In the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning (D.H.C.) is giving a tour to new students. They begin in the Fertilizing Room on the ground floor, an enormous laboratory where workers dressed in wintry white overalls and "pale corpse-colored" rubber gloves bend over instruments in the frozen, dead light. Here, eggs are extracted from human ova kept in incubators and then fertilized to produce five groups of people: Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons.
Using Bokanovsky's Process, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon eggs are forced to "bud" divide into an average of seventy-two identical embryos. The process is one of arrested development, in which an egg's normal growth is checked with X-rays, cold, and alcohol. When the egg's growth is checked, it divides and then grows; then its growth.....
This is a free excerpt of 135 words. This section contains 1,247 words. This
study guide contains 30,574 words (approx. 102 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Literature Guide with our Brave New World Access Pass.
