All language subtitles for IneXplicável - S07E13 - Mad Scientists

A trailblazing biologist
determined to design

a half-man, half-beast hybrid.

A gifted neuroscientist

whose machine can
manipulate the human mind.

And an eccentric aristocrat

who inspired the world's
greatest mad scientist.

For thousands of years,
mankind's great thinkers

have made enormous
contributions to scientific progress.

Yet, throughout the centuries,

there have been more than
a few men of science who

while brilliant in their own right

pushed the boundaries
of experimentation

to the edge of madness.

They were renegades,
known for bizarre experiments

involving human-animal
hybrids, mind control devices,

and even... Unspeakable torture.

What were these mad
scientists really trying to achieve?

And what led them
down a strange, dark path

in their pursuit of knowledge?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

A Chinese district court
finds biophysicist he jiankui

guilty of illegal medical practices.

His crime involves a highly
controversial procedure

where the DNA of three female
embryos is genetically edited

for the purpose of creating
HIV-immune babies.

The academic and medical communities

call the radical experiment
unsafe and unethical...

And he jiankui is added
to a long list of geniuses

whose dangerous
acts have deemed them

"mad scientists."

I think there are so many questions

about what motivated him.

Scientists are driven by
the same kinds of motivations

that other humans are driven by.

In the same way that people
want to gain fame or notoriety,

scientists may want to
gain fame or notoriety, too.

Sometimes, that ambition
drives them to cut corners

or to do unethical experiments

because it could lead
to a major breakthrough

that would advance their career.

And that desire to become
famous, to get a nobel prize,

to be internationally recognized,

can really, in many
ways, poison the work

rather than improve it.

There's one particular

psychological bias that
scientists are more prone to

than your regular person.

And that's the idea that
they can get seduced

by the idea of their own brilliance.

They can get attached to an idea,

and they will go to extraordinary lengths

to be proven right.

The mad scientist represents this idea.

When we think of a mad scientist,

we often imagine an obsessed madman

performing extreme and
disturbing experiments

in a dark laboratory

but where does that image come from?

The term "the mad scientist"
really enters the mainstream

in 1818 with Mary
shelley's Frankenstein.

Victor Frankenstein was the doctor,

and she described
him as a mad scientist,

and that's really the
character that we think of

when we think of a mad scientist.

Victor Frankenstein
created a humanoid figure.

A monstrous humanoid figure.

He was playing god,

and therefore, he was
the ultimate mad scientist.

Mad scientists were
fanatically driven to experiment

well away from the
eyes of the population,

and often these experiments,

they're unethical, they're immoral.

They could be grotesque and horrifying,

as with Dr. Frankenstein.

The stereotype of the mad scientist

comes from the early 19th century.

We know that, at that time,

many scientists worked in isolation,

and so, this idea of a mad scientist,

working by themselves

in some dungeon or
laboratory somewhere,

who perpetrated some
great crime against humanity,

this comes from

this victorian-era way
of conducting science.

While stories of evil geniuses

have frightened and intrigued
us for hundreds of years

in reality, history can point
to many gifted scientists

whose work could be called
progress... Or perversion.

And perhaps the most
surprising example of this

is a brilliant mind from the 17th century

who laid the foundation
for modern science...

Sir Isaac Newton.

Isaac Newton was

an extraordinary, extraordinary genius.

He invented a way of
expressing how the world works

in his mammoth book
principia mathematica,

which was a bestseller in the day.

Basically, he was showing people

how to make sense of the world
through mathematical formula.

Newton articulated
the three laws of motion.

He devised the principle
of universal gravitation.

So, I think it is fair to say

that even his contemporaries

thought that the principia
mathematica was extraordinary,

and it almost put an end to science.

That is to say, there was very little

left to do after Newton's work.

Yet despite Newton's
groundbreaking achievements,

to some, the "father of physics" was also

the most famous mad
scientist of his time.

If you're talking about the
trope of the mad scientist,

Isaac Newton is a classic
example in the sense that,

on the one hand, he is an
emblem of human rationality,

of using human reason to
figure out how nature works.

But Newton was also a crackpot,

we'd have to say, in modern terms.

He was a practitioner in alchemy,

which is this kind of occult
precursor of modern chemistry.

He actually did experiments,

hoping he could find
the philosopher's stone,

which would be a way
to turn lead into gold.

In addition to his interest in alchemy,

Newton's most notable
achievements include

the invention of calculus,

the creation of the reflecting telescope,

and groundbreaking work in optics.

But his determination

to understand the
composition of light and color

and how we see them

would lead him to conduct
gruesome experiments...

On his own eyes.

Newton's experiments with his eyeballs

are extraordinary. There's nothing like it.

What he's trying to find out
is, how do we see things?

We have two separate notebooks

where he describes in detail what he did,

what the effects were, because
they damaged his eyesight.

We know that his eyesight was
damaged by looking at the sun.

So much so that, in the
last months of his life,

he recalled that he could still
see the sun if he shut his eyes.

That he'd clearly damaged his eyes

so much that this lasted for 60 years.

Newton was really interested
in understanding sight.

So, in the pursuit of this,

he took what he called
a bodkin, a large needle,

and he decided to
see what would happen

if he stuck it into his eye

and pushed it back as far as it would go.

And he saw all these
little lights going off,

because if the eye is injured,

it will send little screaming
light signals to your brain.

Now, you know, most people
probably wouldn't do that.

Isaac Newton was kind of crazy.

On the one hand, it's
perfectly possible to understand

the rationale of what he was doing.

It's a perfectly sensible question:

What does happen to
your sight when the eyeball

is distorted in various ways?

But the thought that a good
way of answering that question

would be to kind of

push a needle around
the back of your eye...

It's just this horrible, horrible thought.

No sane person would
do something like that.

But Newton clearly thought that this was

a perfectly sane thing to do.

You know, there lies the mad scientist.

A scruffy-looking dog is found injured

and brought to an animal hospital.

But upon examination,
doctors soon realize

this is not a typical canine.

In fact, this four-legged creature

is an entirely new hybrid animal

a unique combination
of domesticated dog

and pampas fox.

Now identified as a dogxim,
its origins are unknown.

Was it created in nature,

like the coyote-wolf
hybrid called coywolves,

or was the dogxim
man-made, like the liger,

which is half lion, half tiger?

Our fascination with hybrid creatures

can be traced back
for thousands of years,

and many times, these freaks of nature

include strange,
unthinkable combinations

that are part animal and part human.

If you go back and look at paleolithic art,

40,000 years old, they
were painting on cave walls

hybrids of men and
birds, women and bison.

Another famous example
is the sphinx in Egypt.

The body of a lion and
the head of a person.

And one of the driving
forces behind this was

the idea that it might have been possible,

using magic, to actually acquire

some of the powers that animals had.

While tales of half-man,
half-animal creatures

have been part of folklore and
mythology since ancient times,

has modern science now reached a point

where human hybrids
could become a reality?

This mad notion was the
focus of a Russian scientist

with a disturbing vision.

Dictator Joseph Stalin launches

the first five-year plan
for the Soviet union.

Heavy industries like
steel, coal and machinery

are the focus of rapid industrialization.

Farmers are pressured
to increase their harvests

to support the growing workforce.

And scientists are
tasked with figuring out

how to breed stronger livestock.

Leading this effort is a
Soviet biologist named...

Ilya Ivanov.

Ilya Ivanov started his career

as a biologist under the czarist regime,

and one of the things that
he was very interested in

was the idea of the artificial insemination

of horses and cattle.

So this was a way to take

particular desirable biological traits

find the stallion who
had the traits you wanted,

and if you milked the sperm

and artificially inseminated it,

that one horse can
fertilize five thousand mares.

Before the 20th century,
artificial insemination was

looked at as something
that just would not work.

Ivanov helped to prove
that this was not the case.

And he began using these techniques

to create strange new creatures.

He created a zebra-donkey
hybrid called a zedonk

and a bison-cow hybrid called a zubron.

And it was amazingly successful.

He became the foremost
expert in the world

on artificial insemination.

But then, he had an even bigger idea.

He thought, could we breed
a human with a chimpanzee?

To most of us, the idea of

a half-human, half-chimpanzee hybrid

sounds, well, insane.

But ilya Ivanov was convinced

such a combination was possible,

and he became obsessed with the idea

of creating an entirely
new species called...

Humanzee.

Ilya Ivanov wanted to create a crossover

between apes and humans.

He called these the
"humanzee" experiments.

It was government-funded research.

Part of what people
believe he was trying to show

is that humans really
did evolve from apes.

And by showing this kind
of inter species impregnation,

it would, in theory, prove
that kind of evolutionary link.

As far as we know, ilya Ivanov

tried this in a lot of different ways.

He tried to get human women

to be willing to be inseminated
artificially by ape sperm.

He tried to transplant tissue

from the uterus of a
human woman into an ape.

He was willing to do it in
any way that was possible.

For one of his experiments,
in the summer of 1927,

Ivanov managed to bring
back to the Soviet union

a male orangutan.

He named him Tarzan.

And he actually managed to find

five female volunteers
in the Soviet union.

One of the women
memorably commented that

"I'm willing to volunteer for this

because I feel that my life
has no more sense anymore."

So, I think he was somehow
tapping into the suicidal women

in the Soviet union who were
just gonna abandon all hope

to participate in this
gruesome experiment.

But Ivanov had failed in his attempt,

because the orangutan promptly died.

Soon after that, one of his colleagues

reported him for
counterrevolutionary activities

and he got arrested in
one of Stalin's purges.

They exiled him to Kazakhstan.

Two years later, he died of a stroke.

That was the end of his research project.

Was ilya Ivanov's dedication
to his delusional hybrid project

simply to prove that human
beings had evolved from apes

or was there a more diabolical plan

driving the 10-year odyssey
to create a humanzee?

Why would a Soviet scientist
want to create a humanzee?

Well, we don't really know,
but we can take some guesses.

One of those would
be that he was trying to

create a super soldier.

When you talk about a chimpanzee,

you're talking about more
stamina, more strength.

If you can pull some of
those traits into a soldier,

you would have, essentially,
a real-life captain america,

and if you ask me, it's probably
what Ivanov was trying to do.

While it's widely believed

that Ivanov's controversial
experiments failed...

His work still raises

some very important ethical questions.

Even if Ivanov could create
an ape-man in a laboratory,

should he have ever been allowed

to try in the first place?

The humanzee experiments
raise so many ethical concerns.

Ilya Ivanov really regarded,

you know, whether it
was humans or apes,

not as, you know, beings that required

and demanded our respect,
but really as instruments

for his different scientific experiments.

So, imagine for a moment

that the humanzee experiments
had actually succeeded.

We have no idea what the consequences

for the woman would
have been. Would it have

destroyed her health?

And how would we regard that species?

Would we think that was a human

that had all of the
same rights as a human?

It's almost impossible

to grapple with the full set of implications

of an experiment like that.

Why, for thousands of years,

have humans been so obsessed

with creating hybrid creatures?

One thing that many mad
scientists have in common

is that they rarely consider

the consequences of their experiments.

Which was the case
with the Harvard professor

whose research into mind control

may have turned one of his students

into a dangerous madman.

Since its founding in 1636,

some of the brightest minds in science

have taught at this esteemed institution

including James Watson, a
pioneer in the science of DNA,

nobel-prize-winning
physicist Sheldon glashow,

and the highly controversial psychologist

named Dr. Henry Murray.

Henry Murray was a psychologist

who, during world war
ii, worked for the oss.

The oss is the precursor to the CIA.

So this is military intelligence.

And what he was trying to find out was,

how far can you push a
man before he breaks?

He was testing the limits of soldiers

put under interrogation and pressure.

After the war,

Murray went to work at
Harvard as a psychologist.

During his time at Harvard,

Henry Murray was very interested

in how people respond
under extreme stress,

how personality is shaped and changes.

He was committed to do so at any cost.

And if that meant subjecting students

to extreme stress to do it,

then Henry Murray
was, was okay with that.

At Harvard, Murray began
a new research project

titled "multiform assessments

of personality development
among gifted college men."

He would experiment

with intelligent Harvard undergraduates

to observe how they
responded to extreme

psychological stress.

He wasn't looking for

students that had a
sense of self-confidence.

He wanted students that were

feeling isolated, out of place,

having trouble acclimating to college.

He wanted weak people
to be part of this experiment

not strong ones, because the weak mind

is just much easier to break.

So, he conducted
very in-depth interviews

with these students that
were potentially for the study.

He wanted to know
what their values were,

what their fears were,
what they believed,

what made them proud,
what made them nervous,

what made them ashamed.

And, from there, selected 22 students

to be part of the program.

From 1941 to 1962,

Dr. Murray engaged
five groups of 22 men.

Each group committed to
200 hours of intensive testing

from their sophomore to senior years.

After collecting information

about each subject's
life, beliefs and values,

they were confronted with

"vehement, sweeping and
personally abusive attacks,"

all intended to trigger

crippling levels of stress
and mental collapse.

He was using tactics

that he'd learnt working
in the intelligence services

during the second world war.

Murray's methodology was to, first of all,

have a brightly lit room
in which he'd create

what were termed
"confrontational scenarios."

So, his subjects would
be covered in electrodes

and then basically shouted at, yelled at,

and this was hugely distressing.

In essence, Murray would
spend many sessions

just berating students, and
they would use those things

that were dear to those students

to deflate their self-esteem.

To make them feel
like they were worthless.

To give them a sense that,

the things that they believe,

the things that define
them, were horrible things.

Even Murray, by his own admission, said

that these were vehement
assaults on the ego

with the intention of
breaking individuals down.

There was some controversy

and some dissentment
among his colleagues

that he was a fringe psychologist.

And when one considers
lonely undergrads

and the developmental
period in which they're in,

that kind of treatment,
that kind of torture,

it stays with the person.

The students of Murray's
experiments, 25 years later,

noted serious negative side effects

of both physical health,
mental health, social health

that remained with them.

What motivated Dr. Murray

to conduct such disturbing
and cruel experiments

on vulnerable young minds?

Was it a radical act
in the name of science,

or was there a bigger force

influencing the
psychologist's mad project?

While it's a matter of debate,

some believe Henry
Murray may have been

working for the U.S. government's

central intelligence agency.

There are rumors that he was, in fact,

still working for the CIA,

trying to develop
techniques of mind control.

I mean, when asked,
Murray was quite cagey

about, you know, just
what he was trying to do.

Though I do sometimes wonder,

was Murray really capable of

controlling the way other people thought

as a result of his experiments?

Is it possible that Murray's
diabolical Harvard experiment

was secretly a mind
control program for the CIA?

We can only speculate.

But what we do know

is that one of Murray's test subjects

died in a supermax prison

for a crime spree that
caused death and destruction

across the United States.

His name was Ted kaczynski,

also known as the unabomber.

Ted kaczynski was only 16
years old when he was at Harvard.

This is a very,

very impressionable
developmental period

and one can't help but think,
what exactly was the role

of Murray's experiments

on Ted kaczynski's future behavior?

The unabomber carried
out a series of bombings

in which three people
were killed and 23 injured.

And, of course, people have wondered

was it as a result of
Murray's experiments

that kaczynski went on to become

this sociopathic serial killer?

We know that for a
fact from his manifesto,

where kaczynski specifically went after

the American scientific community

and he attacked psychology as a field.

Now, we can't make a
direct, exact correlation that,

did this experiment in mind control

cause Ted kaczynski

to become, essentially,
a domestic terrorist?

We can't do that.

But certainly these experiments

built kaczynski's worldview.

The psychological
mind control experiments

conducted by Dr. Murray are distressing,

to say the least.

But there's another mad scientist

whose fascination with electric medicine

led to the creation of
manipulative... and shocking

experiments.

Cardiologist Dr. Claude s. Beck

is performing open heart surgery

when his patient suddenly
goes into cardiac arrest.

In that moment, Beck decides to use

an untested invention of his own design

and saves his patient's
life by shocking him

with 1500 volts of electricity.

Dr. Beck's invention, called a defibrillator

and other devices, like the pacemaker

and the cochlear implant,

has transformed lives
through electric medicine.

But while it's easy to see the benefits

electricity has offered
medical advancement,

it is not without controversy.

Such is the case
surrounding a troubling tool

invented by a brilliant brain scientist

named José delgado.

José delgado, I'd say,

is the most flamboyant, outrageous,

fascinating scientist I've
ever interviewed personally.

He moved to Yale in 1950.

And while he was there,

over the next two and a half decades,

he did all these experiments
involving brain implants.

And he spelled this out in a book

that was published in 1969

called physical control of the mind.

For example, he developed something

called the stimoceiver,

which is a device about
the size of a half dollar

that could be inserted inside the skull,

and had electrodes
inserted into the brain

that could both detect signals

being passed from one
part of the brain to another

and also stimulate the
brain to get various effects.

Through this period, delgado did
a lot of experiments on monkeys.

He had all these monkeys in a chamber,

and there was one big
Alpha male bully and...

And a bunch of females.

Delgado put a stimoceiver

in the brain of the male monkey,

and when he pushed the
lever, it would pacify the male

and the male would suddenly become

meek and mild and cower in the corner.

There was a little bit of this

kind of mad scientist aspect of him.

Through this period also,

delgado had been experimenting

not only on animals but also on humans.

So, in the 1950s, he was
going into mental hospitals

and inserting brain
implants into mental patients,

most of whom had
epilepsy or schizophrenia.

He's trying to show the
power of these technologies

for treating severe mental illness,

in his book physical control of the mind,

he was showing that he
could control people's emotions.

He could make them laugh,
he could make them feel rage,

just by pressing a button

which was controlling
the, the stimoceivers

implanted in their brains.

He wanted to take the technology as

as far as it could possibly go.

Delgado claimed that his radical
experiments with the stimoceiver

showed evidence that human
behavior could be manipulated

by applying electricity to the brain.

And to prove it, delgado
created a public demonstration

of his mind control machine
after embedding his device

in the brain of a bull.

Delgado famously went
into a ring with a bull.

And the only thing he
was holding in his hand

was a radio receiver.

And as the bull charged toward him,

he pressed a button and
the bull suddenly stopped.

And what he was trying to show

was that it was possible
to control behavior

of other species through electrodes.

But what it also did was show people

how powerfully the
brain can be manipulated

and induce fear in the public

about the possibility of brain control

and external brain control

by what could be
seen as a mad scientist.

The problem with his technology is

it isn't designed to
suddenly change somebody

from charging at you
to stop charging at you.

It's designed to
suddenly change behavior

and to make people
or species into puppets.

Delgado had a vision for
humanity being reshaped

by these technologies
that he was developing.

In his book physical control of the mind,

he said that technologies
like the one he was developing

had the capacity to transform
human society for the better,

to create this kind of utopia,

but he's describing his patients
as though they are puppets.

He can make their
limbs move up and down.

He can make them wave
their arms and clench their fists.

He can make them laugh on command.

And what-what's creepy is that

often these people thought they were

doing these things of their own free will.

Where does it cross the line

between understanding
how the brain works

and then making it
work in a particular way?

So, if we could just
have a remote control,

and press a button and make
them behave in certain ways,

the next question becomes, why not?

If we think of what delgado was doing

to control human
movement and behavior,

then that raises the question of

who gets to play god, in that sense?

Who-who, then, gets
to control that behavior?

If we are like puppets,

then who is pulling the strings?

The idea of creating an
army of human puppets

is certainly unnerving.

But when it comes to conducting
diabolical human experiments,

the medical atrocities committed

during world war ii stand alone,

and earned one mad scientist
the terrifying nickname...

"The angel of death."

The Auschwitz-birkenau
state museum, Poland.

During world war ii, it was the site

of some of the worst
atrocities in all of human history.

Over one million innocent victims

were murdered here by the Nazis.

And later, survivors would speak

of a sadistic doctor stationed here,

responsible for truly horrific experiments

on the prisoners,
named Dr. Josef Mengele.

There's no more notorious example

of the extremes of
scientific experimentation

than Josef Mengele at Auschwitz

during the course of
the second world war.

His victims called Mengele
"the angel of death."

When he came around, they
knew they were going to die

in horrible, vicious ways.

Mengele joins the Nazi party in '37.

Early on, he's actually a combat doctor.

He's wounded on the Russian front,

sent back to Germany to recover,

and then reassigned as
the chief medical officer

of this prison industrial
extermination complex

with an almost unlimited
supply of test subjects,

and given relatively free reign

to conduct whatever
research it was that he wanted.

That consisted of things like

removing a kidney from a prisoner

and then putting them
back in their work detail

to see whether or not they
could continue to do that.

He deliberately infected
prisoners with various diseases.

But he was very interested in genetics.

One of his favorite things
was to work with children,

particularly sets of twins.

And he would take the twins

and use one as the experiment

and the other as a control.

What is so inexplicable about Mengele

is he could be so kind
and warm and gentle

to these children one day,

giving them chocolates,
giving them candy,

and the next day, turn around
and torture and murder them.

What kind of monster does it take

to do something like that?

What madness causes a man of science

to become a sadistic monster?

Some believe the answer may be found

by examining a secret Japanese
program during world war ii.

Tucked away in this
city of ten million people,

a group of brick buildings
stand as a grim memorial.

It is the home of a research
and development unit

created by the Japanese
during their occupation of China

in the 1930s and 1940s.

And it is the place where
thousands of prisoners

were the victims of heinous experiments

conducted under the direction

of senior army surgeon shiro ishii.

Shiro ishii was born in 1892

into a wealthy family,
a land-owning family.

His father grew rice and made sake.

Ishii, though, didn't want to
follow in daddy's footsteps.

Instead, he wanted to go into medicine.

He joined the army to
become a military surgeon.

Ishii was interested in studying cholera,

epidemic hemorrhagic fever,

bubonic plague... which
was one of his favorites

but he also recognizes

that you can weaponize these diseases,

so he proceeded to examine biowarfare

as an option for Japan.

To test bio weapons for Japan,

ishii formed a military research group

known as unit 731.

And between 1937 and 1945,

they performed deranged experiments

on thousands of prisoners
of war and civilians.

General ishii was focused
on the military research.

But again, the atrocities
are unimaginable.

These were usually
Chinese prisoners of war,

but it was really any non-Japanese.

He infected patients
with tuberculosis, Anthrax,

all kinds of diseases, just
to see what would happen

and if he can find ways to
make his soldiers immune

or how to treat them.

And this was his justification.

It is estimated that shiro
ishii's bio weapons experiments

killed over 10,000 test subjects.

After world war ii, both ishii and Mengele

were never punished for
their crimes against humanity.

But ever since their
horrific secret experiments

were revealed to the world,
we still don't understand

why these deranged doctors

would do such despicable things.

One answer that Mengele
and ishii both offered

was that they were
doing it for nationalism.

They were trying to further, perhaps,

important military aims of their country.

But I think, beyond that,
part of the answer is that

these two were clearly psychopaths.

They enjoyed doing this.

We really don't know
what would drive a person

to dehumanize another person.

What happens in their mind?

Do they snap for some reason?

Is there some trauma
inflicted upon them as a child?

How could a scientist be drawn

to this type of experimentation?

I think this is one of
life's great mysteries.

Sitting on a lonely hilltop

is an imposing stone fortress

that dates back to the year 1252.

Known as castle Frankenstein,

after the family who
first laid claim to this land,

legend says it is the location that inspired

Mary shelley's world-famous
gothic horror novel.

But surprisingly, shelley's Frankenstein

is not about the original
13th-century family.

It is said inspiration for her mad doctor

would come from tales
of grotesque experiments

conducted at the castle centuries later

by an eccentric scientist
named Johann dippel.

In 1673, in castle Frankenstein,

was born the perfect man for that name.

That was Johann konrad dippel.

He was technically a theologian.

He went to college to study god.

Dippel was a man fascinated with death,

with other people's
death, with his own death,

and wanted to prolong
his own as long as he could.

He believed that the
soul was a physical liquid

inside the human body.

And he procured cadavers,
legally and illegally,

to perform experiments on
bodies in all kinds of ways.

What it entailed was sticking a tube

usually made of animal
intestine... into a cadaver,

extracting the fluids from the cadaver

and then transfer it into another cadaver.

The goal being to reanimate that cadaver

with this other one's soul.

It makes sense that,

if the soul has a specific,
physical location in the body,

then you can kind of extract it, and

and put it... put it in another body.

So about half a century or so previously,

the French philosopher rené descartes

had developed a view of humans

that the soul has a physical
location inside the body.

In case you're interested,
your soul is there.

That's where the pineal gland is.

And the pineal gland,
according to descartes,

is where the soul lives.

But nevertheless,

even by the standards
of the early 18th century,

if dippel did indeed carry out

these experiments on the dead,

trying to transfer the soul
from one body to another...

This sounds, from
our point of view, mad.

Like the famous fiction,

these stories of
horrendous experiments...

They serve as cautionary tales

about the pursuit of knowledge.

You really have to ask:

Is the way science is being pursued,

is it being done with wisdom

or do we risk creating
Frankenstein's monster?

The mad scientist, for
me, leaves me conflicted.

We need to push science forward.

We also have to maintain
our ethics and our dignity.

But there are experiments
that may require us

to for ego our ethics,
even if just for a moment,

for the greater good.

And I think that's why the
"mad scientist" archetype

will continue to persist.

As long as we pursue
the boundaries of science,

we'll always be questioning
our own boundaries as humans.

Were Johann dippel's
attempts to resurrect the dead

driven by ambition, curiosity...
Or plain old madness?

Maybe it was all of the above.

And it stands to reason
that a unique combination

of genius and insanity

may also apply to other great
thinkers throughout history.

But no matter how
potentially groundbreaking

their outrageous experiments might be...

They serve as a chilling reminder

that the price of progress
is often paid in blood.

Whether it's ego or a warped
notion of right and wrong,

what ultimately motivates
these mad scientists remains

unexplained.