Jurassic Park and the Significance It Holds Regarding Biology

An essay for AP Biology

Jurassic Park: a movie about real people facing real problems in a realistic manner. Well, not quite, but if you’ve been given the incredible imposition of a vivid imagination and have completely lost touch with reality, then this movie brings up some real issues that you must think about before you can really go on to live a somewhat normal life. However, if you simply have the faculty to think carefully about a subject when asked to, then the cinematic rewrite of the Michael Criton novel does raise some interesting questions. For example, should humans play God through genetic manipulation, even in the case of reviving extinct species? When such a species is revived, or any creature is created through test-tube growth, do we have a right to alter its genetic coding to suit our own needs or convenience? Will the incomparable human ego impair our ability to see when we’ve taken things too far and placed ourselves and our loved ones in danger? Do humans taste like chicken when dissolved by acidic dinosaur spittle? If so, at what approximate distance should the amazing expectorating creature of times-long-past stand in order to achieve that juicy, succulent flavor by the time it reaches the unfortunate primate?

To address the first of the more relevant questions, one must contemplate the importance of the DNA strand. The building blocks of life: a double helix of essential amino acids that forms a complex pattern which we receive from our parents at conception, and which we pass on to our children when the time comes. Clearly, this is an important element for all life, but is it sacred? Is this sequence really the language of God? Some might say that the dinosaurs became extinct because it was God’s will, not the consequence of some horrible natural disaster or an end result of the natural process of evolution. In that case, what right do we lowly sinful mortals have to defy the will of God and resurrect a long-dead species? The scientists in Jurassic Park evidently could care less about that particular question. They just go right on and defy the laws of nature thanks to the amazing wonders of extracting DNA from a fossilized bug. However, looking at the question of genetic fiddling from a less god-fearing point of view, nature spends thousands upon millions of years constantly molding various species into what they need to be to survive. In that case, what right do we have to interrupt this process of evolution by speeding up, slowing down, or otherwise altering the natural course of things? When a creature has been naturally wiped off the face of the earth, do we really have the right to reintroduce it to a world is wasn’t capable of surviving in in the first place? Going back to the somewhat religious aspect, one could say that the scientists who brought the dinosaurs back were making a great mistake, and were justly punished for such actions. Jumping back to the less severe point of view, one can easily say that the reintroduction of a species might very well work under extremely controlled conditions where the various species in question aren’t large, dangerous meat-eaters and natural hunters.

Now, skipping ahead and assuming that genetic engineering is a good thing, thus rendering the entire paragraph above a simply pointless string of babble, we come to another important question. In Jurassic Park, all of the dinosaurs were made female, so as to prevent breeding. However, this begs the question of how ethical it is to purposely engineer something for ones own convenience; how much say should the creator really have over the creation’s basic rights as a living thing? For the sake of argument, if a child is grown in a test tube by a scientist, does that scientist have a right to decide if that child should be able to reproduce or if it should be sterile? Should that child be allowed to grow and make its own choices as a member of the human race? However, due to the fact that the child wasn’t born from the natural union of a male and a female, but rather from a randomly picked sperm and egg that have been heavily altered by this mad scientist, is this child really human? Or is it simply the beginning of some horrible Frankenstein race that will act as slaves and be given no rights as living creatures, only allowed a hatred of mankind that will grown until they gain the power and numbers to overthrow the human population and replace our systems of government with a utopian society of which we never could have dreamed?

Shifting the subject entirely, since it seemed in need of shifting, the human ego is boundless; a basic driving force behind our desire to take the "language of God" and place it in our own hands. With the mapping of the genome and rampant experiments with things that only existed in Star Trek a few decades ago, that same ego has found a seemingly boundless playing field on which it can flex its muscles. However, do we, as the self-important all-powerfully-evolved human race, posses the ability to know when we’ve gone to far. What happens when a human being is cloned because someone wants to find out if it’s anything like cloning a sheep? Or what about when someone devises a way to bring back the dinosaurs for an amusement park attraction, and the creatures fall into the hands of some evil idiot who lets a big one loose in LA? Ok, so that’s the other movie, but the question is still somewhat valid with only some points taken off for twisted references. Will we be able to identify when we’ve crossed the boundaries of scientific exploration and descended into simply doing things because we can?

When the end of the page is getting close, and one is running out of questions to leave unanswered, there is only one thing left to say. Humans do not taste like chicken when projectile-salivated on by a funny looking bird ancestor from times-long-past. This is mainly because nothing tastes like chicken, but rather chicken tastes like everything, except artichoke-jalapeno dip with Cool-ranch Doritos©. However, if you want to get that juicy, succulent taste, try having the thing stand roughly five point eight feet away from the subject and spit in a random-spray pattern for two point nine seconds. Teh Enb.