The commercialisation of genetic engineering has proceeding at a rapid pace, bringing great potential benefits in the fields of medicine and agriculture. However, technology that involves the use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) is often perceived as risky, with the application of genetic engineering in areas such as food production generating widespread public concern. This anxiety has been reflected in recent cinema. In contrast to real-life, the risks associated with biotechnology usually outweigh the benefits in the movies. In addition, threats are increasingly created not by individual mad scientists, but by faceless multinational corporations. These fictional organisations are portrayed as making profits irrespective of the social or environmental costs, while working to unethical secret agendas.
Pest control
Insects have caused mass starvation by consuming food resources, and have contributed to the spread of devastating fatal diseases, throughout human history. They have continued to be major pests, despite intense scientific research aimed at trying to control them, for example, by becoming resistant to pesticides. Genetic engineering is the latest pest control tool available to man. While many insects are beneficial to man, and others a source of wonder and beauty, it is insects as a nature-as-threat metaphor, complete with biblical connotations and images of decay and death, that has mainly interested film-makers. Insects, spiders (arachnids) and other arthropods have come to represent the dark side of nature, playing on common phobias and often irrational fears.
The key killer insect movie of the 1950s, Them! (1954) set the pattern for much that followed. It was one of the first movies to suggest that radiation might cause genetic mutation in common creatures. (1) The threat is caused by radioactivity from nuclear weapons testing in the New Mexico desert, which leads to the creation of aggressive giant ants. The US army engages the ants in battle in the Los Angeles storm drains and contain the threat. A theme of biblical prophecy is developed, a recurring feature of subsequent insect movies. The ants can also be read as communists, of course, in a time of Cold War paranoia.
Radiation continued to be the most common man-made cause of change in arthropods during the 1950s and 1960s. The most frequent mutation was that they grew to a massive size. (2) During the 1970s, however, a greater degree of "realism" was evident in the insect-as-threat movie, with entomological consultants starting to be credited for their input. Giant insects became less ubiquitous, for example, reflecting the fact that insects cannot naturally grow to enormous sizes. Insects breathe through pores, called spiracles, situated around their external skeleton, which carry air into the body. Without an efficient air delivery system, such as lungs, insects are limited in the size they can attain. Now, when giant insects appear in movies, pseudo-scientific explanations are offered to explain the anomaly. A wider range of environmental pollutants, along with misguided experiments, have become responsible for the insects threats in movies since the 1970s, which often have parallels in the real-world. This can be illustrated by the "killer bee" phenomenon. Scientists first introduced African bees into Brazil in 1957, in an attempt to increase honey yields. These bees successfully established and hybridised with local bees, forming a new type that was more aggressive than the native bees. It soon displaced them over an ever-widening area. A number of well-publicised human deaths were attributed to the bees, due to the severity of the swarm's attack. They became known as Africanised bees and spread rapidly northwards during the 1970s and 1980s, reaching the United States in 1990 on a wave of media hysteria. (3) These bees inspired several movies, including The Swarm (1978) and Deadly Invasion: The Killer Bee Nightmare (1994), in which the danger from the bees was considerably exaggerated. Killer bees were more recently observed on the big screen in The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998).
Aliens in movies frequently have features borrowed from the physiology, life-cycles, social structures and behaviour of insects. The general body structure of aliens is often arthropod-like, with the ability to secrete insect-style mucus an essential prerequisite. Meanwhile chrysalides abound, from Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (1956), through Alien (1979), to Mimic (1997) and Species II (1998). Complex parasitoid life-cycles have become the most common model since Alien. Insect movies take place in claustrophobic settings, in which they are bought into close proximity with humans. The settings have included sewers and drains, tunnels, caves, locked rooms, cellars and underground railway stations. Aliens also thrive in these bug-friendly habitats. In Alien, for example, the action takes place on a claustrophobic spaceship, with endless ducts and corridors. These movies are also characterised by graphic shocks, and attempts to disturb and disgust the audience with buckets of unidentifiable slime and entrails. All these traditional elements are evident in Mimic (1997), a film directed by Guillermo del Toro, but a genetic engineering theme is used to update the plot.
In Mimic, the fictional Strickland disease, which is spread by cockroaches, is killing the children of a modern American city. In order to combat the disease, scientists genetically engineered a new insect, by combining DNA from a termite with that of a mantid. The new GMO is effective because it releases a froth containing an "enzyme", which causes cockroaches to come flocking, like rats to the pied piper, whereupon they roll over and die. The scriptwriters may be confusing enzymes here with pheromones. An introduced gene might well code for an enzyme, but this will act on a biochemical pathway in a gland or organ to produce the pheromone. The engineered bug would most likely be releasing a pheromone attractive to cockroaches, along with a novel bio-insecticide that acts at close range (urban roaches being resistance to all previously used man-made insecticides). The new bug is a great success and Strickland disease is eradicated, saving the city's children. The entomologist in charge of the project, Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino), together with her husband Peter (Jeremy Northam) who works for the Centre for Disease Eradication, become media celebrities. Meanwhile, Dr. Gates (F. Murray Abraham), Susan's former entomology professor, remains sceptical. He disapproved of releasing the Genetically Modified (GM) insects, but had two grandchildren saved as a result of the disease eradication program. He fears there will be future repercussions of the scientists' actions.
The GMO in Mimic had various in-bred safety mechanisms, most notably a suicide gene programmed to kill the insects after six months, before any that escape can breed. However, we have watched enough DNA manipulation movies by now to known that "nature will find a way". Three years later the bugs claim their first victim. The genetic modification has allowed the insects to evolve in an unusual manner. In one of the movie's most effective moments, Susan is alone on an underground subway station looking at Polaroid photos of fragments of an enormous insect carcass, retrieved from a sewer outlet. She orientates the pictures and discovers that when the insect's modified front legs join together they form a human face. A subway train rushes past (and a blast of chilled air comes from the back of the cinema), as she becomes aware of her late-night isolation and the shadow of a tall dark man on the subway wall, who is not quite human. The script invokes the biological phenomenon of mimicry, with the insects evolving to mimic their new prey: humans. Their outer wings envelop their bodies like overcoats and they have also evolved lungs, thereby explaining why they can grow so large; although this is one metamorphosis that is highly unlikely in scientific terms.
The GM insect in the film has features of both termites and mantids - the two insects from which its DNA was derived. Termites work as a social colony and have intricate nests, like the new insect in the underground railway system, while the Mantis is a ruthless predator. Practical genetic engineering to date has involved putting only one or two genes into another species' genome. The film's insect is probably meant to be a chimera, with two genomes mixed in a relatively hit-and-miss manner, as was experimentally achieved with the geep (a sheep and goat chimera). The GMOs are attracted to human odour, particularly human blood. They have powerful pheromones, however, and the humans discover that they can mask their smell by smearing themselves with the gunky scent glands of eviscerated bugs. They survive long enough in a subway car, which is internally smeared with bug innards, to plot the downfall of the beasts. A massive gas explosion burns out the nest, in line with the usual flame thrower solution. Meanwhile, Susan does solitary battle with the colony's one fertile male, who is eventually smashed to bits by an oncoming subway train. Susan and Peter emerge into daylight, amidst wreckage but in a world where it is again safe to bring up children, in this case an adopted one. As in the film of Jurassic Park, where dangers are also assumed to be inherent in genetic engineering technology, the theme of the family is ever-present. The family unit and childhood innocence are recurring oppositions to the "unnatural" threats unleashed by genetic engineers. The GMO here is a continuation of a long line of Frankenstein monster.
Mimic's strong religious sub-text is descended from the biblical prophecies of Them!. Liberally borrowing imagery from his previous film Cronos (1993), Del Toro's mutant insects first manifest themselves in a chapel, a building in symbolic limbo, whose crucifixes and saintly statues are wrapped in plastic. The GMO is called the "Judas Breed"; it is part mantis, meaning prophet in Greek; while its first victim is a priest. The religious imagery acts to underline the view that genetic engineering takes mankind into "realms that belong to God, and to God alone". (4)
In Mimic, genetic engineering is the latest tool in man's armoury against insect pests, but its use creates a threat to humanity. The potential benefits of genetic engineering are explored early in the film and the scientists are ultimately heroes, but the inherent unpredictability of DNA technology is implicated in creating the threat. Medical applications of DNA technology are generally perceived as the most beneficial use of the technology, yet constant negative representations in the movies would suggest that, whatever good the technology is used for, the social and environmental costs will be high in the long-term.
In Deep Blue Sea (1999) a team of scientists on a floating research station (Aquatica) off the coast of Mexico, led by Dr. Susan McAlester (Saffron Burrows), develop a cure for Alzheimer's disease by genetically modifying sharks to produce a protein complex in their brains that can rejuvenate human nerve cells. The sharks grow much larger as a result of the genetic modification, which makes their brains four times bigger (giving a better yield of the valuable elixir), but as a result they become more intelligent. We learn that the increased brain mass has been achieved in contravention of official regulatory protocols. Susan (the mad scientists of the piece - why all these Susans?) is motivated by a thirst for knowledge and glory, while the pharmaceutical company Chimera financing the work are motivated by profits. The super-intelligence sharks learn to hunt in a pack and to swim backwards, in order to pick off the humans one-by-one. Meanwhile, the elaborate containment of the GM sharks is, needless to say, breached.
The dialogue in Deep Blue Sea emphasises the fact that the GM sharks are man's creation. The most dangerous are identified as second generation females, or two steps removed from "nature". The sharks escape but dynamite and human sacrifice terminates the threat they pose. Sharks are ancient creatures, like living fossils in the sea. As with Jurassic Park, the theme of genetic engineering is used to revive a well-worn genre. In the case of Deep Blue Sea, however, the genetics lacks somewhat in credibility. In real-life, scientists will not need sharks to develop cures for Alzheimer's. Human cell cultures that have been genetically modified with extra copies of the Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) gene are being used for this purpose. Initial animal experiments have been encouraging. However, when injected with NGF extracts, mice also show enhanced abilities to negotiate mazes. An increase in intelligence could be a side-effect of this disease treatment, raising worries that gene therapies designed to treat disease might be abused by healthy people seeking non-medically essential genetic enhancements.
Eat your genes: Silent Running to eXistenZ
Food production is rarely represented in an optimistic light in the visions of the future served up in science fiction films. In Silent Running (1971), an astronaut (Bruce Dern) and his robots are adrift in space, along with the last of the Earth's vegetation. The entire genetic resources for human crop production are containing in his spaceship greenhouse, after the Earth has been sterilised by nuclear war. By ignoring his orders to destroy the cargo, the astronaut is identified as the last conservationist. He sends the greenhouse off into space, so that it might seed a new beginning for life on another world. Despite being located on a spaceship, the agriculture is here portrayed as a Garden of Eden, a fantasy idyll of food production in balance with nature, before pesticides and genetic engineering entered the garden.
Food in science fiction films rarely looks wholesome. For example, in Sleeper (1973), giant fruit and vegetables, with drip-feed hydroponics tubes attached to them, are certain to be genetically modified and tasteless. In Soylent Green (1973), agricultural production has failed to keep up with population growth, and the teeming urban population in the year 2020 is fed a mysterious green synthetic foodstuff. Charlton Heston investigates its origins and concludes, "Soylent Green is people!". Meanwhile, food in the Star Trek universe is synthesised out of thin air by food replicators that reconfigure atoms to produce matter. This food is literally all artificial substances, flavourings and colour.
Genetic engineering was heralded by scientists in the late 1980s as the means by which the world's food problems would be solved, without harming the environment. This initial optimism is reflected in the James Bond film A Licence to Kill (1989), in which GM fish with increased growth rates for export to the Third World provide the front for a drugs smuggling business. Biotechnologists have been working with genes for increasing fish growth rates since 1985. The first successful trials were conducted around the time of this Bond film, which represents the technology in a positive light - in contrast to the evils of drug running. However, such optimism had waned by late 1990s, with GM foods meeting considerable public opposition, particularly in Europe. (5)
During the 1990s, GM crops and GM foods have been increasingly represented in a negative light, reflecting growing public anxiety about the technology. The BBC film Breakout (1997), for example, was based on real-life experiments conducted at the Institute of Virology and Environmental Microbiology, in Oxford, England. The actual work was aimed at developing a more effective insecticide, by genetically modifying a biological insecticide (a baculovirus), with a gene from a North African scorpion that expresses a powerful neurotoxin. When a suspension of the modified baculovirus was sprayed on cabbages it killed caterpillar pests quicker than unmodified bacteria, thus reducing crop damage. (6) The film departs from this scientific reality when it depicts a maverick post-graduate student secretly doing an unauthorised experiment with a different virus. The authorised baculovirus is specific to insects and so its modified form is not toxic to anything but insects. However, the student added a toxin gene to an adenovirus, one of a group of viruses common in mammals. The common cold, for example, is due to an adenovirus. The student's neurotoxin-containing adenovirus is therefore lethal to mammals. (7) He just intends to do laboratory work with it, but his unmarked experimental glassware gets mixed up with the official bioinsecticide and accidentally gets sprayed onto a field trial. Several deaths, of people who have cut themselves in the vicinity of the field site, occur before the origin of the problem is traced. Initial suspicion pointed to animal rights activists, but DNA testing of a hair implicates the student. The field site is sanitised and the incident is covered up, with the scientific establishment closing ranks so as not to jeopardise future research funding. The film emphasised the commercial pressures to achieve results in the general area of biotechnology.
The portrayal of the laboratory techniques and the field trials in Breakout were realistic, and the film was clearly based on actual experiments being done at a clearly identified research institute. The Oxford baculovirus field trials were controversial, with significant public opposition being expressed in the year before the film was made. Although the film did not suggest that baculovirus of the type being sprayed in real-life was dangerous, the implication that things could easily go wrong through human error clearly played on general fears of biotechnology. Those involved in the real-life project had a low opinion of the film. (8)
The X-Files has continually reflected topical concerns about genetic engineering and cloning. In the series, agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dr. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are an FBI team who investigate previously unsolved cases that have been filed away and forgotten. Many of these files have paranormal overtones, making them difficult to solve by conventional procedures. (9) Other files may have been filed under "X" to get them out of sight, as part of elaborate cover-up operations. In an early episode (Red Museum, 1993), for example, Mulder and Scully are investigating the disappearance of children and cattle, when they are taken to a farm where cows are being injected with genetically engineered growth hormone. The modified hormone injections contain alien (foreign) DNA, and form part of a classified government experiment on the effects of alien DNA, possibly with the aim of developing a vaccine against it. Government agricultural projects are the front for this clandestine work. (10) In reality, one of the first genetically engineered products used in agriculture was recombinant BGH (Bovine Growth Hormone). This hormone is naturally produced in a cow's pituitary gland and contributes to growth, muscle development and milk production. The gene responsible for producing BGH was isolated from a cow's pituitary and inserted into bacteria by the multinational company Monsanto, who were able to produce the hormone in commercial quantities for the first time. The company marketed recombinant BGH in the USA from 1993, as a product that could be injected into dairy cows to increase milk yields. However, its use proved controversial, in terms of possible health risks to humans, adverse effects on cows and the desirability of increasing milk yields. (11)
In 1997, only the second year in which transgenic crops were grown commercially, 15 per cent of soybeans, 8 per cent of maize and 25 per cent of cotton in the USA was grown from transgenic seed. The area under transgenic crops has continued to expand. It was only a matter of time before transgenic crops featured in a Hollywood film. It was no surprise that the film was The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998). In this film, Africanised bees are seen pollinating transgenic maize, which has been genetically engineered to include a smallpox-like virus containing alien genes, which can be transmitted to humans via pollen and bee stings. Africanised bees were first introduced in Herrenvolk (1996), with the bees having lethal stings, and in Zero Sum (1996), where the stings were sub-lethal. In both cases victims developed lesions and scars that resembled smallpox. (12) The children were hospitalised in Zero Sum, but the military stepped in to administer a mysterious treatment. (13) In The X-Files: Fight the Future, Mulder and Scully discover a secret government facility, where millions of bees are about to be released to pollinate nearby fields of transgenic maize. In reality, maize has been genetically modified with genes from bacteria, to confer crop resistant to herbicides and insect pests. This transgenic maize has been grown over large areas of the United States. However, there has been concern about pollen from transgenic maize spreading foreign genes, causing "genetic pollution" in organic crops, and threatening wildlife, such as Monarch butterflies. (14)
The fictional scenario of The X-Files is highly improbable. The choice of Africanised bees and maize is an odd system with which to distribute a deadly virus or a virus-based vaccine. Africanised bees, although aggressive and numerous, could not be counted on to sting a large proportion of the population, while many individuals would be subject to multiple stings, making dosage inconsistent. A number of technical objections could be raised, including the improbable transfer of foreign genes from pollen to bee stings. In addition, maize is a wind-pollinated crop, and not particularly attractive to bees. Transgenic oilseed rape (also called canola) may have been a more logical choice, as it is highly attractive to bees and widely grown in Canada, where the film's plot is located, in a climate more suited to it than maize. However, touching base with modern concerns about technology is only one factor in the choice of crop. Maize is tall and allows Mulder and Scully the cover to escape an helicopter attack, which is also clearly a homage to Hitchcock's North By Northwest (1959); both films, incidentally feature Martin Landau. At the end of the film, Scully finds a bee loaded with transgenic pollen in her clothes. Scully presents it to government officials, as the only evidence that has not been removed. We suspect it may end up in that big warehouse with all the other disappeared evidence. The final shot in the film is of a field of menacing transgenic maize in North Africa.
A particularly unappetising plate of GM food is dished up in David Cronenberg's eXistenZ (1999). In the eXistenZ game environment, amphibian and reptile eggs are genetically engineered with synthetic DNA. The resulting mutant creatures are dissected in an abattoir-factory-laboratory to make "metaflesh game-pods" for the virtual reality games industry. These pods are attached to bioports fitted in the base of the spine, where they draw off human energy through umbycords. An escaped two-headed lizard is seen early in the film, suggesting that containment of genetic pollution is lax. The ruthless entertainment company finds that as a side-line, and a front for illegal operations, the engineered creatures provide a "unique taste sensation". A "special" in their Chinese restaurant turns out to be a large slimy dish of deformed lizard and amphibian parts in a rich red sauce. The only possible audience reaction to this novel food is disgust.
Conspiracy theory: The X-Files
Multinational companies involved in agricultural biotechnology have engaged in a massive public relations exercise to promote an increasingly unpopular technology. They have also used their considerable political influence, for example, within the World Trade Organisation (WTO), to try and stop countries banning imports of transgenic crop seed and GM foods. (15) However, once a mistrust of genetic engineering sets in, as it has with GM foods, the technology tends to be regarded through conspiracy-tinted glasses.
Alien threats have often been intertwined with government or corporate treachery. In Quatermass II (1957), for example, the British government secretly conspires with alien invaders. In Alien (1979) Ash is a corporate man through and through, working totally for the good of a Company more powerful than any government. His devotion to the Company's objective of safeguarding the alien is so unemotional, selfless and soulless that it should come as no surprise that he is also an android. In Jurassic Park (1993) it is the capitalist entrepreneur who acts to unleash the threat, while the scientists seek to neutralise it. In The Andromeda Strain (1970) science is shown in a relatively positive light, while it is the military and politicians that are cast in a negative light. (16) It is those in power who control the scientific agenda. By engaging in secrecy and cover-up, they present the ultimate threat. Sinister consortiums and covert government groups, engaged in unethical genetics research, are ubiquitous in The X-Files. Monoclonal reproduction first featured in Eve (1993), for example, when Dr. Sally Kendrick (Harriet Harris), fired from clinical work because of her eugenic experiments, creates clones in a secretive private laboratory. (17) Later, after the cloning of Dolly, FBI characters from the series can be observed in the background of an actual congressional debate on human cloning, in Redux II (1997).
In The X-Files mythology, soon after the Roswell Incident in 1947, a secret program to create human-alien hybrids is established as part of an undercover project called Operation Paper Clip. In Paper Clip (1994) details of this project emerge, involving Nazi war criminals granted immunity from prosecution because of their expertise in eugenic experiments. In reality, Project Paperclip involved bringing German scientists to the US to work on secret government projects after World War II. President Truman wanted known Nazis excluded from the project, but it has been shown that files were tampered with to allow prominent Nazis scientists into the country. They made important contributions to America's technological progress during the Cold War. (18)
In the story that develops from Paper Clip, Dr. Josef Mengele's friends mastermind "Purity Control": eugenic experiments using alien genes. The Mengele character in The X-Files is the fictional Victor Klemper, who we learn performed outrageous medical experiments on POW and Jews in Nazi concentration camps. The scientists form part of an international syndicate within the higher circles of power, who are secretly collaborating with the alien colonists in exchange for immunity under the coming post-colonisation New World order - by attempting to breed a slave race of alien-human hybrids for the aliens (a goal eventually achieved in One Son; 1999). This shadow syndicate have secretly developed a vaccine against the aliens, using DNA from an alien foetus given for the purpose of developing hybrids, a secret they must keep from both their government colleagues and the aliens; although a band of alien rebels threatens to stop their collaborative work. (19) A systematic inter-governmental smokescreen is therefore used to obscure the truth about possible alien visitations and genetic experiments, from both the public and anyone else outside the syndicate. Under a system of "plausible denial", misinformation is continually leaked by syndicate members. (20) Mulder is told about "black operations", and "groups within groups conducting covert activity at the highest levels" in The Erlenmeyer Flask (1994) and is still perplexed by a "conspiracy, wrapped in a plot, inside a government agenda" in Patient X (1997).
It is revealed to Mulder that shadowy government groups obtain eggs for cloning and eugenic experiments from victims who believe aliens have abducted them. Dana Scully is one of the abducted (Duane Barry, Ascension and One Breath; 1994) and she later meets a clone derived from her ova (Christmas Carol and Emily, 1997). DNA analysis identifies Scully as the genetic mother, but Emily's metabolism is alien and she cannot be kept alive by conventional medicine. The covert organisation, working through a multinational pharmaceutical company who have been administering life-saving serum, decide she must die and all evidence of her disappears. Therefore, genetic themes are closely tied to covert operations, cover-up and unethical experimentation in The X-Files. Chris Carter, the producer and main writer of The X-Files, has steeped the series in conspiracy theory, with its roots in Watergate, The Cold War, the Kennedy assassination and Vietnam. Governments have been implicated as responsible for atrocities, murder and systematic lying. A trust has been broken ("Trust no one") and conspiracy theory flourishes. (21) These theories often only make partial sense and can grow more complex and convoluted with time. The X-Files reflects conspiracy theory culture, in that each answer throws up another question, while contradictory evidence is constantly being presented.
The general public's anxiety about genetic technology has made it a natural component of The X-Files' overall mythology. Genetic engineering and cloning are often perceived as racing ahead of public accountability and effective regulatory control. It is easy to suspect a hidden agenda, even if one does not exist. The writers of the series, with their own research library, have been quick to pick up on technological developments in genetics soon after they happen. Chris Carter has said that, "You can lay on the bullshit really thick if you lay on a good scientific foundation". (22) In addition to the scripts, the sets are often constructed with great attention to detail to aid this scientific foundation. For example, in Paper Clip the props department generated two drawers' worth of files using real DNA data borrowed from a genetics laboratory. (23)
In The X-Files the faceless conglomerate is referred to as the "military-industrial-entertainment complex". In much recent science fiction, the source of the threat that drives the plot is generated not by individual mad scientists, but by massive multinational (or multiworld) corporations. These faceless organisations are increasingly represented as using technology to ruthlessly destroy the environment or repress individual freedom for the sake of profit and power. A presumed conspiracy between the institutions of science, the state and big corporations is an important strand running through recent horror and science fiction movies. (24) When individual geneticists do cause a threat through genetic engineering, it is either through an accident or due to the inherent risks of DNA technology. The future is increasingly represented as being moulded by corporate politics and corporate science in the worlds depicted in Alien, Blade Runner (1982), Gattaca (1998) and other visions of the near-future. Even a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far way, The Trade Federation stands as a symbol of evil. In corporate dystopias, social divisions are normal, with the population often divided along genetic lines. Individuals are regarded as expendable if they come into conflict with the interests of the corporation. The corporations remain omnipresent and unassailable. The power they have consolidated is dispersed and not located in any one space. Although individual scientists are in a better position to play a heroic role, in opposition to the corporation, whatever triumphs any individual makes are usually minor victories when compared to the big picture of corporate rule.
In contrast to these corporate dystopias, which offer critiques of a capitalist future, other films can be said to justify bourgeois patriarchal structures of power and values. Thomas Byers singles out Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) as a film, in opposition to the dystopias of Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982), that presents a vision of a rose-tinted capitalist future. Whereas conformity and uniformity lead to a process of dehumanisation in Alien and Blade Runner, in the Star Trek universe they are a sign of necessary and proper allegiance. (25) Nevertheless, it is corporate dystopias that have dominated recent science fiction cinema. This may partly be a reflection of the past records of multinational corporations, and their increasing power and influence on the world stage. Today's biotechnology giants, for example Bayer and Hoescht (now AgrEvo), were in the past involved with unethical drug trials and the exploitation of slave labour in Nazi concentration camps; while Monsanto previously gave the world dioxins, for example, in the form of Agent Orange, along with PCBs and other pollutants. Forums such as the WTO have given multinational companies unprecedented rights on a global scale, while lessening the power of governments, particularly in the Third World, to regulate corporate activity. (26) Corporate science is the dominant science in the area of biotechnology. It is multinational companies who are gaining the patents that confer ownership of genetic resources. (27) Cinema is reflecting a growing concern about globalisation and capitalism in the age of powerful multinational companies. The opposition to the WTO talks in Seattle, in November 1999, was an indication of this concern, and the growing resistance to "free trade".
Genetically modified bioweapons
The all-powerful multinational companies of the near-future are rarely represented as feeding the world through improving crop varieties, but are often attempting to create the "ultimate killing machine" to eliminate enemies and pacify populations, as in D.N.A. and Alien Resurrection. In the Alien films, the Company wants to acquire the alien as a weapon. The threat to the crew is therefore a combination of the alien and corporate greed, as the Company considers all life as property and the crew as dispensable. Byers, is his reading of Alien, considers the alien to be the doppelgänger of the company. (28)
If corporations or governments wish to manufacture biological weapons with the aid of DNA technology they are most likely to turn to bacteria and viruses. Infectious diseases, caused by micro-organisms, have been major killers throughout human history, while resistance to antibiotics, more frequent and rapid air-travel, the emergence of new diseases - such as AIDS, and the Marburg, Lassa and Ebola viruses - have all thwarted efforts to wipe out communicable diseases. (29) In The Andromeda Strain the source of a devastating disease, initially believed to come from space, is traced to a covert bacteriological warfare project. In Twelve Monkeys (1995) a virus, engineered in the laboratory and released by a terrorist, wipes out 99 per cent of the human race; while in Outbreak (1995) the source of a US outbreak of viral hemorrhagic fever is traced to military operations in Africa. (30) The fictitious Motaba virus in Outbreak is based on the Ebola virus, which is seen on a microscope monitor in the film, but with its characteristic question mark shape slightly modified. The Ebola virus first appeared in Zaire in 1976, resulting in a series of devastating African outbreaks. (31) The film Outbreak plays upon comparisons with AIDS, and the conspiracy theories of the late 1980s that suggested HIV was made in a US government laboratory. (32) However, although Outbreak begins promisingly, with convincing laboratory scenes, it completely wastes its interesting biological theme by degenerating into pure hokum.
The smallpox virus plays a key role in the mythology of The X-Files. Smallpox has been a major killer throughout history. (33) Its eradication has been the greatest success story in mankind's battle against disease. Edward Jenner showed that a cowpox lesion protected against smallpox in 1796, resulting in the development of smallpox vaccine. A co-ordinated worldwide vaccination program started in 1967. The last case of smallpox occurred in Somalia in 1977 and the world was declared free of smallpox in 1979. (34) Stocks still existed in laboratories in Atlanta and Moscow, however, and a debate ensued about whether they should be destroyed. (35) It was initially agreed to destroy the remaining stocks of smallpox virus, but the stocks were retained. It was thought that research needed to continue, in the light of the possible use of smallpox or genetically modified relatives of it, for example monkeypox, as terrorist weapons. The vaccine against smallpox is administered to US military personnel under certain circumstances, for example, during the Gulf War. In The X-Files, a group within the US government is unofficially doing research on the smallpox virus and its vaccine. Meanwhile, in plot revelations that may or may not be true, it is suggested that a single-base variation in the coding sequence of the cowpox virus (the smallpox vaccine) acts as a genetic marker of human DNA for the benefit of the aliens. In addition, the smallpox eradication programme in the USA (where the last official case occurred in 1950) may have been used to initiate a massive DNA database of the entire US population, according to the conspiracy theorists.
The Nazis' war-time human experimentation in The X-Files has already been alluded to, while the series also makes reference to similar Japanese war-time experimentation. In 731 (1995), Japanese scientists working in a laboratory on a train in the US attempt to create a human-alien hybrid. The character of Dr. Zama is partly modelled on General Ishii, who headed Unit 731. This unit used human subjects during WWII in research designed to develop and deploy biological weapons. Thousands of human guinea pigs were subject to lethal toxins. They were also exposed to extremes of temperature and pressure, and were operated on without anaesthetics. As with Nazi scientists during Project Paperclip, immunity deals with the USA in exchange for scientific knowledge ensured that no prosecutions were bought against members of Unit 731. (36)
Bioweapons have up until recently been viewed as indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction. However, developments in genetic engineering are threatening to make them more discriminating, and even more deadly. Bioweapons could be engineered, for example, to target particular ethnic groups within a population. (37) It is believed that the US Navy thought of this back in the early days of genetic engineering, when a project was initiated using valley fever, a disease that is more lethal to Blacks than other ethnic groups. (38) South Africa also sought such a weapon during the days of apartheid. With wars being fought increasingly between ethnic groups, and the human genome project providing data for genetic differences between such groups, "designer toxins" could become a key part of tomorrow's warfare. Genetic markers that distinguish a number of ethnic groups have already been identified. Meanwhile, genetic targeting technology, developed to attack cancer cells, could potentially be modified to make bioweapons, whereby a virulent genetically engineered virus only inserts itself into a cell when it encounters particular marker sequences in the cell's DNA.
The US officially scrapped its bioweapons capability in 1969, while the major powers signed up to the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention in 1972. However, it is thought that this convention has been widely flouted by all the major powers. Iraq, Iran, Israel, Libya, Syria, China, North Korea and Russia are known to have biological weapons programmes. (39) In the movies, the US appears to be engaging in all manner of covert bioweapons operations, in films from The Andromeda Strain, through to Outbreak and The X-Files: Fight the Future.
The present day applications of genetic engineering in the fields of agriculture and medicine have the potential to bring great benefits in food production and preventing disease. However, representations of genetics in the movies invariably highlight negative aspects of biotechnology. The reasons for this will be explored in later chapters.
Notes
Chapter 6: Designer Babies.
References:Complete bibliography of book, including all names on multi-author publications and details of edited books.
Chapter 1: It came from the laboratory.
Chapter 2: Dinosaur Resurrection.
Chapter 3: Confronting the Clone.
Chapter 4: Cloning the Alien.
Chapter 5: Danger: Genetically Modified Organisms.
Chapter 6: Designer Babies.
Chapter 7: All in the Genes?
Chapter 8: Real-life Science.