Genetic Engineering In The Movies |
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| Introduction Genetic Engineering In the Movies Cloning Through the Ages?! |
Gattaca: Beyond Total Control "There is no gene for the human spirit." (Tagline for Gattaca.) Unlike Multiplicity or Jurassic Park, Gattaca is set in the distant future, not the "here and now." Therefore it is a lot harder to put in a "realistic" perspective. In Gattaca all "normal children" are genetically engineered so that they have high intelligence and live long, healthy lives. "Love children," known as "in-valids," those conceived naturally without any genetic manipulation, are doomed to lives filled with dead-end jobs. In reality, at the dawn of a new millenium, scientists have yet to determine how intelligence is formed. Genes can only do so much, the rest depends on the child’s environment as it grows and develops. So "designing a child" can only affect the child up to a point – the rest is unpredictable. A job interview consists of the applicant putting their thumb on a scan pad. Their genetic material is scanned and compared to the other applicants, and from that a final person is chosen. Again, a reality check forces the question: can you tell someone’s work ethics by skin cells? Its seems highly unlikely. We are much more than our genes. The largely unpredictable way the environment influences our moral development, at least at our present level of understanding, would make keep this part of the plot permenant fiction. The world in Gattaca is completely dependent on computers, to the point where common sense is ignored. When the police were searching for an in-valid who got onto a space crew, they took blood samples rather than getting a picture of the in-valid and comparing it to the space crew. This kind of thinking it what suddenly makes the world of Gattaca seem highly unlikely. For all of our dependence on computers and testing, there is always the worry that something will go wrong, whether it be a system crash or a mix-up at the laboratory. Even if our level of technology does advance to that of Gattaca, it will take a long time before the general public can be convinced to adopt it.
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