Oryx and Crake Summary

In Orgy and Crake Marg aret Atwood highlights this ethical issue through the lives of characters straight involved in this business to show that impasses both in the myth and in nows society use poor and epic passel to further their businesses and hug drug a profit. Tattoos novel focuses on a community dominated by bio engineering and genetic sciences in a time where restrictions on what companies could do with applied science are limited.The main character Jimmy and the important figures in his life (his parents, Crake, Orgy, etc) live in a society where their comfortable lifestyles are only thinkable through the revenue they hold in clear up of the biomedicine beatments they make. Atwood uses the desires of concourse like Jimmy who live in the engineering compounds, and the desperate conditions of the poor inhabitants in the slums, known as the planeloads. At the end of the novel, Atwood creates a catastrophic apocalypse stemming directly from a infirmity created by a company distributed to the plebes, who were eager to receive what they thought was a life changing medicine.Atwood uses this to illustrate issues that are prevalent in modern society. In both modern times and in Tattoos novel the upper-class takes advantage of the lower-class desperation for a better lifestyle to make a profit and bear to live their ivies comfortably at the expense of others. Atwood uses the way companies in the novel manipulate and take advantage of the lower-class to draw a parallel to todays society. In the novel the first example shown of economic manipulation is through an cable Jimmys parents have over the ethics of the recent breakthrough in drug advancements.In this excerpt, Jimmys father comes home celebrating advancements in genetic engineering at his company, but his pay arrive at refuses to celebrate as she sees this as yet another way to rip off a bunch of desperate nation. (Atwood 26) As the pedigree regresses Jimmys father maintains the argumen t that the new technology being created gives people hope a. Jimmys mother relays that it gives hope At Nonskid prices it is. You hype your wares and take all their money and then they run bug out of cash, and its no more treatments for them. They can rot as far as you and your pals are concerned Make life better for people -? not just people with money (26). In this passage Atwood uses Jimmys parents and the false hope companies products like Nonskid give to represent companies and people, profit and generosity and the struggle between aging money and lot others. This reveals an issue that concerns not only the characters in the novel, but also people today. The way companies rip off a bunch of desperate people is seen today with businesses that take their drugs overseas to take advantage of desperate people in need of a miracle, and instead streamlet their products on them for half the cost and lilliputian consequence.In an article called Drug Testing Goes Offshore in Fortune Magazine, Abraham Illustrate states that nearly 40% of all clinical trials are now conducted in poorer countries much(prenominal) as Russia and India, where costs are rower and patients more vulnerable. (Fortune) This parallels the disparity shown in the novel where Jimmys father and the company he works for uses the poorer people in the planeloads to test their products on to do the same principles of low cost and vulnerability.Additionally the article reveals that The very business model that summons drug companies to those places also risks exploiting the vulnerability of foreign patientsthey are eager to sign up because they lack a viable alternative and tend to have blind faith in medicine, (Fortune) showing how truly desperate the patients are and easily impasses in both the novel and todays society are able to take advantage of that as a business opportunity sooner than a chance to help others.The article also shows how the companies make singular profit by explaining that trials investigators in Russia can make ten times his requital by recruiting his patients into studies, (Fortune) and also tells how Patients in SST. Petersburg told stories about bribing doctors, passing on a few dollars to ensure they would get a repeat visit or entryway to a clinic (Fortune). Atwood uses products like Nonskid and the arguments Jimmys parents make to present the same involvement companies in modern society use the same form of manipulation to make money instead of helping the people they deceive to grow financially.Atwood also shows another side to the companys forms of manipulation through a controversial statement Jimmys champ Crake makes about how companies are always able to create new drugs for a seemingly increasing amount of new diseases. In this passages Jimmy asks But dont they take hold discovering new diseases? (Atwood 1 26) In which Crake replies Not discovering, theyre creating them they insert a hostile oviform started in he plebe population and it more or less runs itself.Naturally they develop the antidotes at the same time as theyre customizing the bugs, but they hold those in reserve, they practice the economics of scarcity, so theyre guaranteed high profits (Atwood 126). This radical business notion mirrors the same tactics of manipulation seen previously with deception of the plebes and the immediate advantage taken in finding a way to make money off of them. But even in the novel this concept seems to manipulative and far- fetched to be believable, or relatable to modern society.However the concept of disease mongering or the creation of diseases to convince people to buy products to cure them is more prevalent in society than expected. In the British Journal of Nursing and article called Marketing disease is osteoporosis an example of disease mongering? this concept is explored in a disease that is more or less excepted as an accurate condition that people need drugs for. In the article it explains that Osteoporos is is very much described as a disease, yet the symptoms are imperceptible and reliable diagnostic criteria have not been formulated E manufacture of lifestyle drugs has been costly without probatory improvement in mortality or morbidity. The influence of the medical profession and large drug manufacturers is and the manufacture of illness is shows there may be world-shattering risks attached to treating non-existent diseases (BBC). This shows that not are there diseases that are believed to be problematic and prevalent, but that companies are in fact making them up and furthermore victimization them to make money by selling treatments that could even be harmful to the consumer.This was shown as he case with hormone replacement therapy, which resulted in the unnecessary deaths of thousands of women, (BBC) unveil that as long as there are people desperate enough to seek relief to their ailments, companies will take advantage of that for personal bring forward whether it leads to hurting people and in this previous case, even death. Here Atwood shows that the evil and deceitful actions taken by the fictional characters in the novel share a striking parallel with the companies in todays drug market.Although it is easy to take away from these examples that there are manipulative people in todays society as head as in Tattoos novel, Atwood encourages that a further step is taken with this. These examples of disparity in the ethics of drug companies not only reflects the looming threat of big scary companies always out to get people, but reflects how as a population, people are ready to throw themselves at whatever drug comes their way as their miracle.Atwood pushes the realization that people arent safe just because theyre not impoverished or seeking free medical care, but that even the wealthy and the everyday individual in modern society are vulnerable to this manipulation. It is unfortunate that today the dream of living a life with good health and medical rampart for families is used to support an already wealthy society that continues to flourish while the poor are left to depravity. Although companies use the lure of low prices and free trials to continue their lives of leisure, the victims pay an even larger price than anticipated.A shown in the novel and the articles, many pay with being worse off than before and even death. The price people pay for these miracle pills and a chance to enjoy a better way of life cant be valued, however companies still make a refit off of the hardships of the destitute and despairing. This lack of empathy and simple decency is the foundation that breeds the inhumane suffering of others and, as Atwood illustrates, can lead to the same catastrophic downfall constructed in her novel.