Brave New World.

Brave New World.
            If you haven't re-read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley recently, it's time you did.  Recently I read about a Toronto Clinic that's bragging that it achieved a first in the fertility world.  It can 're-charge' poor quality ova using young energy producing stem cells from the woman's own ovary.  It is called the 'Augment' program.
            "We are totally satisfied that this is a safe procedure," vaunted the director of the clinic.     This, despite the fact that none of the usual controlled studies have been carried out and the fact that the procedure has not been approved in  the U.S.  There are another eight pregnancies from similarly treated ova.  How they are going  to turn out, no-one can say with any degree of certainty.  An  equally puzzling question is why anyone  would try to engineer already blighted ova into viable pregnancies, when nature had already labelled the ova deficient.  In a society that condones abortions of convenience in the millions, often in the second or  third trimesters, what reasons other than  narcissism can there be to devote resources and expertise to this line of research.    It takes only a slight stretch to consider Huxley's novel as a version of the results of genetic and social engineering  that seems to be much closer to reality now than could have been imagined when  it was written.
              The novel opens in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. The year is a.f. 632 (632 years “after Ford”). The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning is giving a group of students a tour of a factory that produces human beings and conditions them for their predestined roles in the World State. He explains to the students that human beings no longer produce living offspring. Instead, surgically removed ovaries produce ova that are fertilized in artificial receptacles and incubated in specially designed bottles.The Hatchery destines each fetus for a particular caste in the World State. The five castes are Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. The Director explains that the Bokanovsky Process facilitates social stability because the clones it produces are predestined to perform identical tasks unquestioningly. The cloning process is one of the tools the World State uses to implement its guiding motto: “Community, Identity, Stability.”  Even the Epsilon-minus -morons who are virtual slaves are contented with their lot.
               Much of the contentment was the results of frequent use and  availability of 'soma' (A physically harmless version of marijuana) and all stress and strain were dispensed with immediately, as many try to do today with the less effective pot.  Brainwashing does the rest.  
                The similarity of the way society is unfolding to Huxleys book is frightening.
                Read it again!



         
And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your mortality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears - that's what soma is.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
 Comment, if you have anything to say!