Gattaca and Biotechnology

Biotechnology can be a very good thing, but there ris the potenital of taking it too far. In the movie "Gattaca" the capabilities of biotechnology were taken too far. In this movie parents can choose exactly what their child will be like down to their looks, talents and physical abilities. In this new way of life nothing is left to chance anything and everything can be genetically altered. Although this has its benefitssuch as eliminating diseases, heart defects, and premature balding, it is not a good thing overall.

The biotechnology in this move is extremely advanced. There day in which biotechnology could be used to eliminate diesease in children would be amazing. However, the extreme genetic alterations could lead to discrimination as shown in the movie. Your genetic make up should not define you as a person, it should not eliminate job opportunites or seperate you from the rest of society. The idea of such specified ways of reproduction is beyond ridiculous and just unnecessary.  Childbirth is a game of chance that has been around for millions of year, you should not be able to pick and choose exactly what your child should be like, its just weird.

Discrimination based off of your genetic make up, sound crazy right? Well in this movie this actually happens. The main character, Vincent, is born with a heart defect and isn't even supposed to live to be very old. However, Vincent wants to go to the moon, he wants to go up into space. But Vincent has a heart defect, so he is proclaimed an "invalid" and the only jobs available to him are janitorial. The good jobs belong to the "valids" the ones who had everythting about their genetics picked out before they were even born. Job discrimination due to the work of biotechnology was one of the negative impacts shown in this movie. Another negative thing was shown with Vincent's relationship with a woman at Gattaca. She was technically an invalid, and he was posing as a valid so when they got together she gave him a hair off of her head. The hair was so that he could check and see if anything was wrong with her... you know being an valid obviously just makes you that much more superior than anyone  who isn't. That in itself is ridiculous, you shouldn't have to worry about testing the DNA of the person you are considering dating. Relationships don't work like that. The biotechnologoy really just changed the way of life for every day people in this movie.

Another big issue with the biotechnoloyg's capability to change everything about people is that the "valids" were all capable of living long lives, and were very healthy. If everyone is healthy, and everyone is destined to live a long life, where are they all going to go? We would over populate like the deer population. There would be no room for any of us to live comfortably. This is yet another negative impact of genetic altering. Although the idea is a good one, there is just too great of a possibiltiy that we will take it too far and the negative impoacts will out weight the few good ones. If we would learn how to limit ourselves and just use it to eliminate disease that would be great, but we are humans why would we even consider stopping if we can just keep accomplishing more?