The Island

While I was in Madrid, my friend and I went to see the new movie "The Island". It was a good movie, but the reason I thought it blog-worthy is because it dealt heavily with ethics and bioscience - something we've discussed in this course, particularly in relation to the Nazis and their medical experiments. The movie envisions a future where rich people can pay to have clones of themselves made. These clones are essentially "insurance" against death, providing "spare parts" (such as body organs) or even serving as a "maturation chamber" by bearing a child for a woman (presumably so her pretty little figure isn't ruined.) The subject matter of the movie directly confronts some of the most controversial subjects science faces today - cloning, obviously, but the application to other issues, such as stem cell research or possibly even abortion, is evident. One of the things that struck me, though, especially after our visit this week to the Documentation Center in Nuremberg, was the similarities between the man who owned the cloning company and Hitler in their use of propaganda and careful word choice to conceal the truth. Namely, the owner referred to the clones as "masses of tissue" and claimed that they never achieved consciousness, never felt emotion, pain, etc. (This was a lie; however, my impression from the movie was that it questioned whether the achievement of consciousness was the true dividing line between being alive - being worthy of saving - being human - or not; thus the application to stem cell research and abortion.) Ultimately, the owner did everything possible to establish in these people's minds that these clones were not human and therefore had no rights, including the right to live; they were simply property, bought and paid for. It reminded me of how Hitler worked, through propaganda particularly, to dehumanize Jews, gypsys, the sick and handicapped, etc., in the eyes of the public, working toward convincing everyone that these "subhumans" did not have the right to anything, including life itself. Also, seeing the operations performed on the clones, removing their organs while they were alive and perfectly healthy to give to their "real" double, or killing them through an injection once they had performed their duty by delivering the "real" couple's baby, was eerily reminiscent of everything we'd been learning that past week about doctors experimenting on prisoners in the concentration camps. In the same way that I feel it is vital, despite the discomfort and pain of it, that everyone learn about the Holocaust, I really believe that everyone, but especially those of us in the field of medicine, should see movies like this, despite the discomfort, and let them make us decide what we believe about these issues.