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Gattaca And The Short Story

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The film GATTACA and the short story, “Nine Lives,” exemplifies the ethics of altering human life at the genetic level, through techniques of genetic engineering. Throughout GATTACA, the ability to create improved, even superior forms of human life as a positive development through eugenics is shown as well as arousing questions about the moral implications of such engineering. The main protagonist in GATTACA, Vincent Freeman, battles with the discrimination of being an “invalid” in a world of “valids” and comes to realize that he is not an inferior being in the midst of an altered humanity. In “Nine Lives,” a lone survivor of the ten genetically engineered clones of John Chow struggle come to understand itself in relation to unaltered humanity and its individuality for the first time in its life. A dystopian society is produced when unaltered humans and genetically engineered beings coexist and interact with one another due to nefarious social practices such filtering menial jobs only to “invalids” in GATTACA and the emphasis in the value of clones and their worth to society as collective work group rather than focusing on each individual’s contribution to society. The film GATTACA exhibits the adverse nature of eugenics while “Nine Lives” stresses the importance of individualism instead of collectivism and fend off the need to be reliant on others to feel welcomed in society. GATTACA is well known for its use of eugenics in the film. The film is set in a “not too

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