Ethical Issues Complicated In The Film 'Gattaca'

I watched the 1997 film, Gattaca, which had a running time of 1 hour 46 minutes. The film is set in the not too distant future when parents have moved from having “God -children”, that is babies born naturally with no interference from science, to having babies that are genetically engineered for specific traits, or for lower or zero probability for genetic diseases or dispositions. The protagonist of the film, Vincent, was a God-child and thus genetically inferior. A blood test taken at birth determined that he would probably not live past thirty due to the 99% probability that he would have a serious heart problem. This put Vincent at a disadvantage socially and led to his parents genetically engineering their second son, Anton, who was physically superior in every way to his brother. However, Vincent was intelligent, intrinsically motivated, and had dreams of becoming an astronaut in the Gattaca space program. He continued to study science and physics in his free time, even though he realized that his dream was unattainable as the genetic testing that constituted an interview would immediately rule him out as a candidate. Vincent’s …show more content…
Firstly, the main ethical issue concerning the morality of genetically engineering human beings and whether we should interfere with nature to such an extent? One of the ethical issues tied to genetically engineered humans is fictionally referred to in the movie as “genoism”, the discrimination resulting from differences in an individual’s genome. Your worth as a human being is tied directly to your genetic superiority; as the film points out, you are either “valid” or “in-valid.” Although this film was made almost twenty years ago, there is one parallel I noticed that comes about as a result of the successful mapping of human genes by the Human Genome Project. Currently, this information is being used to carry out genetic testing to determine your predisposition