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MAD GENETICS: THE SINISTER SIDE OF BIOLOGICAL MASTERY
Andrew Burnett
 
 
 
Nathaniel Essex is a serious scientist born into a comic-book world. Toiling obsessively to prove his theories, shunned by the scientific establishment for his unorthodox experiments, he stands on the brink of enlightenment or, perhaps, corruption. A fateful encounter with Apocalypse provides both. When offered genetic knowledge from outside his own timeline, Essex accepts transformation at Apocalypse’s hands, refashioning his body and mind to eliminate mortal weakness—and with it, his essential humanity. Casting off his identity as Essex, he becomes the diabolical figure known as Mister Sinister. In decades to come, he will emerge as a geneticist of unparalleled brilliance and daring, a witness to great discoveries and travesties of medical history, and one of the most dangerous opponents the X-Men will ever face.
The mad geneticist is a mad scientist but with a difference. Mastery of the genetic code not only unlocks the powers of nature, it confers a certain seductive ability to redraw the boundaries of human and mutant existence. Heroic scientists such as Henry McCoy, Moira MacTaggert, and Charles Xavier, although sometimes tormented by the moral weight of their choices, are mostly able to resist temptations to misuse their knowledge and power. But many others succumb out of weakness, naiveté, or flawed motives, forsaking ethical restraint and leaving behind a trail of scarred, even dead, victims. Those with ordinary talent or luck often perish when their experiments get out of control. But Mister Sinister survives, driven by purposes that mystify others but burn with “the fierce light of clarity” in his scientific mind.1
Mister Sinister and other villainous geneticists illustrate a very real set of concerns about the moral interpretation and use of genetic knowledge, in our world as well as theirs. Even in ostensibly advanced societies, the progress of biomedicine has been shadowed by events that echo Mister Sinister’s dark obsessions of genetic mastery. If biotechnological progress is not accompanied by ethical maturity, we may yet see more of these stories play out, exacting an awesome price in individual and global suffering.

The Burden of Dangerous Knowledge

Like the X-Men, bioethics is a child of the atom that came of age in the 1960s, outside of the cultural mainstream. Postwar revelations of Axis atrocities carried out by scientists and physicians had shaken the world. But the ongoing practice of ethically unsupervised research on vulnerable populations—under democratic as well as totalitarian regimes—came only slowly to public attention. Bioethics also went against current philosophical fashion, which emphasized analysis of ethical statements (metaethics) over making actual ethical judgments (normative ethics). Despite these difficulties, bioethics began to attract a wider public and professional audience. Few could deny the expanding influence of biomedical technology or the inadequacy of existing ethical guidance and regulations.
From its beginnings, bioethics incorporated a basic insight that is amply displayed in the X-Verse: knowledge is power, and power always has a dangerous edge. Power to heal includes power to kill. Power to preserve life includes power to prolong suffering. Power to identify differences includes power to isolate and oppress those who are different. Power to read genetic information includes power to take away individuals’ freedom and responsibility. And power to reengineer humans, animals, or plants includes power to invite disaster, through hostile intent or simple miscalculation.
Ultimately, bioethics is about more than the balance of power or regulating biomedical activities relative to a given set of moral standards. Bioethics also involves wrestling with new moral questions posed by biomedical discoveries, realizing that our ethical standards appear differently as biology fills in our picture of humanity and its place in the world. This means there is a vital, if not always acknowledged, relationship between bioethics and the philosophy of biology, a difficult dialogue between the way things ought to be and the way things empirically appear to be. What is the meaning of justice and compassion in the larger life story of which humanity is only one part? On what basis would, or should, the strong feel solidarity with the vulnerable, evolutionary winners with those who are expected to lose? Should science model itself after the moral neutrality of the natural processes it studies? What happens when it does?

Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw

The rift between biology and ethics broke the surface in Victorian England, a society shaken by biological, industrial, and social revolutions. Even before Darwin’s work was published, older conceptions of the natural order of things were coming under critical pressure. Evidence for a long history of life on Earth challenged literal readings of Genesis. But the real problem was not simply chronological. Nature was revealing multiple features that were hard to reconcile with divine design, such as natural cataclysms and the extinctions of multiple species, the apparent wastefulness of many biological processes, and the cruel adaptations of “torturing parasites, which outnumber in their kinds all other creatures.”2
A generation earlier, the arguments of William Paley’s Natural Theology impressed educated Britons (including the young Charles Darwin) with abundant natural evidence for a benevolent Creator. But if one could reason from Nature to God, how then should one interpret the widespread suffering due to natural causes, especially diseases that afflicted children and cut short so many lives? What kind of God would that reveal? Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” expresses the dismay many Victorians felt:
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs
That slope thro’ darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope . . .3
Reaching toward a loving God but confronted by Nature’s indifference to individual suffering, it is no wonder that some Victorians began to wonder about the basis for their moral sensibilities or the possibility of using science as a weapon to rebel against the natural order, rather than meekly accepting it. These are just the questions that fire the imagination of Nathaniel Essex. The scene is London 1859, ground zero for Darwin’s Origin of Species. Like Darwin himself, Essex has been emotionally devastated by losing a child to disease (implied to be a genetic condition). Energized by Darwin’s theory, Essex gets into a heated debate with him about the potential to take control of future human evolution. Darwin counsels compassion and restraint and eventually expresses concern for Essex’s mental stability. Stung by Darwin’s rejection and devastated by his wife’s death in premature labor, Essex rages in frustration at his own moral limitations and opens himself to the dreadful bargain offered by Apocalypse.
After his transformation, Mister Sinister exults at having “undergone what amounts to an industrial revolution of the mind,” shedding Essex’s moral restraint, which “prevented me from reaching the highest summit of knowledge.”4 Quickly rebelling against servitude to Apocalypse, he is freed to pursue his scientific agenda without interference from society or his own conscience. Like Nature, he, too, will be attentive to the type—whether Homo sapiens or Homo superior—and more careless when it comes to a single life.

Evolutionary Justice?

Is Mister Sinister’s reading of evolutionary ethics correct? Is it really true that the only moral lesson of natural selection—if any—is victory in the struggle for existence, at any cost? Does evolution show that loving thy neighbor is not just an illusion, but actually an obstacle to real progress in economics, politics, and especially science? Such a view is hardly a necessary component of Darwin’s theory, although it resonates with folk philosophies of biology such as “dog eat dog” and the “law of the jungle” that portray the natural world as an amoral world. But, in fact, it’s not only possible but actually quite plausible to see a more harmonious relationship between biology and morality.
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) was not merely an intellectual cheerleader for Darwin’s theory, although it was he, not Darwin, who introduced the popular formula “survival of the fittest.”
He was also an ambitious moral and political thinker with a huge influence on his contemporaries. Rethinking history in evolutionary terms, he pressed a claim Darwin had only hinted at, about the need for humans to evolve morally as well as physically:
Here we shall assume it to be an inevitable inference from the doctrine of organic evolution, that the highest type of living being, no less than all lower types, must go on molding itself to those requirements which circumstances impose. And we shall, by implication, assume that moral changes are among the changes thus wrought out.5
Spencer saw a natural logic driving the development of human ethical behavior, just as it did the “quasi-ethical” behavior traits observed among higher animals. But the behavior patterns Spencer studied, at least among social animals, were based on the needs of the group, rather than of the individual organism. “Dog eat dog” turns out to be a losing strategy for dogkind, and even the law of the jungle includes the need to support young offspring who cannot care for themselves. Thus, instead of playing up the contrasts between biological facts and human moral feelings, Spencer encouraged the view that ethics had been, and would continue to be, shaped by a natural balance between cooperation and competition, between aggressiveness and restraint. Too little sympathy for one’s fellow creatures could prove just as detrimental as too much.
If Spencer is right, then those who cite evolution to justify aggression and conquest are telling only part of the story. Egoists such as Mister Sinister, Apocalypse, Magneto, the Brotherhood, the Phalanx, and others may hail themselves as the next stage of evolution, agents of Nature’s will, in eradicating those who stand in their way. And a collection of totalitarian villains has attempted similar rationalizations in our world. Yet a stronger case can be made—even on a strictly evolutionary basis—in support of altruists like Moira MacTaggert, Colossus, Cyclops, Cable, and Charles Xavier, whose “fitness” is reflected in sacrificing themselves so that others may survive. Evolution may have a cruel side, yet those who justify cruelty with genetic necessity are perhaps only making excuses.

The Eugenic Agenda

Another aspect of Mister Sinister’s agenda poses a more subtle ethical challenge. What if, instead of plotting to dominate one’s fellow humans or mutants, the goal is to improve their lot by improving their genetic constitution and increasing the number of “superior” individuals? Does the prospect of controlling evolution in a beneficial way confer moral legitimacy on the project? Do benefits to future genetically enhanced generations justify breaking a few eggs? Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) believed they did. Galton coined and popularized the term eugenics to describe his project of taking control of human evolution. Rather than abandoning humanity to the randomness and misery entailed in the natural evolutionary process, eugenics would take a rational and (relatively) gentle approach to ensuring biological progress:
Now that this new animal, man, finds himself somehow in existence, endowed with a little power and intelligence, he ought, I submit, to awake a fuller knowledge of his relatively great position, and begin to assume a deliberate part in furthering the great work of evolution. He may infer the course it is bound to pursue, from his observation of that which it has already followed, and he might devote his modicum of power, intelligence, and kindly feeling to render its future progress less slow and painful.6
Galton was a pioneer in the field of biometrics, devising ways to measure and quantify all manner of natural phenomena, with a special interest in human intelligence. Galton and his colleagues believed it possible to identify families and racial strains with clearly measurable variations in genetic giftedness. Working before the discovery of genetic engineering or testing—or even a basic theory of how genes work or what they are made of—the only “technology” available to Galton and the early eugenicists was selective breeding: maximizing reproduction among “fit” specimens, while discouraging or preventing the “unfit” from passing on their “inferior” genes.
It is easy to picture Mister Sinister, who would have been a contemporary of Galton, listening with approval to Galton’s lectures. Although Mister Sinister is equipped with comprehensive knowledge of molecular genetics and yet-undreamed biotechnology, his methods often have an old-fashioned eugenic flavor. The offspring of exceptional individuals will be exceptional as well. Rather than working “from scratch” to produce a mutant powerful enough to defeat Apocalypse, he identifies a gifted bloodline—the Summers family—to be manipulated over multiple generations, culminating in the offspring of Scott Summers and Jean Grey. Mister Sinister also shows a preference for found materials in creating Madelyne Pryor as Jean’s clone and implanting her with Jean’s memories, only to be confounded when Madelyne nevertheless fails to manifest powers like Jean’s. Apparently, even in the X-Verse, greatness is more than the sum of a person’s DNA. Yet Mister Sinister is not deterred by this interruption in his plans; he continues without noticing the suffering inflicted on his genetic favorites (hence the name Sinister).
Is eugenics intrinsically indifferent to human suffering, at least when it is viewed as necessary to progress? This is the accusation that stung eugenics the most, based on its appeal as a progressive social movement propelled by seemingly benign motivations. Eventually, the track record of eugenics carried out by fascist regimes discredited the cause completely. But from the beginning, Galton had recognized and defended the ironies of carrying out genetic or racial hygiene for the benefit of humanity:
There exists a sentiment, for the most part quite unreasonable, against the gradual extinction of an inferior race . . . [I]t may be somewhat brutally argued that whenever two individuals struggle for a single place, one must yield, and that there will be no more unhappiness on the whole, if the inferior yield to the superior than conversely, whereas the world will be permanently enriched by the success of the superior.7
If the world must have winners and losers, who can object if the “superior” win? In fairness to Galton, he intended eugenics to proceed gradually and as humanely as possible, by persuasion and policies to guide public opinion, rather than by force. Nevertheless, Galton’s defense of the rights of the superior and his casual identification of inferior and superior races (which just happened to coincide with the prejudices of his audience) is chilling to those who know where ideals of racial hygiene would lead later in the twentieth century. Eugenic aims and government power would forge a dangerous alliance, not only in totalitarian regimes, but in democratic societies as well. Only later would bioethics develop an awareness of the specific hazards of making governments the custodians of genetic health.

The Real “Menace” to Humanity

In a break with the conventions of Golden Age comics, where superheroes and the authorities usually get along swimmingly, the Silver Age writers of X-Men stories developed a new and much more fertile perspective on the inevitable conflicts between mutants and a government suspicious of difference and threatened by social change.
Not long after the advent of the X-Men, the comic storyline brought in eugenic elements with the U.S. government’s approval of the Sentinel project engineered by Bolivar Trask. Introduced as an “eminent anthropologist,” Trask is animated by a passion for the genetic future of humanity that Galton would find familiar.8 But unlike Galton, Trask is not rooting for the winners. Trask sees mutants as a “menace,” not only on an individual or a social basis, but as an evolutionary rival that will displace Homo sapiens if allowed to survive and reproduce. Trask believes he can and must halt this evolutionary detour. To this end, he creates and programs the Sentinels, an army of adaptive robots theoretically capable of destroying even the most powerful mutant. The mutant menace will be brought under control.
Unfortunately for Trask, his scientific genius does not extend to predicting what his own robotic creations will do. The Sentinels, too, have been evolving, and soon Master Mold adopts a more aggressive approach to protecting humanity by completely taking over society. Trask’s obsession with control has come full circle, with disastrous results. Learning only when it is almost too late who the true friends and enemies of humanity are, Trask sacrifices himself in the hopes of destroying the true “menace” to humanity he has unleashed.
Deeper irony emerges as the story of the Sentinels continues with Dr. Trask’s son, Larry. Larry, who shares both his father’s technical aptitude and his obsession with mutants, reactivates the Sentinels and their mission. What Larry does not know is that he himself is a mutant, and that the medallion he wears is actually a device engineered by his father to suppress his powers and conceal his mutant status from the Sentinels.
This storyline illustrates two key ironies that follow almost every definition of genetic health. One is the ease with which we forget that most of the “normal” among us also carry a load of genetic abnormalities, including a handful of lethal (but recessive) mutations. The other is the fact that like any form of discrimination, eugenic agendas feel most comfortable when directed against those we do not see as people like us. To view people as individuals and not as test subjects is to start making exceptions to rules about genetic fitness.
As it develops and reappears in multiple versions throughout the X-Men comics, the Sentinel project also raises disturbing questions about the will and ability of a democratic government to back projects that treat its own citizens as less than human. Can the same be said for our real-life environment of biomedical science?

Behind the Glass

Through the twentieth century and beyond, Mister Sinister turns up in the background of all manner of biomedical research projects, especially the darkest. To the children of Auschwitz, he is “Nosferatu,” offering candy in exchange for blood samples. To the mutants who fall into the custody of the Weapon X program, he is Dr. Robert Windsor. On the Black Womb eugenics project, scientists such as Brian Xavier and Kurt Marko (Charles Xavier’s father and stepfather) know him as their senior colleague, Dr. Nathan Milbury. David Moreau, the lead geneticist supporting the subjection of mutants into Mutates on the island of Genosha, draws on Mister Sinister’s technology, if not his active assistance. Indeed, the full range of Mister Sinister’s involvement in biomedical history can only be guessed at.
Of all of Mister Sinister’s schemes, his collaboration with other scientists on large projects sounds the most morally pessimistic note about the nature of science in the X-Verse. Whether strictly in pursuit of his own agenda or contributing his expertise to others’ research, Sinister mingles easily among scientific circles, sometimes barely in disguise. Perhaps Sinister takes pains to conceal his character and behavior from his scientific colleagues. Or, maybe no one raises objections to a brilliant, handsome figure who may be ethically questionable but obviously very talented?
Mr. Sinister’s semi-anonymity in the corridors of Big Science illustrates a key insight about the possible ethical hazards of research in government—or corporate—sponsored contexts, where individual investigators may feel a diminished sense of moral responsibility. Unlike the archetypal mad scientist alone in his lab (a role Sinister is also happy to play), the scientists working on Weapon X or Black Womb feel their individual efforts swallowed up by a much larger whole. None sees the big picture or feels responsible for morally evaluating the project as a whole.
Thus, even sympathetic, albeit flawed, project staff members find themselves involved in unsavory research, knowing that if they don’t participate, someone else will. Behind the glass wall, each is merely a faceless investigator doing research on nameless subjects. “They,” superiors or sponsors, are in charge and have already decided what the protocol is.
Something like this moral alienation among real researchers emerges as an important factor in a wide variety of unethical research projects that were known to have been conducted in the postwar United States. Probably the most infamous is the Tuskegee syphilis study, where antibiotic treatment was withheld from African American men as their disease process was “followed” over a number of years. Other incidents involved injecting highly radioactive isotopes into terminal cancer patients without their knowledge or dusting public places, including schools, with a radio-tracing compound that was used to model the spread of a biowarfare agent. And these are only the declassified examples! Behind continuing walls of secrecy, the hazards of treating science and ethics as separate worlds are probably greater.
No one is currently in a position to assess whether, or how far, the end results of all biomedical research may justify the means. Since the 1970s, significant steps have been taken to require most biomedical research on humans or animals to be ethically reviewed at the local level, with careful documentation of informed consent in the case of human subjects. Still, with very limited resources for enforcement, the system relies almost completely on the willingness of individual investigators and staff to follow protocols and self-report problems.

A Sinister Purpose?

Mister Sinister is hardly a fair representative of geneticists, even within the X-Verse. Any character retaining a shred of genuine humanity would have more potential for redemption than he. By placing himself in Apocalypse’s hands, Essex chose to deliberately dehumanize himself, hoping to irrevocably excise the moral sympathies that were, if Spencer is right, a part of his evolutionary heritage no less essential than his capacity for rational thought is. Yet through a centuries-long conflict with Apocalypse, Mister Sinister ultimately functions as a preserver of the human future, saving the world on more than one occasion. And ultimately, whatever his own twisted motives may be, all of his actions combine with the efforts of the X-Men to defeat Apocalypse—almost as if by divine design.
With Apocalypse defeated, Mister Sinister presumably continues his scientific work, his current purposes and goals unknown. His successes have been dearly bought, but Sinister is not consumed by his work. He is defined by it.
 
NOTES
1 Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix #4 (September 1996).
2 Herbert Spencer, Principles of Ethics, vol. 2 (New York: D. Appleton, 1898), p. 248.
3 Alfred Lord Tennyson, “In Memoriam A. H. H.,” stanza 55.
4 Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix #4.
5 Spencer, Principles of Ethics, p. 261.
6 Francis Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development (London: Dent & Dutton [Everyman], 1907), p. 198.
7 Ibid., p. 201.
8 X-Men Vol. 1 #14 (November 1965).