Scientists have revived dead brains, edited human embryos, and created animals with two heads, all in the name of progress. These real-life experiments, pushed to the edge of ethics, seem straight out of a modern horror and raise deep questions about the limits of biology.
Frankenstein inspired many scientific experiments PHOTO: Shutterstock
When Mary Shelley published “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” in 1818, she wasn’t just writing a Gothic novel, she was laying the foundation for science fiction literature. The story of the scientist who revives dead tissue has left lasting questions about the consequences of unchecked ambition and the ethics of manipulating life.
More than two centuries away, her themes are more relevant than ever. In 2025, director Guillermo del Toro brought Frankenstein back to Netflix, reinterpreting the myth of human transcendence. But reality has already surpassed fiction.
From experiments with electricity on corpses in the 19th century to “CRISPR children” today and technologies capable of reactivating brain activity after death, the line between speculation and science has thinned spectacularly. Here are five real-life cases that show what happens when research pushes or even breaks ethical boundaries once considered unshakable.
Genetically modified twins
In November 2018, Chinese researcher He Jiankui announced that he had edited the genomes of two twin girls using CRISPR-Cas9 technology, trying to make them immune to HIV by disabling the CCR5 gene. Thus Lulu and Nana were born, the first humans with hereditary genetic changes – a much-debated but never-before-taken step.
The scientific community immediately reacted with concern. He’s study had been conducted in secret without institutional oversight and, according to investigations published in J Zhejiang Univ Sci B, violated essential ethical protocols and regulations. Although CCR5 editing was supposed to protect against HIV, there was a risk of side effects, mosaicism, and as yet unknown long-term consequences.
A TIME report first revealed the story and how He circumvented international guidelines by operating in a legislative vacuum. The Chinese authorities later condemned the study and the researcher received three years in prison.
“The sanctity of human life has been ignored in favor of scientific notoriety” said Dr. Kiran Musunuru, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania, according to the Daily Galaxy. “These children were treated as subjects in a large medical experiment.”
Worse, the intervention was not medically necessary: HIV-positive fathers were at minimal risk of transmission thanks to modern treatments. It is this lack of necessity that has reignited fears of a new form of eugenics, fueled not by ideology but by out-of-control innovation.
The Pig Brain Experiment: Death of Death?
In 2019, researchers at Yale University were able to restore cellular activity in pig brains four hours after death. The team led by neuroscientist Nenad Sestan used a system called BrainEx, which pumped a special solution through the brain, reducing cell death, preserving structure and reactivating synaptic functions.
The study, published in Nature, indicated no signs of consciousness. However, he redefined the biological criteria of brain death. Traditionally, brain death is considered irreversible, but BrainEx has challenged this assumption, with major implications for organ donation, emergency medicine, and the cultural understanding of death.
“It wasn’t a living brain, but it was definitely a metabolically active one.”explained bioethicist Stephen Latham, co-author of the study.
Far from restoring consciousness, technology has nevertheless opened a door that many thought was closed for good. And it has forced the medical establishment to ask uncomfortable questions: If function can return hours after death, how do we define the end of life?
The dog with two heads
In the 1950s, Soviet surgeon Vladimir Demikhov performed one of the most controversial experiments in transplant history: he grafted the head and upper body of a puppy onto a larger dog, creating an animal with two heads. The grafted head could drink water and react to stimuli. One of these hybrid animals survived 29 days.
Although Demikhov’s work contributed to the early development of organ transplants, his methods ignored any ethical standards, with no pain control, no animal welfare protocols, and no clear medical goal. Just ambition and ideology.
The images published by LIFE magazine shocked the West, but in the Soviet Union Demikhov was seen as a pioneer, proof that scientific ethics often depend on the political context.
The head transplant in the monkey
Two decades later, American neurosurgeon Dr. Robert J. White went even further. In 1970, he performed a complete head transplant on a rhesus monkey. The animal woke up after the operation, could see and hear the environment, but was paralyzed – the spinal cord had been severed without the possibility of reconnection.
White claimed the experiment demonstrated the brain’s ability to survive in a new body and believed the procedure could one day help terminally ill patients. His ideas inspired the controversial Italian doctor Sergio Canavero, who in the 2010s said he was preparing for the first human head transplant, but no credible study has confirmed such progress.
Currently, although advanced surgery and immunosuppressive treatments have evolved, human-scale spinal cord reconnection remains purely speculative, and the ethical barriers are as strong as the technical ones.
Frankenstein’s legacy in the pulse of a pacemaker
Not all experiments inspired by Frankenstein led to terrifying results. In 1957, after watching the 1931 film adaptation, engineer Earl Bakken developed the first portable, battery-powered pacemaker. Inspired by images of life-giving electricity, Bakken created a device that would transform cardiac medicine.
His company, Medtronic, keeps more than 4.5 million pacemaker users alive worldwide today. In this case, fiction fueled not madness, but one of the most important modern medical innovations—a reminder that inspiration, when backed by rigor, can serve humanity.
