, with their engineered sterility of spirit, risk becoming a new kind of monstrosity—clinical, sanitised, but no less unnatural.
Finally, the bodyoid vision shares Frankenstein's fatal flaw: overconfidence. The proposal admits to technical unknowns—can they survive without brains? Will they mature fast enough?—yet pushes forward with a call to action, urging investment and exploration. This echoes Frankenstein's reckless plunge into creation without mastering the aftermath. What begins with rodents could spiral into human experimentation, driven by the same insatiable curiosity that blinded Frankenstein to his creature's humanity. The promise of revolution—better drugs, endless organs—tempts technocrats to ignore the ethical abyss, just as Frankenstein's dream of conquering death led him to ruin.
In short, the bodyoid idea isn't just a scientific proposition, it's a Frankensteinian gamble. It cloaks itself in noble intent, promising to heal and innovate, but beneath lies a troubling willingness to manipulate life at its most fundamental level. Like Frankenstein, it risks creating something we can't fully control or comprehend, all while dismissing the moral weight of its actions. The shortage of human organs for surgery is a real problem, but this solution is less like progress and more like a descent into a dark, familiar tale—one where the creator, not the creation, becomes the true monster. Perhaps the lesson of Frankenstein isn't to avoid innovation, but to recognise when our reach exceeds our grasp. Bodyoids might solve some problems, but at what cost to our humanity?
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