Thousands of Lives!

In what appears to now be a series of posts outlining ridiculous movies which claim to be, at least loosely, based on the genetic revolution, I bring to your attention the latest: Repo! The Genetic Opera. (I am not making this up). This motion piture (dare I dignify it with such a title) is said to be a thriller set in 2056, where an organ failure epidemic forces people to buy expensive genetically modified organs from the evil biotech company Geneco. The director, Darren Lynn Bousman of the last two Saw movies, said this: "The idea is that everybody is buying up organs, and they cannot afford to pay for these organs. Thus, legalized organ repo-men come into the picture. Murder becomes sanctioned by law. So, if you buy a heart and can't afford it, someone can burst through the door and take your heart out and they don't get in trouble for it." Sounds like a winner.

Now, my point in bringing up this movie, which you may have already read about in the gossip mags, is not to highlight Paris Hilton's role in the film, but to give another example of how society, demonstrated through its pop culture, has developed an irrational and greatly exaggerated fear of genetics. OK sure, those biotech companies who refuse to relax their patents for needy third world countries are kind of evil, but Genetically engineered organs can save tens of thousands of lives! (There are over 90,000 people on the organ transplant list in the USA). Biotech has tremendous promise, and it's sad to see this important industry be slandered through associating with such a cheesy film.