DNA and Pregnancy are a Reality in the Movie, Gattaca

We are living is a world where very soon it will be possible for people to create ‘designer babies’ that have all the features they wish for. In the article Building Baby from the Genes Up, Ronald M. Green talks about all the positive impacts that genetic modification of human beings can have on our future generations. Green acknowledges some of the negatives such as parents creating perfect children and being able to give them any trait the parent wants. However in the end he comes to the conclusion that the positive impacts of getting rid of genes that cause obesity, cancer, learning disorders, and many other diseases and disorders, outweighs the negative aspects. Richard Hayes, author of Genetically Modified Humans? No Thanks, takes the stance that we should not be able to change anything about human beings through genetic modification. He believes that once we start modifying a few features, it will slowly turn into every parent altering as many of their babies’ genes that they want. While he does acknowledge the positive impacts of getting rid of negative genes such as Tay-Sachs, he believes that it is not worth the risk of having parents manipulate all their future children’s genes to their liking. Green and Hayes stand on opposite sides of the debate about genetic modification of human beings and this essay will explore the similarities and the differences of their articles.

Parents have a responsibility to improve their children to the best of their abilities, and he claims that the ability to determine a child’s traits, would place a burden of responsibility on both the parents and the child for their genetic makeup, a crucially important choice which until now, has been left to a higher power to make.

Picture a young couple in a waiting room looking through a catalogue together. This catalogue is a little different from what you might expect. In this catalogue, specific traits for babies are being sold to couples to help them create the "perfect baby." This may seem like a bizarre scenario, but it may not be too far off in the future. Designing babies using genetic enhancement is an issue that is gaining more and more attention in the news. This controversial issue, once thought to be only possible in the realm of science-fiction, is causing people to discuss the moral issues surrounding genetic enhancement and germ line engineering. Though genetic research can prove beneficial to learning how to prevent hereditary

What if you could pick your child’s traits? Sounds like a fantasy doesn’t it? Well you might be wrong. Scientists around the world are working on Genetic Modifications in human beings. This allows a specialist to pick the strongest traits in an embryo and get rid of the bad ones. Imagine a world where there would be no cancer, no diabetes, no everything. A world with the strongest, fastest, and smartest human beings would be the outcome. I personally think this is a great idea for the advancement of the human race. I think it would be amazing to have my asthma taken away as an embryo. The positives outweigh the negative and Ronald Green agrees with me. In his article he includes Logos, an understanding tone, Satire, and Pathos.

Technology is developing every day. The automobile was revolutionary, and then they introduced the plane. Cell phones can connect us with people around the world. Self-driving cars are in development today! Revolutionary inventions are the expectation nowadays, but a new discovery is sparking controversial questions in the science world. Is it acceptable to alter a baby’s genes to make it a better human? Genes are the instruction book of the body, and they determine everyone’s attributes and how people act in their environment (Medical News Today). Some people say that everyone is different for a reason, and others think customizing the genes of children was meant to happen. Altering an infant’s genes is acceptable to prevent hereditary diseases, but the line should be drawn at making an artificially smarter, stronger, or prettier human.

Although this may be the case in many areas of people’s lives today, it is not always beneficial, or necessary. People may have trouble deciding whether messing with human genes and cells is ethical. Designing the “perfect child” in many parent’s eyes becomes a harsh question of reality. The concept of a parent’s unconditional love for their child is questioned because of the desire to make their child perfect. If genetically engineering humans becomes a dominant medical option, people could have the chance to create their child however they like: from physical appearances, genetically enhanced genes, and the possibility to decide what a child thinks and acts, parents have access to designing their entire child. Naturally, people could be creating a super-human. Issues between different races, and eventually creating new prejudices against genetically engineered humans may increase. People may not realize how expensive genetic screening is at first. With only the rich being able to “enhance” their children, another social issue might occur, giving the world another type of people to outcast.

Gattaca, a Classic example of Nature vs Nurture, but in this example a miracle happened where Nurture won, because in the reality of case studies, Nature often being the side that wins. Gattaca was a great Sci-Fi Thriller movie at it’s era. It tells us about how dream of life that comes with a trial, that You must test and polish yourself in order to face the great challenges of life. Transcend the realm of life and death, and then you will be able to make your way calmly and safely through any crisis that confronts you (Ueshiba, 1992).

In Improvements in Prenatal Genetic Testing Raise Ethnic Issues, R. J. Crayton produced an article about prenatal testing and whether or not parents should be allowed to have these tests done. First the situation of a high risk baby who will have a disability or defect after birth, so the parents decide to abort the child is being viewed as an inequality to the disabled community. Secondly, certain adoptions are put on hold since the biological parents chose to not carry the unborn child through the entire pregnancy, however, the surrogate mother wants to carry the child through the entire term. Lastly, research shows that the results can be a false positive, so unintentionally the parents decide not to keep the unknown, but healthy baby.

The last 150 years have seen the origin of—and rapid expansion in—human knowledge involving the nature and mechanisms of trait and disease inheritance in human beings. Advances in genetic research hold great promise for the future development of effective prevention and treatment strategies for a great many, often devastating, heritable conditions. However, these advances also raise a series of policy, legal and fundamentally ethical questions concerning what we should and should not do with the knowledge and technology we acquire. These questions are numerous and both imminently practical and speculative, ranging from the exhausted, yet still largely unresolved, question of the moral status of the human embryo to fears about slippery slopes into a Brave New World or Gattaca-style dystopic future characterized by designer children and a genetic underclass.

Gattaca is an imaginary movie that was released in 1997 about the not-so-distant future involving a dystopic world with genetically engineered humans and technologically reinforced discrimination. It is about a world that no longer discriminates against one’s gender, class or religion but on one’s genes instead. The movie acts as a cautionary tale about the extremes in technology and genetic engineering through its powerful visuals. A world attempting to create utopia by genetically enhancing reproduction does not leave much to an otherwise natural process, and this can ultimately lead to more destruction than perfection.

Science is now able to better improve human health and safety thanks to the advanced modern technology and medicine that are available. Yet with today's technology being implemented into science comes the questions of human morality, or bioethics. One of the bioethics debates is on the coined term “Designer babies”; on if or where society should draw the line on genetically altering our children before they are born. With the technology able to stop hereditary diseases, the scientific development’s are able to change the child’s “eye color, hair color, social intelligence, right down to whether or not your child would have a widow’s peak” before the child is born. From the options on choosing whether or not your child will look or act a certain

While the previous ethical dilemma is more cut and dry, Sandel also grapples with the morality of futuristic technology that can engineer children to be a product of their parents’ will. Sandel mentions the Gattaca scenario, of a society that can remove any malignant gene from an embryo, creating perfectly healthy children with greater potential physically and mentally. Gattaca focuses on ethical issues such as the polarization of society between the genetically enhanced and the naturally normal, and the value of human individuality; however, Sandel chooses to focus on the morality of engineered progeny in terms of personal relationships (Philosophical Films, 1997). Sandel suggests that parent creating children exactly how they want them to be is immoral because it turns children into an object of man’s will, rather than a gift of life. If a child turned out exactly how a parent wanted it to, the experience of raising a child would be irrevocably altered. Normally parents have children with inevitable shortcomings, but this is good for two reasons; it teaches the parents humility and unconditional love for their child no matter what shortcomings they have, and it emphasizes the talents the child may have, allowing parents to appreciate the natural gifts and talents that the child is endowed with. If a parent engineers the perfect child, they never develop empathy for their child and unconditional love in undermined. If the child is perfect in all aspects,

The birth of a child is supposed to be a time of joy, the uncertainty of life leads to this one point in time. Will she or he be the next president, a star athlete, a genius or just fall into the crowd as another citizen. With recent advancements in science, this uncertainty has become a thing of the past. The human being is now seen as a commodity and no more is valued in the uncertainty of individuality. The parent can now choose how they want their child to come out or develop into. Sandel’s book The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Case of Modern Eugenics is a well researched look into examples of modern eugenics and the problems that arise from it. These topics range from the ethics of cloning, athletes using performance enhancing drugs, and other practical uses in everyday life. Sandel’s argument is that there is value in human nature (even with all its flaws), and genetic engineering will forever change human nature. Destroying the very essence of what it is to be human and scarring humanity. The main features of human nature that will be altered: are responsibility, humility and solidarity.

It is a series of genes alongside the strong influence of external factors such as the environment. Nonetheless, technology and science continued to move in the direction of designer babies. Those who support human genetic engineering claim that the science is meant to prevent diseases and encourage more healthy births. They compared the use of gene therapy to prevent genetic diseases to medicine which helps cure it. Professor Lee Silver at Princeton University said, “Some people say we should not go against nature, but that’s illogical because every time we cure a disease we go against nature” (Schicholr, Simonet, and Canano, 2012). The pregnant women from the ABC NEWS study thought picking the traits of a child takes away the surprise. However, other felt different. Supporters claimed that the selection of a child’s genetic pool could be beneficial because parents get to choose how they want their children to be. There will be no surprises and no disappointments. They create the child who they imagine it would be, leading to their perfect family (Resnik, 2012). Everyone wants to be smarter, be more athletic, or better looking and if technology can design babies in such a way then everyone should want genetic engineering as stated by scientist Joe Tsien (Annas).

Parents today enroll their children in the best possible schools and will do anything to make sure their children look up to standards. Possibly in a few decades parents would be able to choose from a plethora of traits: hair color, eye color, bigger muscles and so on that their children could obtain. Maybe they'd like to add a few inches to a child's height. Or improve their kid's chances at longevity by tweaking inherited DNA. Planning the child’s genetic future could really give him/her a head start in life.