8 ms·

Gattaca set the field of biotech back by decades. Countless hours have been wasted pointing to the movie for why we should not go down the slippery slope of gen

Gattaca set the field of biotech back by decades. Countless hours have been wasted pointing to the movie for why we should not go down the slippery slope of genetic choice. Cool movie though, that's part of the problem. "If the audience is supposed to accept that genetic determinism is true in Gattaca, then no amount of Vincent's hard work should make Vincent a hero. He's just a fraud. If the audience is not supposed to believe that in the world of Gattaca genetic determinism is true (that is, it's false), then it should be interpreted as a story of discrimination, and a story of the underdog's heroic hard work overcoming the negative effects of a corrupt, wrong, erroneously-discriminating society." from http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/Gattaca.pdf http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/Gattaca.pdf & https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32386006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32386006 Besides, Vincent could just purchase a ticket for a rocket ride instead....

brmgb 4y ago
Or as I like to put it Gattaca put the spotlight on research which had been treading the line of ethics for a decade with a dangerous lack of supervision and helped convince people that putting the brakes on it was welcome. That’s fiction playing its role.
- kanzure 4y ago
  yeah let's hope parents don't get to choose a better life for their kids, watch out?
  - NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
    Well, the problem we deal with today is that parents--actually medical professionals--choose death for children rather than allow them to live out their lives. Zero children with Down Syndrome are born in Iceland. Why? Because physicians would rather end their lives as soon as they find out that they "suffer" from the condition. I placed "suffer" in quotes, because many of us are quite aware that people with Down Syndrome don't suffer any more or less than the rest of us with a medical condition, and many of them lead happy and productive lives for a relatively long time. But if the physicians, or the parents, can just head off that predicted suffering within a 9-month time frame, nobody has to suffer at all (beyond one little procedure.) Sometimes I wonder who would suffer more, a child born with Down, or overly-entitled parents who will always wish their baby wasn't so... imperfect.
    - skeeter2020 4y ago
      I don't particularly agree with your comment but it does point out another aspect of the movie's genius: it presents the scenario, makes us think and suggests some conclusions but doesn't beat us over the head with moral lessons. In other words, it treats the viewer like an adult.
    - skybrian 4y ago
      I think there's some status quo bias here? Seems like if Down's Syndrome didn't exist, someone who invented it and caused children to born with it would be considered a monster?
readams 4y ago
I don't think that's at all what you should get out of Gattaca on discrimination. Rather, even in a world where you have people who are statistically overwhelmingly likely to be better in every way, the morally right thing to do is _still_ to allow people the same opportunities to excel, and succeed or fail on their merits.
- kanzure 4y ago
  Bingo. It's mostly a story about discrimination. Unfortunately it is mistakenly used as a cautionary tale to slow down or prevent progress on genetics.
- chii 4y ago
  > the morally right thing to do is _still_ to allow people the same opportunities to excel, and succeed or fail on their merits. let me play devils' advocate for a minute: should the cutting edge of human endeavour (in the case of the movie, it's going to space) be available to all and sundry, even tho statistically the superior humans would do better and thus achieve the goals of said endeavour? If it costs the equivalent of billions or even trillions of dollars, would you make the choice to allow equal opportunity to all, at the cost of potential mission failure, rather than discriminate heavily and only allow those considered perfect? I agree that discrimination is usually bad. But is it really discrimination, or is it competition, to only allow those that would be statistically overwhelmingly likely to be better to do the thing?
chordalkeyboard 4y ago
> Therefore the statistical estimates issued by genetic experts have to be true; otherwise, there is simply no story to tell. (from your first link) The movie obliquely addresses this when Vincent experiences a non-fatal heart attack on the treadmill. The scientific predictions are not infallible but some people seem to have forgotten that.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
imtringued 4y ago
Is this a joke? It is just some science fiction movie and not a particularly good one. It is just that it was the first movie for many people that involved genetic engineering. The actual impacts of the engineering was to pass a gene scanner test. In no way did the depicted society actually depend on this genetic engineering.
- kanzure 4y ago
  I wish it was a joke: "Biomedical ethicist Ronald Michael Green reports that Gattaca 'lives on in bioethics classrooms around the country as the epitome of what is bad about human gene interventions' [...] Like Brave New World before it, Gattaca has become a rhetorical resource for public debates about biotechnological futures (Lynch, 2019, p. 34; Von Burg, 2010, p. 4), with allusions to it frequently deployed as a commonplace for the unethical consequences of human genetic manipulation. But what if this is wrong?" from https://www.redalyc.org/journal/5117/511769287029/html/ https://www.redalyc.org/journal/5117/511769287029/html/

brmgb 4y ago

Or as I like to put it Gattaca put the spotlight on research which had been treading the line of ethics for a decade with a dangerous lack of supervision and helped convince people that putting the brakes on it was welcome. That’s fiction playing its role.

kanzure 4y ago
yeah let's hope parents don't get to choose a better life for their kids, watch out?
- NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
  Well, the problem we deal with today is that parents--actually medical professionals--choose death for children rather than allow them to live out their lives. Zero children with Down Syndrome are born in Iceland. Why? Because physicians would rather end their lives as soon as they find out that they "suffer" from the condition. I placed "suffer" in quotes, because many of us are quite aware that people with Down Syndrome don't suffer any more or less than the rest of us with a medical condition, and many of them lead happy and productive lives for a relatively long time. But if the physicians, or the parents, can just head off that predicted suffering within a 9-month time frame, nobody has to suffer at all (beyond one little procedure.) Sometimes I wonder who would suffer more, a child born with Down, or overly-entitled parents who will always wish their baby wasn't so... imperfect.
  - skeeter2020 4y ago
    I don't particularly agree with your comment but it does point out another aspect of the movie's genius: it presents the scenario, makes us think and suggests some conclusions but doesn't beat us over the head with moral lessons. In other words, it treats the viewer like an adult.
  - skybrian 4y ago
    I think there's some status quo bias here? Seems like if Down's Syndrome didn't exist, someone who invented it and caused children to born with it would be considered a monster?

readams 4y ago

I don't think that's at all what you should get out of Gattaca on discrimination. Rather, even in a world where you have people who are statistically overwhelmingly likely to be better in every way, the morally right thing to do is _still_ to allow people the same opportunities to excel, and succeed or fail on their merits.

kanzure 4y ago
Bingo. It's mostly a story about discrimination. Unfortunately it is mistakenly used as a cautionary tale to slow down or prevent progress on genetics.
chii 4y ago
> the morally right thing to do is _still_ to allow people the same opportunities to excel, and succeed or fail on their merits. let me play devils' advocate for a minute: should the cutting edge of human endeavour (in the case of the movie, it's going to space) be available to all and sundry, even tho statistically the superior humans would do better and thus achieve the goals of said endeavour? If it costs the equivalent of billions or even trillions of dollars, would you make the choice to allow equal opportunity to all, at the cost of potential mission failure, rather than discriminate heavily and only allow those considered perfect? I agree that discrimination is usually bad. But is it really discrimination, or is it competition, to only allow those that would be statistically overwhelmingly likely to be better to do the thing?

chordalkeyboard 4y ago

> Therefore the statistical estimates issued by genetic experts have to be true; otherwise, there is simply no story to tell. (from your first link) The movie obliquely addresses this when Vincent experiences a non-fatal heart attack on the treadmill. The scientific predictions are not infallible but some people seem to have forgotten that.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

imtringued 4y ago

Is this a joke? It is just some science fiction movie and not a particularly good one. It is just that it was the first movie for many people that involved genetic engineering. The actual impacts of the engineering was to pass a gene scanner test. In no way did the depicted society actually depend on this genetic engineering.

kanzure 4y ago
I wish it was a joke: "Biomedical ethicist Ronald Michael Green reports that Gattaca 'lives on in bioethics classrooms around the country as the epitome of what is bad about human gene interventions' [...] Like Brave New World before it, Gattaca has become a rhetorical resource for public debates about biotechnological futures (Lynch, 2019, p. 34; Von Burg, 2010, p. 4), with allusions to it frequently deployed as a commonplace for the unethical consequences of human genetic manipulation. But what if this is wrong?" from https://www.redalyc.org/journal/5117/511769287029/html/ https://www.redalyc.org/journal/5117/511769287029/html/