Mutation By Robin Cook Essay, Research Paper
Mutation, by Robin Cook, is a twisted and scientific adventure, of a man’s dream to create the perfect son. He succeeds in his quest yet, his results are not what you might say praiseworthy. Victor, the main character, tried to create the perfect son. He later discovers that his so-called perfect son, VJ, is not who and what he thought. VJ is a mastermind who is obsessed with learning as much as he can, and kills whoever gets in his way.
Tampering with genetic makeup and cloning, are not good experiments; they can result with disastrous effects. Trying to control the traits and/or sex of a child, or whatever else one might want, by mixing up genes and chromosomes is not a full proof way to obtain their wishes. It effected VJ’s interaction with children, he would never play the games but would watch instead, he would get into fights. It affected his relationship with his parents also, he would lie and say that he would be spending the night at his friend’s house when in fact he was working on his next scientific discovery in secrecy.
If a child were a genius, he/she would be unable to interact with children his/her own age. An explanation of this would be that the child would be too smart to fully enjoy his/her childhood. That child would find that things that children his own age did were either too dumb or boring. It would affect his/her schoolwork,because the child would become bored with the assignments and would not be eager to be in school as much as he would if he/she were normal.
For example, VJ did not want anyone to know that he was a genius. He would not participate in games with children his own age, when forced he would lose intentionally. He did this to hide his intellectual superiority. His explanation was, “I prefer not to draw attention to myself. I don’t want anyone to pry, and people seem to get so curious when there is a prodigy in their midst.” When VJ faked his drop of IQ, he fooled the rest of the people into thinking he was normal, and no longer a genius. This caused him to be able to do his work without being watched carefully, and to obtain his normal exterior with little effort.
If anything were to happen to the child’s intellectual standings, for instance if they dropped, the child would feel disappointment about the fact that they would no longer be superior over his peers. The child would no longer feel capable of handling the pressures of their parents, because when one is different in any way, that person is constantly on show.
Another effect from tampering with genetics is that there would always be a chance for something to go wrong. In Mutation, what went wrong with VJ was that his intelligence got him into trouble. He set high goals, which he considered to be top priority. Meaning that he would put everything else in his life last, and stop at nothing to obtain them. VJ took this to the extreme and in result he killed his brother, a friend of the family, a teacher, and his father’s business associate. When finding this information out, VJ was asked how he felt after he had had them killed. VJ in response said that he had felt relieved. A question that comes to mind is why VJ felt nothing after he had them killed. This might also be an effect but it cannot be proven, for there is not enough information.
Cloning is something that should be left alone. It goes along the same lines as messing with genetic makeup, it is dangerous and the results cannot be fully controlled beforehand. If cloning could actually be performed on a human and someone tried to clone, lets say, George Washington. They would only be able to create a person with the same genetic makeup as George Washington. The clone would know nothing of George’s life or any of his accomplishments. There is not even a way to guarantee that they would even have the same personalities, but even if they did, what if someone were to bring back a psychopath who loves to kill. When people play around with things that they are not meant to touch they are just asking for trouble. They are playing with fire and do not know that there are consequences to everything, and Victor becomes aware of this when his son kills people that are dear to him because Victor had to have an extraordinary child.
In conclusion, I feel that the book mutaion was an excellent book that proved that advancing too far into science or wherever else can not always be a good thing and that it can be dangerous to play with things that we are obviously not able to handle or else we would have had it done and it would no longer be debated over on whether or not it should be made lgal to genetically clone someone. However it is legal to play around with the chromosomes to create whatever child you would like and I do not approve of this because if God intended for us to have the perfect child why on earth would we have to mix up chromosomes in order to reach this goal. I think that we should go on living the way that our ancestors did, I mean they never even thought about things like this and they survived just fine, people need to realize that enough is enough and that they are going to run out of things to discover or make even more efficient and that there will be no mystery left to science, or to the res of the world. If that were to happen then what would have been the point to this whole discovery because what are you going to do now that you have spent your whole life trying to figure out this one little thing and now that you’ve found it out, what will you do?
Bibliography
Cook, Robin. Mutation