Summary Of Daniel Keyes Flowers For Algernon

Scientists should not genetically engineer humans to have artificial intelligence because it could negatively affect a person's life harm people. In a novella called “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes, we meet a character named Charlie Gordon who is the first human to be genetically altered to have artificial intelligence. Scientists do not know that much about genetically engineering and therefore don’t know all of the possibly fatal side effects. We also don’t know the long term effects of genetic engineering and how it could possibly change a person’s personality, whether it be attitude or even social interactions. The unknown aspects of Genetic Engineering hold too many risks.

Genetically altering someone’s brain to have artificial
intelligence will most likely have side effects that could possibly be fatal, and since we do not know these side effects, genetic engineering is too dangerous. For example, in “Flowers for Algernon”, Charlie Gordon discovers that “artificially enhanced intelligence deteriorates at a rate of time directly proportional to the quantity of the increase”. Charlie discovered this after he had been given artificial intelligence, so there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it, so Charlie had to wait for the mental deterioration to happen. Charlie didn’t know what would happen after the experiment, but chances are, deterioration of his mind is not what he was expecting.