Bioethics of the human body in Michael Crichton’s Next and Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Pages: 66 - 77

Language: eng

In this essay, I use two literary works from two distinct genres and with two very different narratives – a satirical techno-thriller and a historical non-fiction piece – to show how they can both convey the same bioethical message – donation of human body parts – to their audience. The two books I examine and contrast here are Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010) and Michael Crichton’s satirical techno-thriller Next (2006). The main question this article will try to answer is obviously not why The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a carefully researched nonfiction book, belongs on the list of essential works on bioethics , but rather why Next, a satirical techno-thriller that continuously blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction, belongs on the list as well.

Sýkora, P. 2024. Bioethics of the human body in Michael Crichton’s Next and Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. In World Literature Studies, vol. 16, no.2, pp. 66-77. 1337-9275. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/WLS.2024.16.2.6

Sýkora, P. (2024). Bioethics of the human body in Michael Crichton’s Next and Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. World Literature Studies, 16(2), 66-77. 1337-9275. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/WLS.2024.16.2.6

Publisher: Ústav svetovej literatúry SAV, v. v. i.