A-Level Essay On Gattaca Movie For Free Use

The movie Gattaca is set up in the fictional not-too-distant future. The not-too-distant future is a society in which eugenics are the dictating ideology and genetic discrimination is real. The use of biometric based on the genetic database registry has helped create two categories of people; the ‘valids’ and the ‘invalids’. The ‘valids’ are those individual who are created based on the choices of the biometrics and are seen as actually being superior that the invalids who have been conceived by tradition la means and are regarded as having a higher likelihood of developing genetic disorders. Genetype profiling is significantly applied in identification of valids for purposes of quality employment with the invalids being subjected to those lower quality jobs. Vincent Freeman is conceived as an invalid and is regarded to have an estimated lifespan of just 30.2 years and the probability of many disorders. Vincent’s parents out of the frustration and regret decide to have their next child through genetic selection and this led to the birth of Anton; an invalid. Vincent and Anton grew together and they would regularly play a competitive game of ‘chicken where they would swim into the sea and he who returns first to the shore being labeled the loser. Vincent would lose all these games until the day that he challenged Anton to the game and beat him as well as carrying him back to the shore while he was drowning. It is on this day that Vincent left his home to pursue his dream career in space travel despite being reminded of his genotype inferiority. Vincent would then work at the Gattaca Aerospace Corporation for the menial jobs such as cleaning before he got the chance to pose an invalid using the urine, skin and hair samples of Jerome Eugene Morrow, a valid who has been paralyzed by an accident. Vincent successfully gets a job as a navigator for the trip to the moon of planet Saturn as he forges his way through despite the many challenges that he met including being implicated in a murder case after Vincent’s eyebrow was identified at the murder scene. It is a case that he was saved by Anton his brother who had already identified Vincent posing as an invalid and as an investigator, Anton closed the case file.
Genetic selection is becoming a reality in the contemporary society and poses a greater challenge in the future. The rapid adoption of genetic selection to retain desired genes in animals and plants as well as to eliminate those that are considered undesirable all but points to a case of appreciation of genotype selection and profiling which may in future extend to humans. There have been significant positives that can be associated with genetic selection with the possibilities of drought-resistant and disease-resistant plants having a positive impact on human life. Animals with high milk production such as cows have benefited humans. However, there are answered ethical issues that such selection poses to human kind and these have remained unanswered. A majority of these are in regard to the ethics of genetic discrimination and the classification of humans as superiors and inferiors. This could lead to a situation where some, the superiors generally based on their accumulation of power and wealth subject the other humans ‘inferiors’ to undesirable lifestyles, poor working conditions or payments and discriminatory provision of services and access to basic rights.
Having been made in 1997, the movie Gattaca could be regarded a fiction movie that has lived to oversee the accomplishment of the fictions that it had predicted. Today, genetic selection has become a reality and it is being applied widely as a case for selective abortion. Today,. A majority of parents are insisting on genetic selection to determine the health status of their child, their mental and cognitive capabilities before birth and thus utilize this as a justification for retaining a pregnancy or conducting what is widely being labeled as selective abortion. The case of recombinant DNA is fast gaining pace in animal and plant genetic engineering and the possibility of being applied in humans is rapidly gaining pace.