Frankenstein – what fiction reveals about Bioethics

The relationship between science, ethics and responsibility is rarely as well illustrated as in works of fiction that deal with the creation of life and experimentation with human beings. The new film Frankensteinby Guillermo del Toro, which also reminds us of the work Poor Creaturesstarring Emma Stone in 2023, offers a contemporary and provocative reinterpretation of the theme. Although cinematographic, both reflect issues that accompany Medicine, scientific research and Medical and Health Law on a daily basis – especially in the field of Bioethics.

The story of Frankenstein is still, for many, misunderstood: it is not the creature who receives this name, but its creator, Victor Frankenstein – a doctor who pushes scientific frontiers without any moral reflection on the consequences of the experiment itself. This detail is essential because it shifts the focus from the “monster” to the ato ea responsibility of the creator, which is precisely the starting point of many bioethical debates.

In the film, the doctor, after a failed attempt to kill his “experiment”, abandons his creation. And it is precisely in this abandonment that lies the main point of intersection with Bioethics: the absolute absence of responsibility and respect for Human Rights, the denial of the “patient’s” autonomy, the damage and suffering caused by an experiment conducted without care, without limits and without humanity.

This same debate reappears in a reinvented form in Poor Creatures. Bella Baxter, reconstructed from a radical experiment, lives under male tutelage, initially deprived of autonomy and self-determination. The narrative is deeply linked to the Feminist bioethicswhich emerged precisely to highlight that Bioethics was constructed from a masculine, abstract and supposedly neutral perspective – but which, in practice, ignored the concrete experience of women. This current focuses on several themes: reproductive autonomy, obstetric violence, sexuality, unequal access to health services and the way in which the female body is repeatedly controlled.

Traditional Bioethics remains essential as a guiding framework. However, it does not exhaust the complexity of the dilemmas marked by historical and social inequalities. Many vulnerabilities do not simply arise from biological or circumstantial conditions, but are produced and perpetuated by power structures. It is at this point that the feminist and racial currents of Bioethics expand the debate.

Bioethics in its essence constitutes an interdisciplinary field that especially unites medicine, Law, philosophy, sociology and biology. It is a discipline consolidated as a response to scientific abuses that marked the 20th century, such as: Nazi experiments in concentration camps, the Tuskegee study carried out on black men with syphilis in the United States, forced sterilizations of vulnerable women, research conducted without patient consent and medical practices that victimized, above all, women, black people, the poor and vulnerable groups, who tend to be more susceptible to abuse and, therefore, are constantly treated as mere available bodies. for experimentation, with less protection, less access to information and less recognition of their autonomy.

These facts revealed that science and medicine, when dissociated from ethics, can become very dangerous instruments of violence. Bioethics was born precisely as a protective barrier, based on principles such as autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice – and later expanded by feminist and racial aspects, which denounce structural inequalities in access to health and the distribution of scientific risk. Its focus is to analyze conflicts that arise when scientific progress directly affects the life, integrity and dignity of human beings and animals.

When revisiting these works from a legal and biomedical perspective, we noticed valuable points of intersection for professional practice:

• Free and informed consent and autonomy: Both Frankenstein’s Creature and Bella Baxter are conceived and manipulated in experiments without any possibility of deciding on their own existence or on their physical, socio-environmental, moral and psychological integrity. Both are subjected to the absolute power of their creators, deprived of autonomy and prevented from exercising any form of self-determination over their own life and health.
• Responsibility: Innovation is necessary, without a doubt, but it requires continued care. In this sense, the Brazilian national law on research with human beings 14.874/24 expressly prohibits the provision of exemption from liability for damages arising from research. Furthermore, it provides for the responsibility and obligation of compensation of both the sponsor and the researcher to the participant who has suffered direct damage from the research that remains proven and guarantees health care. Technological/scientific enthusiasm cannot overcome dignity and protection of the subjects involved.
• Justice and deprivation of a dignified life: although the Creature has no race, it is doomed to exclusion and embodies the symbol of the subject considered “other”, “less than human”, someone whose dignity is denied because their appearance or origin deviates from the standard. Uncritical science tends to reproduce existing inequalities and accentuate vulnerabilities. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights already recognized human dignity and the right to health as universal values. In Brazil, the 1988 Constitution reinforces this protection by elevating the dignity of the human person to the foundation of the State and guaranteeing a free, comprehensive and universal health system. In this scenario, debates about scarcity of resources and judicialization of health become central to Bioethics, especially in relation to the principle of justice.

The breadth of the dilemmas presented by Frankenstein and Poor Creatures dialogues directly with the major axes that structure contemporary Bioethics: from debates about the beginning of life – such as assisted reproduction, cloning, abortion, genetic editing and surrogacy – to the complex questions at the end of life, related to palliative care, advance directives, euthanasia, orthothanasia and dysthanasia. Added to this is the whole discussion about autonomy, consent and vulnerability, refusal of treatment, especially relevant in research involving human beings, genetic manipulation and the use of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and neurotechnology.

In the end, both Frankenstein How much Poor Creatures they function as exercises in moral reflection. They remind us that technique is not enough, we need to have ethics. And that, without ethics, science stops being an instrument of progress and becomes a mechanism of oppression. For those who work in medicine, Health Law and Bioethics, these works are not just entertainment: they are opportunities to reflect on the contemporary challenges that face our practice. After watching, it’s worth asking: which bioethical dilemma provoked you the most?

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SOUZA, Wendell Lops Barbosa de. Medical error in the courts. 2nd ed. Indaiatuba: Editora Foco, 2025. p. 45 and following; p. 180 et seq.

KOENIGSTEIN, Livia Maria Amentano. Bioethics: what is it? Migalhas, 2017. Available at: Accessed on: 28 Nov. 2025.

KEID, Fernanda Borges. Bioethics as an instrument to mediate conflicts in health. Migalhas, 2022. Available at: Accessed on: 28 Nov. 2025.