Gattaca - Hollywood Gets It Exactly Right

Re:Gattaca - Hollywood Gets It Exactly Right by hvs on Tuesday September 01, 2009 @07:12AM (#797766)

Gattaca is a great movie -- one of my favorites -- but genetics is not predestination. The environment plays a huge role in the development of children and many diseases are not genetic in nature at all. Many other diseases and conditions are a combination of genetics and environment.

Are we in danger of creating a society of a "genetic upper class"? Sure, as long as there are people willing to buy into the idea that genetics determines our future there will be people that want to exploit that for their own personal gain. But that is why it will continue to be our duty to defend the dignity of human beings and use science to improve the lot of all of us, not to exclude some in favor of others based on some pseudo-scientific eugenicist fantasy.

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Re:Gattaca - Hollywood Gets It Exactly Right by jacquesm on Tuesday September 01, 2009 @07:53AM (#797825)

You are very right, but the fact of the matter is that money will probably be the deciding factor in who gets access to this kind of technology and who does not.

It's not as though our current status of 'defending' the rights of the people in tight spots on this planet gives us much hope that in the future we will suddenly become a completely different race in this respect. History is littered with the corpses of those who were taken advantage of, I fail to see how the future will somehow be magically different.

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Re:Gattaca - Hollywood Gets It Exactly Right by hvs on Tuesday September 01, 2009 @08:17AM (#797859)

History also shows that people are often willing to stand up to great evil and oppose it. I don't disagree that humans have been pretty awful in the past and will continue to be in the future. We are not on some Hegelian march towards a preordained future. The decisions we make will decide whether we live in a good society or a dystopia.

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Re:Gattaca - Hollywood Gets It Exactly Right by run4yourlives on Tuesday September 01, 2009 @08:01AM (#797840)

One cannot simply focus on the corpses without also seeing the wars that caused them.

I would hope that there are a noble few that choose to stand up to such a development.

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Re:Gattaca - Hollywood Gets It Exactly Right by cousin_it on Tuesday September 01, 2009 @08:06AM (#797845)

Well, what if genetics were predestination? Would it be okay to judge/exclude somebody based on Minority Report-type information about them, as opposed to Gattaca-type information? Is there a difference? I wonder what people here think.

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