Frankenstein, the Original Lab Leak

A sign of great literature is that one can return to it at different times and find that, though its words have not changed, alterations in either the reader, the world itself, or both can change or heighten the import of the text. Such is the case with Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, published in 1818 and which I first read some 15 years ago. Shelley’s gothic tale has become a byword for the view so, uh, ably expressed by Jeff Goldblum (playing Ian Malcolm) in Jurassic Park: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” And given what seems increasingly likely about the origin of the coronavirus, it’s a message that has given this timeless work a particularly modern relevance.

Frankenstein, of course, refers to Victor, the creator, not to the creature he forms after his relentless quest to unlock “the secrets of heaven and earth” makes him “capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.” Amusement at the popular confusion of the two is one likely takeaway of reading or rereading Shelley’s novel now. Frustration at some of the early-19th-century flourishes and oddities — a strange and sometimes distracting method of conveying the narrative, a defect Frankenstein shares with its 19th-century gothic stablemate, Dracula — is another. Then there’s the classic high-school literature question of who’s the real monster: Frankenstein or his creation? (The answer: both.)

And of course, you can’t not think about the movies and the pop-culture imprint they have left: what elements of the book they authentically drew from (in both you’ll find a blind man, a little girl, and angry mobs), and which ones they supplied that have largely supplanted, in the popular imagination, what Frankenstein is (Boris Karloff’s lumbering, inarticulate, bolt-bearing creature; and Frankenstein’s deranged lab assistant — neither is accurate to the book).

But to read Frankenstein now, it is easy to connect it to the latest Promethean offense perpetrated by mankind. National Review was notably ahead of the curve in reporting that COVID-19 could have emerged from a virological laboratory in Wuhan, a possibility that lines up with most of the evidence available to us even as the Chinese government has worked furiously for almost two years to cover up any trace of its actions.

Almost in tacit acknowledgment of this, the debate has lately moved on to whether the National Institutes of Health, through the intermediary of EcoHealth Alliance, funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that intentionally heightened the virulence of bat coronaviruses (“gain of function”). This possibility, too, seems increasingly likely. The justification for this research can sound legitimate: to make viruses stronger artificially so that we know how to fight them better. The danger, however, seems far more obvious and concerning. And if such research had anything to do with the pandemic that has afflicted the world, what better “living monument of presumption and rash ignorance,” as Frankenstein refers to his creature, could there be?

This long into the era defined by COVID, it can be trite and exhausting to find parallels in already-extant works to our own experience, even if it’s understandable to do so — a testament both to the oddly repetitive and fixed nature of our lives at times nowadays, and to the oppressive omnipresence of concern about the disease. Yet certain parallels remain striking. Before the creature is made, Frankenstein delights in the possibility that a new species would bless him “as its creator and source” and that “many happy and excellent natures would owe their being” to him. If what we now quite reasonably suspect about the lab leak is true, then the Wuhan Institute of Virology can likewise claim the paternity of a new species, as well as of the many cases, deaths, and variants that have literally plagued the world since.

Frankenstein’s creature also escapes from a lab, largely due to Victor’s own incompetence (upon seeing the thing he was so keen to make, he recoils in horror and flees). And the creature, acting in revenge against what he views as his callous creator, acts as a kind of infection, targeting for destruction those closest to Victor. The creature’s preferred method of dealing death, strangulation, even bears an eerie resemblance to the potentially fatal symptoms of this respiratory disease. It is not hard to see something familiar in Frankenstein’s lament that he “had unchained an enemy among” those dearest to him, “whose joy it was to shed their blood and to revel in their groans.”

Alas, we are unlikely to see such remorse from the possible culprits of the pandemic. Nor would it be entirely prudent for us to heed completely Frankenstein’s counsel, offered to an enthusiastic explorer he identifies as similar to his previous, secret-seeking self, to “seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.” Prometheus isn’t all bad, after all. But a relentless quest for technological and scientific advancement that abandons ethics, morality, safeguards, and, ultimately, what makes us human should be as concerning in our world as it was in the world of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (to say nothing of her later work, the plague-focused The Last Man). And that’s something to remember even at a time — one hopes soon — when we are blessed to be no longer thinking about the coronavirus.