Similarities Between Oryx And Crake
Harvest v. Humanity: Can We Move Past the Desire for Profit?
In the development of drugs and scientific ways to improve the lives of the general public there is the constant struggle in society to make money, grow companies and make new products to stay competitive in a growing field. What isn’t often considered, however, is how companies stay on top of their competition and whether their motives involve helping people, or making money. In Oryx and Crake Margaret Atwood highlights this ethical issue through the lives of characters directly involved in this business to show that companies both in the novel and in today’s society use poor and desperate people to further their businesses and turn a profit.
Atwood’s novel focuses on a community dominated by bio engineering and genetic sciences in a time where restrictions on what companies could do with technology are limited. The main character Jimmy and the important figures in his life (his parents, Crake, Oryx, etc) live in a society where their comfortable lifestyles are only possible through the revenue they make off of the biomedicine developments they make. Atwood uses the desires of people like Jimmy who live in the engineering compounds, and the …show more content…
This was shown as the case with “hormone replacement therapy, which resulted in the unnecessary deaths of thousands of women,” (BJN) revealing that as long as there are people desperate enough to seek relief to their ailments, companies will take advantage of that for personal gain whether it leads to hurting people and in this previous case, even death. Here Atwood shows that the evil and deceitful actions taken by the fictional characters in the novel share a striking parallel with the companies in today’s drug
In the development of drugs and scientific ways to improve the lives of the general public there is the constant struggle in society to make money, grow companies and make new products to stay competitive in a growing field. What isn’t often considered, however, is how companies stay on top of their competition and whether their motives involve helping people, or making money. In Oryx and Crake Margaret Atwood highlights this ethical issue through the lives of characters directly involved in this business to show that companies both in the novel and in today’s society use poor and desperate people to further their businesses and turn a profit.
Atwood’s novel focuses on a community dominated by bio engineering and genetic sciences in a time where restrictions on what companies could do with technology are limited. The main character Jimmy and the important figures in his life (his parents, Crake, Oryx, etc) live in a society where their comfortable lifestyles are only possible through the revenue they make off of the biomedicine developments they make. Atwood uses the desires of people like Jimmy who live in the engineering compounds, and the …show more content…
This was shown as the case with “hormone replacement therapy, which resulted in the unnecessary deaths of thousands of women,” (BJN) revealing that as long as there are people desperate enough to seek relief to their ailments, companies will take advantage of that for personal gain whether it leads to hurting people and in this previous case, even death. Here Atwood shows that the evil and deceitful actions taken by the fictional characters in the novel share a striking parallel with the companies in today’s drug