Terminal Men: Biotechnological Experimentation and the Reshaping of "the Human" in Medical Thrillers

Abstract

Terminal Men:Biotechnological Experimentation and the Reshaping of “the Human” in Medical Thrillers Nicolas Pethes (bio) "If it [synthesizing genes] can be done, someone will do it. To be sure, it's almost science fiction but science fiction has a bad habit of coming true. In fact, it frequently surpasses the fact. The facts of science are now surpassing science fiction, and we have a lot of books that would be classified as scientific fact: a novel like The Terminal Man, there's nothing in there that isn't within the reach of modern technology."1 I You don't care about me. You care about your experimental preparation. You care about your scientific protocol. You care about your follow-up. You don't care about me."2 Harry Benson, protagonist of Michael Crichton's 1972 novel The Terminal Man, has every reason to be upset. Roger McPherson, head of the Neuropsychiatric Research Unit in Los Angeles, is going to perform on him a "stage-three" operation, psychosurgery that is supposed to liberate him from his acute disinhibitory lesion, which gives him seizures and causes him to lose all inhibitions against violence. McPherson implants a computer unit in Benson's brain that activates his pleasure centers whenever Benson feels a seizure, returning him to a peaceful state. But it is also turning him into something else: the surgery that is supposed to return him to a normal life in human society is, at the same time, a surgery that puts him at an extreme distance from humanity. As McPherson explains in the philosophical outline of his project: Now, however, in this operation we have created a man with not one brain but two. He has his biological brain, which is damaged, and he has a new computer [End Page 161] brain, which is designed to correct the damage. This new brain is intended to control the biological brain. Therefore a new situation arises. The patient's biological brain is the peripheral terminal—the only peripheral terminal—for the new computer. In one area, the new computer brain has total control. And therefore the patient's biological brain, and indeed his whole body, has become a terminal for the new computer. We have created a man who is one single, large, complex computer terminal. The patient is a read-out device for the new computer, and he is as helpless to control the read-out as a TV screen is helpless to control the information presented on it. (TM 83) For Benson, this "process of being turned into a machine" (TM 94) is quite the opposite of what he was aiming for. Instead of regaining control over himself, Benson is subdued by mind control. Instead of getting cured, he serves as a human guinea pig for the research unit's experimental devices and scientific ambitions: "I feel like a goddamn machine. I feel like an automobile in a complicated service station. I feel like I'm being repaired" (TM 125). But both McPherson and Benson are mistaken, suggesting that the man-machine connection guarantees functioning: Benson's brain develops a "learning cycle" (TM 145), producing seizures deliberately in order to enjoy the pleasure impulses up to the point of breakdown. Having turned into an "electrical addict" (TM 92), he escapes from the hospital, kills a prostitute, and finally makes a futile attempt to destroy the heart of the neuropsychiatric clinic, its central computer section—intelligent technology that is, at the same time, his greatest threat and his own support. This powerful scenario in Crichton's The Terminal Man about the possible outcome of the technological tampering with human beings raises scientific, ethical, and cultural issues. These issues are new ways of computer-based neurosurgery, the question of human autonomy, and the relationship between men and machines. The novel's title itself implies these various readings: the "terminal man" is simultaneously a man with a computer terminal in his head, as well as the last of man, the end, or the "termination" of humanity as it used to be, produced and reproduced by nature. Thus, Crichton's popular novel makes a statement about what it means to be human: computer technology, which...