Gattaca And The Ethics Of Genetic Engineering

The doctor in Gattaca sounds strikingly similar to the voice of an Oxford professor in an article by Aleyne who, “. . . said that creating so-called designer babies could be considered a “moral obligation” as it makes them grow up into “ethically better children.”” Savulescu states that, “Whether we like it or not, the future of humanity is in our hands now. Rather than fearing genetics, we should embrace it. We can do better than chance.”” While it is true that human genome editing has the potential to eliminate genetic diseases from a family’s germ line once and for all, riding a population’s susceptibility to cancer, diabetes, alcoholism, and so on, the problem though is that there are many dangers connected with this type of technology. Despite what Oxford professor Savulescu says, there could be unintended and unexpected consequences, and this poses a great potential to fundamentally changing who we are as a human race. Perhaps we won’t understand that a gene that causes a disease we are trying to eliminate also carries a protection against another disease not yet on our radar. There’s even the possibility of getting into …show more content…
Humans are more complex than what genetic determinism can predict, one’s genes can predict the probability of a man’s predisposition. But how the individual employs those mechanisms is a matter of pure willpower. In the brother’s last moonlight swim race, Anton begins to tire and yells out to his brother who continues swimming, “How are you doing this, Vincent? How have you done any of this?” Vincent replies back eerily calm, “You wanted to know how I did it. That’s how I did it, Anton. I never saved anything for the swim back.” Despite the story of his life that his DNA predicted for him, Vincent overcame that obstacle through the power of the human dream, through his willingness to