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Language:
English
Series:
Part 1 of Full Circle
Stats:
Published:
2018-08-21
Completed:
2018-12-06
Words:
61,377
Chapters:
14/14
Comments:
170
Kudos:
273
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46
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10,974

Full Circle

Summary:

It's been three years since Fallen Kingdom and Claire, Owen and Maisie are trying to navigate life as a family. The escaped dinosaurs (minus the sold ones) have been recaptured and Claire is responsible for their oversight as head of the DPG. The end of the adoption is finally in sight. If only they could keep the word "cloning" from entering the public discussion.

It's a very angst-filled journey for Claire and Owen, but it is Clawen. Life just isn't always easy.

Notes:

I've gone through and edited and fixed a few mistakes within. Everything was pretty minor, but it's been on my mind to do so for a while.

Also - huge thanks to Elise-Collier for her help with thinking through this story. :)

Chapter 1: Prologue

Chapter Text

Prologue

It all started with a tweet. Twitter really was going to be the death of civilization. Some random guy, a father, with just enough followers, just enough influence, had a tweet go viral.

His son was sick. A genetic disease – Epidermolysis bullosa. Suffers are commonly referred to as butterfly children, as they have skin as fragile as a butterfly's wings. His tweet was short. And angry. And since the dinosaurs had never really left the news cycle since their outbreak onto American soil, timely.

"I'm sick of talking about whether we should save the dinosaurs. We should be talking about why these advances aren't being used to solve genetic conditions that affect everyday Americans. People like my son. His life is worth more than any dinosaur."

The response was immediate, the tweet crossing a thousand, then ten thousand, then a hundred thousand likes in just a few hours. And the likes kept pouring in. At the same time, it spawned comments and threads as people started to speculate as to what could be cured.

It made the nightly news.

"Why haven't we been talking about this?" News anchors across the country pondered.

"Don't get me wrong, I love dinosaurs – I had visited Jurassic World three times before the disaster – and I love animals too! But we should be putting people, treating people, before dinosaurs," one national anchor bemoaned.

The initial reaction was generally that this was a no-brainer. Of course, scientists should be doing this. There's no good reason for them not too.

It didn't take long for controversy to start to emerge. Religious groups were divided, with some likening potentially manipulating genes to stem cell research and being an act "against God." Others focused on the "God gave us brains" line and kept the argument on saving sick kids.

Philosophers chimed in with vague statements that could be read multiple ways and often didn't make any sense if you didn't know what they were referencing. Ian Malcolm, who had never really left the speakers circuit after the latest escape, could be found on TV almost every night.

Academics raised the issue that none of the science behind this had gone through proper peer review and that nothing had ever been evaluated by an ethics board.

Medical ethicists were concerned that much of the research could be argued to be rooted in bad practice and worried that patients and advocates didn't fully understand the potential implications of what was being suggested.

They were also the first ones to mention the word cloning. It started a debate on the ethics behind cloning organs. Who would have ownership rights? Would the organs have rights?

Claire was on top of the story from the start. While she didn't have a personal twitter account, the Dinosaur Protection Group, which she continued to run, ran one. And they were always quick to inform her of any trending tweets around dinosaurs because, inevitably, she'd be asked about it by some reporter. She had the DPG put out a statement saying that they were supporters of advances in medical and scientific research and would love to see the research that brought back the dinosaurs be used to save lives.

Owen would've missed it completely. Not a big fan of social media, and preferring to ignore the news as much as possible, he found life easier, and simpler, if he was able to mostly keep himself checked out. Unfortunately, he lived with two very strong-willed females, and so, invariably, he was clued into what was going on, usually around the dinner table.

It became hard to turn on a TV, open a newspaper, or browse social media without encountering the topic in some form. So it shouldn't have been a surprise that it made its way into science classes across the country and around the world.

When it came up in Maisie's seventh grade science class, she listened quietly, but didn't offer an opinion. It was unusual behaviour for the almost teen, but her science teacher let it slide, thinking she was just having an "off" day.