Ananyo Bhattacharya looks back at a science-fiction touchstone on the ethics of experimental biology.
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Bhattacharya, A. In retrospect: Flowers for Algernon. Nature 536, 394–395 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/536394a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/536394a
Ed Rybicki
Flowers for Algernon is an astonishingly good story, in any of the formats it was published in – and Charly was a superb, underrated film that deservedly won Cliff Robertson an Oscar.
I must have read Flowers in around 1968, because I saw the film very shortly afterwards – and had to explain things to the people I saw it with, to the extent of being vigorously "Shushed!" I was a little too young to appreciate the bioethics side of it all – around 14 – but on re-exposure as an adult, and again when my son read it in the 2000s as a school set-work, the true genius of Keyes and the deeper ramifications of his book became evident.
I think it is, quite simply, one of the best SF books ever published. It should also be required reading at ALL high schools, and for researchers in the human and biological sciences as well.
Ed Rybicki
Flowers for Algernon is an astonishingly good story, in any of the formats it was published in – and Charly was a superb, underrated film that deservedly won Cliff Robertson an Oscar.
I must have read Flowers in around 1968, because I saw the film very shortly afterwards – and had to explain things to the people I saw it with, to the extent of being vigorously "Shushed!" I was a little too young to appreciate the bioethics side of it all – around 14 – but on re-exposure as an adult, and again when my son read it in the 2000s as a school set-work, the true genius of Keyes and the deeper ramifications of his book became evident.
I think it is, quite simply, one of the best SF books ever published. It should also be required reading at ALL high schools, and for researchers in the human and biological sciences as well.