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

Rok, strany: 2024, 66 - 77

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.

ISO 690:

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

APA:

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

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