Benjamin Soloway, Foreign Policy: You Don’t Have to Watch ‘Jurassic World’ to See Bioengineered Animal Weapons
Hollywood tends to favor lively narrative intrigue over accurate scientific particulars, and the Jurassic Park franchise is no exception. The latest installment, Jurassic World, revisits the series’ core plot points: Dinosaurs, brought back into existence through science, wreak havoc in a jungle setting, leaving dead bodies and lessons about hubris in their wake. As with the original, released in 1993, many have taken issue with the science of the movie. The film’s dinosaurs are moored in 1980s paleontology: None of the on-screen species have feathers (scientists now think most dinosaurs sported plumage). The mosasaur and velociraptors are bigger than is historically accurate (some mosasaurs may have reached lengths of up to 50 feet in real life, but the one in the film is the size of a jumbo jet). And the mosasaur is depicted with frills running down its back — a laughably outdated idea in the paleontology world.
But there is one arena in which the film comes remarkably close to reality. As in Jurassic World, scientists in real life are already well on their way toward genetically modifying animals for military use.
WNU Editor: The anti-GMO crowd now have a bigger cause to fight against.
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