Last week, I watched Gattaca at the Flora’s Films event. It was an interesting commentary about the upcoming age of genetic engineering, and the potential consequences of the future.
Overall, I enjoyed the movie. It was nice seeing the protagonist, Vincent, achieve his dream of piloting a spaceship; however, it does strike me as very irresponsible for him to to do this when his heart is in danger of giving out at any moment. Sure, there are incredible places that pure willpower can take you, but it can’t prevent your heart from giving out due to a genetic defect. Piloting a ship when his heart was already past its deadline sort of soured the feel-good story that the movie was aiming for, at least in my experience.
In the movie, there exists a sort of class hierarchy between those who have been genetically engineered and those who haven’t. This happens even though there was a law designed to protect against “genetic discrimination.” I thought this was interesting–if an employer such as the Gattaca space center is given the option of hiring a genetically superior person over someone like Vincent for piloting a critical mission to Saturn, of course they’re going to choose the former. It’s really impossible to guard against genetic discrimination–it’s like passing a law today to outlaw “ability discrimination.” A person cannot be hired over another based on their abilities. This makes me wonder if there’s any way to make life fair for non-engineered humans if a scenario like the one in Gattaca appears in the future.
Interesting post on the movie. Your last paragraph really resonates with me. I worked in a lab last semester where we were using the CRISPR-CAS9 system to do gene editing in drosophila. This type of thing will happen in the future, but probably (hopefully?) not to the level that occurred in this movie. As far as laws based on genetic discrimination, a lot of discussions and research are going to have to be done before any legislation is changed.
Many people jump straight to the extremes of genetic engineering: altering our stature, strength, intellect, or any fundamental changes to us as humans. For me, the really exciting and ethically sound applications of genetic engineering lie in the curing and preventing of various genetic diseases, even constructing cures for ones that have already taken hold. There is a vast expanse of positive medical applications for genetic engineering that don’t (just quite yet) involve accidentally creating a race of superhumans.