Equality Essay, Research Paper
Equality
Nausea. To describe the whole situation in one word I would have to choose
nausea. The Expo center was packed with societies elite, eagerly waiting the
announcement of what the rumor mill had told them to be the most important invention
of the decade. The air was cold and damp, like that of a hospital. Barley audible was the
most annoying Michael Bolton song that I could imagine. As I got entranced by the
dullness of the situation I noticed that the lights were slowly getting dimmer. As Michael
Bolton’s voice became silent, Dr. Zimmerman spherical body came waddling out.
Dr. Zimmerman was a very large, gluttonous man. I had worked with him many
times, and I had lost more than one of my ideas to his fat hands. He was ruthless,
unemotional, and conscienceless; the perfect scientist. He painstakingly climbed onto
the two foot platform in front of the podium, making a little grunt that accidentally found
its way into the microphone. “Hello? Can you guys hear me in the back?” He gurgled in
his natural grotesque voice. With the acknowledgment of the audience, he sipped the
glass of ice water which stood on the podium and cleared his throat. “Ladies and
Gentlemen, I am here to inform you of a discovery that my team of genetic scientist and
I have discovered.” The more he said the more I wanted to hear. I wanted to shout to
make him blurt it out, but it was impossible to speed him up, attention was the reason
why he became a scientist. He didn’t care about the effects of his discoveries, as long as
he packed the expo center the next weekend. “The quest toward perfection is finally
over. Your unborn children now have the opportunity to be everything you ever wanted
them to be!” A large blue vein slowly became visible through his cherry red forehead.
“Birth defects are a thing of the past.” Suddenly the severity of the situation slammed
into me like a subway train. “There will be no such thing as an imperfect child!” The
sound of flapping mucus in his throat was almost unbearable. The applause began, I
knew it wouldn’t stop for at least ten minutes because Dr. Zimmerman wouldn’t let it. I
ran to the bathroom to think about what had just happened.
Dr. Zimmerman was referring to the G.A.M. project, Genetic Alterations for
Mankind. The team of four was lead by him. The goal was to alter DNA of freshly
fertilized embryos, to control every one of their physical and mental traits. We all worked
with the idea that our progress would be put to prevent defects and genetic diseases. As
our hypothesizes became facts, Dr. Zimmerman started to act strange in the lab. He
began taking second copies of all of the data, and putting it in a large manila folder
which he placed under the Dunkin’ Donuts box that permanently stood on the corner of
his desk. A week before our completion of the experiment, I decided to confront him.
“Dr. Zimmerman, can I talk to you in private for a moment?”, I asked like a
school boy asking his teacher for a bathroom pass. When he agreed, I briskly followed
him into his office. “Look Jason,” it felt weird calling him by his first name, “I have
noticed that you have been acting kind of weird the last few days.” “Look Steven,” he
replied, “I know that we are all getting very excited about the completion of the
experiment, don’t read into things so much.” Don’t read into things so much. What an
obnoxious thing to say to a scientist. He was hiding something, and now I was
determined to find out. “So, which company do you think we will decide to sell our data
to? ” I asked in Columbo like fashion. “What do you mean we?”, he responded like a
rebellious teenager. “What are you talking about Jason, we all worked on it therefore we
should all decide.” “Steve, I am the experiment leader so I will decide what happens to
the work. You were working for me and you got paid. Your job is almost over, now get
the hell out of my office.”
I think that it was Lewis Thomas that said, “Technology should be watched
closely, monitored, criticized… ” For some reason I don’t think he was referring only to
Jason Zimmerman. He now legally possessed the right to do whatever he wanted with
our data. Three years of my life were carelessly placed under a Dunkin’ Donuts box to be
sold to the highest bidder. The bathroom is a nice sanctuary when the man who stole
your work and used it for the wrong reasons, is getting an applause.
The cool sensation of the hard water sent shivers down my spine. I looked in the
mirror at my bloodshot eyes. I couldn’t understand how all of those people could have
been applauding such a horrible discovery. The whole idea of individualism would be
destroyed. Roaming the earth in the next generations would be armies of Pamela
Anderson, and Joey Lawrence. We as humans haven’t evolved enough to start creating
perfection. We are too ignorant of ourselves and superficial to even think about
unnaturally creating another being. What will happen in two hundred years? Parents
will not have a choice but to alter their kids unless they wanted them to be permanently
on the low end of society. Even an average person would seem like a fool when
surrounded by perfection.
With a world full of beautiful, brilliant people, it will start to be difficult to
recognize beautiful or brilliant. The only reason that beauty exists is because there are
things that are not beautiful. If it wasn’t for the dumb people, there would be no smart
people. Every positive characteristic is dependent on a negative one. Therefore when
the negative is eliminated, the positive also ceases to exist. Essentially what this meant
was the eradication of comparison. No one will be praised or punished; equality would
spread like the new plague throughout the world. I decided that I had heard enough, and
decided to catch the next bus home.
I turned on the news that night, and found out that Dr. Zimmerman had already
received a grant from Dupont to fund their tests for government approval. They
scheduled the alterations to start in roughly two years. I didn’t attempt to stop it, no one
would. Technology will move forward, right or wrong, it only moves forward. The only
thing that can possibly stop it is itself. Powerless, I reclined in my chair and looked out
my window at the snow covered elementary school.