Drawing comparisons between the world in The Windup Girl and today

When I was reading The Windup Girl, I was obviously thinking about how different the world the characters were living in was compared to the one we live in now. While there were clear and obvious differences, I was also able draw some comparisons between elements of the story and things that exist today.  A lot of the things I picked up on are related to health or medicine because those are the classes I spend most of my time in, but I think they are still applicable. 

The first similarity I noticed was the presence of GMOs.  Obviously, the extent to which they are used is very different, but I wondered if the future of our GMO use will be very similar to that of their use in The Windup Girl.  Its hard for me to imagine that the use of GMOs would become that seemingly out of control and industrialized, but when compared to the differences between food production now and 100 years ago, maybe large-scale changes (GMOs now to GMOs in the book) are possible.  On an even larger scale, generipping seems to serve as an extreme form of genetically modifying foods, and even animals and humans.  While I can't really come up with any strong comparisons between generipping and science and technology today, except perhaps, cloning and stem cell research, for the sake of them not being 'natural,' the idea of genetically modifying animals and humans doesn't seem so alien. We already have gene therapy, and while I think creating entire genetically modified humans is extreme, imagine if we could genetically modify a liver or pancreas to be resistant to the cell mutations that cause cancer.  I think the prejudice that existed towards Emiko was awful and that's just one reason why we can't have totally genetically-modified humans walking around in this day and age.

I also noticed that the consistent use of GMOs in The Windup Girl was to combat the threat of diseased food.  With every resistant disease contaminating a batch of fruit, new, disease-resistant fruits are created.  This reminded me a lot of how, today, we are constantly dealing with the threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.  I've obviously read a lot about this in public health classes so I don't know if anyone else thought about it, but they have similar characteristics.  Antibiotics such as Penicillin are given in massive doses now, compared to the doses that were needed to treat an infection around the time Penicillin was created around World War I.  There are also strains of staph that run rampant in hospitals and other health care facilities that have begun to show resistance to the health industry's most potent and expensive antibiotics.  A major issue with antibiotic resistance is that the bacteria become resistant too soon after the drug is released and it can take ten years and billions of dollars to develop a new drug.  This isn't enough time to combat the resistance.  I felt a similar sense of urgency in The Windup Girl, with companies continuously trying to stay on top of the latest resistant bug and attempting to avoid another break out.  I also thought it was interesting how the idea of a breakout of blister rust or cibiscosis could totally shut down a community or threaten the livelihood.  The only comparison I can make between the fear of outbreaks in The Windup Girl and today, is possibly the SARS outbreak between 2002 and 2003.  The United States didn't see much of the effect of the outbreak, but Canada and many countries in Asia did.  SARS was so scary because it was sneaky and quick, and no scientist or public health official had ever seen it before- it was totally new.  I don't think we live in fear of outbreaks the way that individuals did in The Windup Girl, but I think there have been times that we have experienced that tension.