Hey, this is pretty cool: an annotated list of dramas and documentaries about bioethical topics at the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics (SCHB). It was launched this week.

Hey, this is pretty cool: an annotated list of dramas and documentaries about bioethical topics at the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics (SCHB). It was launched this week.

My test for the completeness of a such a list is whether it includes the film with the desperate line, “I am not an animal. I am not an animal. I am a human being!”. Give up? That’s from David Lynch’s haunting film The Elephant Man. And yes, the SCHB has listed it. At the moment, there are 118 documentaries and 165 dramas on the list. It even has some famous foreign titles, like the German classic Homunculus (1916) and the Nazi voluntary euthanasia film Ich Klage An (I accuse, 1941).

I was pretty keen to check out a 1952 drama listed under “Human-Nonhuman Hybrids and Chimeras” — Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. I looked at the trailer on YouTube: it richly deserves the SCHB’s warning that it is among the 50 worst films ever made. Do yourself a favour: check it out now. 

Michael Cook
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Michael Cook

Michael Cook edits BioEdge, a bioethics newsletter, and MercatorNet, an on-line magazine whose focus is human dignity. He writes from Sydney, Australia.

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