Huh. I always thought Gattaca was a commentary on what we <i>already</i> have. It seemed to me an allegory about poor minorities making it into the rich upper class.<p>The genetically engineered angle seemed like a small plot device, not a central feature. If we take health and wealth of the typical first worlder and compare it with that of the average third worlder, it already looks pretty Gattaca to me.
<i>Despite laws meant to prevent genetic discrimination, the world of Gattaca is a highly stratified one with two distinct classes: the valids—who have the right genes, the most prestigious jobs and the highest quality of life—and the in-valids, who were conceived in the typical fashion and are relegated to menial work and relative poverty. Eugenics also risks creating a genetically homogenous population that is far more vulnerable to disease and freak deleterious mutations than a diverse one.</i><p>Isn't their significant evidence that more diverse gene pools, even unexpected combinations of genes are usually more adapted in several ways, because of heterosis [0]. It seems foolish that this one new factor would make eugenics any more successful than its last phase of popular. Not to mention it the deeply-held 'moral repugnance'[1] aspect.<p>[0] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis</a><p>[1] <a href="http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/2624677/Roth_Repugnance.pdf?sequence=6" rel="nofollow">http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/2624677/Roth_Repu...</a>
Yes, I think it will happen. There is a market for this stuff, and, in time, when and why to say N-O will become less and less obvious.<p>There are problems with genetic selection. But I think the larger problem will be the personal toll of new found ways of negatively assessing ourselves, and pointlessly diagnosing our inevitable sundry personal weaknesses as medical syndromes.
I know this might sound bad but I actually think the reality portrayed in Gattaca is not that bad. I mean, if you put aside the discrimination faced by that part of the population born the natural way, you have a society where almost everyone is healthy and will live longer than previously possible, and is of great contribution to the community. I think that's our future and it doesn't scare me that much, what actually scares me are the endless genetic mutations that result in a wide array of tumors and untreatable diseases.
Forget the custom-baby angle, did anyone catch this little nugget?<p>" Their tests cannot recognize every possible shade, but they are specific enough to distinguish between brown, blue and mottled brown-blue eyes, as well as brown, black, blonde and red hair. Such studies are intended to help solve crimes, but clinicians at fertility clinics could easily adapt the strategies for PGD. "<p>Sounds like a lot sooner (now?) law enforcement will be able to determine a lot more about a potential suspect with just DNA. Or am I not reading that correctly?
The 'science' in Gattaca is just an excuse for segregating human beings based on some arbitrary criteria. As others have pointed out this is nothing new.<p>What is extremely irritating is that people actually think that genetics works the way it is portrayed in the film. This is patently false. Yes, some portion of what an organism is is determined by the primary sequence of its DNA. It turns out that the contribution of primary sequence alone is quite small. Look at all the naive genome wide association data sets that have revealed that primary DNA sequences are in most cases very poor predictors of phenotype. This should't be surprising to anyone who has even a cursory understanding of evolution and the interaction between ecology and development. Yes, this is classic nurture vs nature stuff.<p>The fact that people want to claim that science could actually give us a universal, deterministic and predictive answer about the future should quickly alert us that the principles on which they are basing their predictions is not science and not predictive, but instead an ideology based on prejudice rather than evidence.
I wonder if say 50 years from now, we'll be like those religious conservatives who don't want to let women do whatever they want with their bodies (mainly talking about abortion here).<p>Will we also be the ones demanding that the new generations have <i>no right</i> to design their children, while they'd argue that we should just "mind our own business" and that it's not government's place to decide how to effectively "create" <i>their</i> own children.<p>I think this century will see a lot of interesting changes, and not just technological, but also societal. Can we design our own children? Can we marry robots? Can we change our gender? Should the government be able to monitor our thoughts to protect us from terrorism? Will we still have the nonsense "war on terror" even 50 years from now, or will we end all "war on abstracts" by then, just like we are about to end the war on drugs?<p>A lot of new questions will need a lot of new answers as new technologies start making all sorts of new things possible.
<i>> If the past is irrelevant, then we are equally irrelevant to the people living in 2113. They don’t care what we think about morality, public policy, fashion, economics, or anything else. It doesn’t matter what we “decide” about designer babies or anything else. It’s their world. They will view us with contempt. Or with pity. Get used to it.</i><p><a href="http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=24266" rel="nofollow">http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=24266</a>
Culture and life (what you eat, how you exercise, how you live) weights more than genetics, unless you get visibly impaired by some genetic problem. For the by far big majority of people those are the factors that should be taken into account, not the base material, but how you grow up, what you learn, how you are.<p>Of course, if you have enough money to genetically design your children, probably have enough money to feed and raise them right, give them access to the best education, and probably have time to be with them, and is that what will make the difference, not so much to have the best of the best genes. But even without the designer genes, nor growing in a rich family normal people still have the potential to be great in whatever they do.<p>But is not designing the problem, is being discrimined later by people with access to your genetic info (something not very private as we leave traces of it everywhere), if that impairs your access to education or work, that will affect what you are too. Just labeling those that discriminate based on genetics as aryan race fans could put those practices in a negative enough light to avoid it to spread.
One reason why it might _not_ happen - lack of demand. Clearly I have a very small sample so it's merely an anecdote, but I haven't met anybody that wants this for themselves, even if they think other people will want it.<p>I know some people will want it, but it would need to be near universal for something like Gattaca to become reality.
The eye-color part of the article must not be factually correct, unless there have been some very recent developments in understanding genetic influence on eye color. Craig Venter, the first human being to have his genome sequenced, pointed out in interviews[1] that even after the sequencing, no one could tell for sure from the sequence that he has blue eyes. Just in the last day, an article following up on last week's American Society of Human Genetics conference[2] pointed out that genetic studies have continually overpromised and underdelivered, and there are still many very basic issues of human genetics that are embedded in deep uncertainty.<p>As the article kindly submitted here points out, people are already demanding designer babies. They used to try to get those by looking for sperm donations from the Nobel laureate sperm bank,[3] but that project had disappointing results, and the sperm bank is no longer in operation.<p>Researchers on human genetics I know locally (who analyze the data from the Minnesota Twin Families Study) use a photograph of two identical (monozygotic) twins from Germany[4] (from a different source, I think the original medical journal source, rather than the blog I link to here) to show that although genes are certainly very influential on human development, environment, including differing choices of lifestyle, matters too.<p>[1] <a href="http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2007/09/11/craig-venter-discusses-his-genome" rel="nofollow">http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2007/09/11/cra...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_genome/2013/10/human_genetics_successes_and_failures_ashg_stories_of_disease_genes.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_genom...</a><p>[3] <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4700156" rel="nofollow">http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4700156</a><p>[4] <a href="http://thesameffect.com/check-out-identical-twins-otto-and-ewald/" rel="nofollow">http://thesameffect.com/check-out-identical-twins-otto-and-e...</a>
vaguely related - i recently read margaret atwood's <i>oryx and crake</i>, which is another dystopian biotech future, and i rather enjoyed it. she's pretty cynical (and quite amusing at times) and while you can pick holes in many of her arguments the overall jaundiced view of stupid selfish humans screwing themselves over is pretty convincing.<p>(weirdly, some of what she predicted - about 10 years ago now - seems to be coming more true in software. you can't help but think of google when you read descriptions of the biotech corporations, with their compounds designed to isolate superior employees ;o).