blog 10: Gattica

Those words from the essay The Man on the Moon by George J. Annas is definitely true when compared to the movie Gattaca. In the world of Gattaca if you weren’t bred genetically to certain exact specifications you were considered the outsider. While yes you would be able to be without issues or complications thanks in large part to the alterations, this type of person would create a new discrimination. As it was shown in the movie the main character was very well qualified for the position he wanted and was deemed a risk just because he wasn’t altered when he was conceived. The same applied to the holocaust, if you weren’t of the right religion or race you were thought of as the enemy and dangerous. This was the only justification for the mass murdering they did on the Jews. While the newly engineered humans were thought of as perfect they too did have flaws that were showcased in the film. For one the director of the space program was the murderer and according to his DNA he was incapable of committing such a crime. Another example was the man who gave his identity up after he was no longer invincible and got into an accident. This accident we found out later was intentional because he came in second place at a swimming event even thought his DNA code was meant for him to finish in the top spot most of the time. In my personal opinion I don’t think that doing stuff this extreme is good for the human race, while it would be nice to be able to detect and try and get rid of certain diseases so that we could live a better life after birth it’s like you’re playing god and that’s never a good thing. It could work the other way because as you could see in the movie the genetically engineered people were very much envied by the regular humans and that can cause a lot of friction towards them.