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When Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca premiered in 1997, the chances that society could adopt a genome-driven New World Order were still slim enough that audiences could enjoy his dystopian fantasy for what it was: a damn fine work of science fiction. But, in the eighteen years since the film’s release, the gene engineering tools — and their implications — that Niccol imagined have become reality or near-reality. In the golden age of genetic engineering, questions about “designer” babies begin with “when,” not “if.” The film is almost painfully uncomfortable to watch now because the scenario it posits is scientifically conceivable, albeit socially untenable and unlikely.
The real reason we’re scared of genetic engineering, as Gattaca attests, has more to do with our shortcomings than with the pursuit of perfection. In the age of CRISPR, when myopia can theoretically be edited out of a genome and Jude Law’s fair skin and blue eyes engineered in, genetic introspection can be a tough process. At the beginning of Gattaca, the camera pans over a couple in a car banging out offspring the old-fashioned way...
The real reason we’re scared of genetic engineering, as Gattaca attests, has more to do with our shortcomings than with the pursuit of perfection. In the age of CRISPR, when myopia can theoretically be edited out of a genome and Jude Law’s fair skin and blue eyes engineered in, genetic introspection can be a tough process. At the beginning of Gattaca, the camera pans over a couple in a car banging out offspring the old-fashioned way...