Peter Firchow and Huxley's Brave New World novel

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Peter Firchow and Huxley's Brave New World novel
In Brave New World, the question of bioethics appears from the start of the novel, in a hatchery where there is production of identical human embryos. The embryos in turn are made to belong to five castes the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon. Members of each succeeding are physically and intellectually less endowed. Away form the utopian World State, Lenina and Bernard travel to a reservation whether they encounter a new world where people are surprisingly aging. The residents of the new world cannot agree whether there polices are relevant or they simply dehumanize them. Peter Firchow in Science and Conscience in Huxley's Brave New World looks into the interaction of science and technology with human beings as portrayed in Brave New World. The article goes on to highlight development of machines, relevance to scientific interest as well as Freud’s theory. This paper supports the view that Firchow’s position on the technology, bioethics and totalitarian regimes is compatible with that of Huxley.
According to Firchow (301), Brave New World represents fear of technology driven society showing that the society would increasingly be driven through the values of technology. Brave New World focuses on this idea as human beings are seen as being genetically modifiable and psychologically condition able (Huxley 5). There is a fear that cloning might have a negative impact on the human race, as eugenics has the potential to produce unwanted identities. A totalitarian government that focuses on eugenics simply controls the population and there is increased fragmentation of the society from differentiation and self-identification.
Even though, there were mistakes in details found in the Brave New World, there are instances when the inclusions made in the novel were not proven wrong. Firchow mentions that after visiting the Fordian society as elaborated in the Brave New World Revisited, Huxley once again shows his interest in the relations of psychology, physiology and biology. At the same time, some conclusions made about Huxley’s’ views were rejected on social grounds and not on a scientific basis showing that indeed humans are genetically modifiable and chronologically conditionable (Firchow 303). Mr. Foster affirms to this notion by stating that in hatching embryo, the researchers predestine and condition them, in such a way that the babies would be socialized human beings (Huxley 11). The process of conditioning plays a prominent role in human experimentation and this involved psychological training.
Huxley’s version of a new world where dependence on technology would be detrimental to the society is based on earlier scientific fantasies but has remained relevant even today. Firchow asserts that it is highly likely that Huxley borrowed ideas from his brother who was a biology don and Haldane who wrote an essay ...