I like sci-fi. I’m not your typical Star-Wars nerd, instead I like B-movies. You know… the low-budget creature feature movies that entail some giant creature killing everything in sight? They’re fun, campy, not at all meant to be taken seriously, yet can be useful in teaching about biology due to their reliance upon urban legends. Still, some things about them do get on my nerves.
Let’s take an episode of the television show Fringe: Immortality (13th episode of the 3rd season). Fringe is your typical X-Files wannabe show with writing that’s sub-par even for prime-time TV. The show centers around investigators who investigate apparent criminal abuses of science. And there’s a doomsday device in a parallel universe, somehow woven into the plotline, which feels like a very uncreative and poorly done rip-off of the parallel universe in the Doctor Who episode Rise of the Cybermen.
Anyway, the Immortality episode is about entomology, in which a mad scientist genetically modified a sheep parasite which somehow has a protein which cures a deadly flu. The episode made no sense to me for reasons I’m going to get into in a few moments, but there’s something more important I’d like to get to first because I think it’s an important part of how scientists are viewed in popular culture. Continue reading “Genetic engineering on the Fringe” →