The great thing about Gattaca is that the cinematography ages incredibly well on top of the amazing plot.
A lot of great sci-fi is marred by cheap effects that look incredibly dated only a decade later. Gattaca chose to focus on the story and create a minimalist future environment that still looks beautiful 25 years later.
I though about this movie a lot going through IVF with my wife. Particularly when selecting the embryo to implant. For those that don’t know:
With IVF, the doctor harvests as many eggs from the woman as possible. Then after taking the make sample and cleaning, selecting the semen with best modality , fertilize each embryo. Then let the embryo grow for a couple of days then freeze the embryo until it’s ready to be implanted (likely during the woman’s next cycle). If you choose, and generally for a fee, you can have each embryo tested for chromosome mutations.
After the process your doctor will call you and let you know how many eggs were harvested and how many were fertilized. They can then give you a report card for the embryos that represent likelihood of live birth, chromosome evaluation, male/female etc.
You then make a selection of which embryo (s) to insert.
Obviously, given the expense of IVF it’s hard to imagine a scenario of not telling the doctor to pick the highest rated (male or female) embryo just for best chance of success.
Felt very reminiscent of gattaca. And that was just selecting the best that we produced. I can easily see myself saying yes to “The best embryo you have had a chromosome defect that will likely result in condition X, but we can fix the defect with a small gene modification, and give the child the best chance for a healthy life, should we modify the embryo?”
And then the slippery slope, “we can also improve the odds of higher intellect, being taller , thinner, etc”.
Eugenism is inevitable. You can't stop parents trying to get the best life for their children, that's pretty much their top priority. We don't like to frame it that way but we are already there with pre-natal tests. Even the selection of mating partner is a form of eugenics. College graduates only marrying college graduates, repeat that for many generations and it is bound to have an effect.
One of the major problems with eugenics highlighted in Gattaca is that it was used to artificially pre-select who was allowed to compete and who wasn't.
> "Even the selection of mating partner is a form of eugenics."
Only when the selection is done by those who aren't the two partners (e.g. arranged marriages, theoretically rape in the absence of abortion). Otherwise it's natural selection between partners - there's no guarantee the aspects two people find attractive in each other are genetically heritable.
> "College graduates only marrying college graduates, repeat that for many generations and it is bound to have an effect."
Assortative mating per se isn't necessarily eugenics. It takes an instruction from the outside on what mating partners should consider attractive in a potential mate. Without this instruction people will find a variety of differing, and even mutually exclusive, traits attractive, and will assort on these variety of traits, not on a hierarchy of traits.
"Eugenicists realized that assortative mating did not always produce the best offspring, so sought ways to popularize what they considered to be good marriages. Francis Galton urged the brightest and the healthiest individuals to marry each other. He found an ideal situation in German university professors <emphasis mine> (then all male) who tended to marry the daughters of professors or their female graduate students <emphasis mine>. This positive expression of eugenics encouraged the selection of good mates through popular health books and Fitter Families Contests held at state fairs. The training of field workers at the Eugenics Record Office included exercises to help them analyze mate preferences and make better eugenic choices."
When people talk about eugenics, they're usually talking about forced sterilization of people. If "selecting better genes fir offspring" is categorized as eugenics, then animals and humans alike have been practicing eugenics for millions or even billions of years. Sexual attraction is all about selecting the fittest mate that provides the best genes for one's offspring. For more complex species there more to it: mates may be selected based on likelihood of investing resources in offspring. But selecting good genes is a big part of sexual attraction.
> College graduates only marrying college graduates, repeat that for many generations and it is bound to have an effect.
I think there's enough infidelity around to cancel out this effect. You have around a million n*great grandparents at n=20. How many of those are likely fathered by "somebody else"? And that's just at n=20; evolution runs much slower than that. Even with perfect class-based marriage, good genes have inevitably worked their way across the social ladder through infidelity by now. "Bad" inbred lines only exist as lines; when measuring the total effect, illegitimate children need to be included, but of course they are invisible.
I don't think it's inevitable. If anything, eugenics has been disproven on many levels as a viable model. You can't infer the future from just a set of genes and trying to simulate their expression as there's just too many unknowns in our environment which leave doubt to the probable outcomes of any organism, human or otherwise. The key issue with Eugenics is its belief in a clockwork view of genetics which today has been disproven in the last 30 years. Life ain't a clockwork, it's a chaotic system.
In the future the state will collect sperm and eggs from all citizens, and implant random embryos into women who want children. Natural conception will be shunned like arranged marriages today.
They can try, but over time reversion to the mean wipes it away. Inevitably the family will not produce the smartest or best looking or whatever other quality they have selected for.
I keep thinking about eugenics, how can we have eugenics without resorting to genocide or ending up with a dystopia, like in Gattaca? Should we even strive to get eugenics, why bother? Where does diversity become detrimental to success for an individual? The clone of a perfect individual will always perform better than the peers, except when we need adaptation and flexibility. Will we get to a society where just some parents agree to alter the genes of their offspring like in Gattaca, for some very niche job opportunities? What happens when it goes wrong, can the child sue the parent?
Eugenics is a comforting story the middle classes tell themselves feel better about being ruled by liars and swindlers. If you want the best life for your children teach them to be selectively sociopathic without a shred of decency. One day they can be the next Obama or Trump. Or Gates. Or Musk.
One thing I don't understand about the movie, even after reading the screenplay etc. is why does Vincent claim the doctors knew the exact time of his death just seconds after he was born? They clearly don't and can't, given the entire rest of the movie. Are the doctors just reading out the exact middle of the probability distribution (or the time with the absolute highest probability), to way more precision than actually makes sense? On another note, I'm not sure the probability curve would actually only have one peak in Vincent's case, one peak from his heart condition and another from old age would make sense. The doctors/his parents should have explained the nature of the probability distribution in much more detail.
That part of the movie actually makes perfect sense to me.
In the real world, the vast majority of people are quick to misinterpret scientific findings to reinforce their own biases. Gattaca is the story of a world where the "Others" in that society are those who are not genetically engineered to culturally acceptable standards.
IMHO it is a very human and believable part of the story that most of society will simply choose to go along with being bigoted against the out group, and not spend the extra time and effort to figure out if their biases are actually correct. In the story, Anton tells Vincent his parents died assuming that he had died young, because the doctors told them he would.
> Are the doctors just reading out the exact middle of the probability distribution
The movie was very explicit about reading out high probabilities for Vincent's problems. So they're not certainties, but they are treated as such by the wider society which is why he narrated it as if it was a certainty.
the doctors were also salesmen. There is a scene where they are pitching the various options and pushing for the more expensive. I would assume that a majority of what they say is just dishonest attempts to make the parents feel bad about not optimizing their child. They are presenting the worst case scenario as fact.
I always took it as implied that, although the 99% chance was their real knowledge of the distribution, this was a story about the one guy that ended up flying to space.
>> The doctors/his parents should have explained the nature of the probability distribution in much more detail.
It may be a movie based in science and still relevant, but it is still first and primarily a movie for entertainment. Add in the fact that "doctors knew the exact time of his death just seconds after he was born" can be interpreted as how long his body will last, not predicting the future, and I'm not sure your request for explaining the math behind this statement would contribute much to the movie.
Also because how would they know a medical treatment wouldn’t become available to allow Vincent the likelihood of a longer life? Maybe society has stopped advancing because of their deterministic outlook?
Gattaca is one of my favorite movies, mainly because of how believable the concept is. Lets say tomorrow they create a commercially available means of ensuring a child is physically and intellectually superior. Once people start availing themselves of this service anyone with the means almost has to do it as well simply as a kindness to their unborn child to ensure they don't end up as a subspecies to the new genetic ubermensch. Society would quickly split into a genetic upper and lower class exactly as displayed in the movie. It would be very hard to consciously condemn your child to the lower class for the entirety of their life if you had the means to do otherwise.
I'm not advocating for this, just describing what I see as the most likely scenario.
No joke, this film helped me get over really bad mental stuff. That the human spirit can sort of compensate for pretty much anything is what I find beautiful. But the bad side is the faustian bargain, the sacrifice.
I understand this article appeared in Nature Genetics and so explores the genetics aspect of the movie (which is admittedly heavily emphasized, starting with the G-A-T-C letters highlighted in the title and opening credits), but I always thought it is about the practice of discrimination in general, regardless of what "quality" is chosen to put people in sets of "A" and "B".
How literally should the audience take this cautionary tale?
Throw away comment but to anybody that likes this movie and it's ideas, I highly recommend the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown. It's the concepts of this film allowed to run their course for a few hundred years.
I guess I never thought it was much more than a good movie. I mean what is the message supposed to be? For one thing the main character has a heart condition and absolutely should be weeded out of the space mission he is trying to get on. As a larger point about a dystopian future with discrimination based on genetic characteristics I don't think it works either. We discriminate like that based on genetics now. It's just that it comes from random chance at birth rather than human modification, but really what's the difference?
IMO the message is that you can change your destiny with grit and effort, no matter what any authority (even science) says, and trying that is worth it, even if you fail.
I think it is a movie about life and how ruthless it is.
Exactly! We are all already the beneficiaries and casualties of the unearned rewards and punishments due to the randomized genetic combination we received at conception. Kathryn Paige Harden brilliantly explains this ethical challenge in her book, “The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality”, https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190808/th...
> In recent years, scientists like Kathryn Paige Harden have shown that DNA makes us different, in our personalities and in our health—and in ways that matter for educational and economic success in our current society.
> In The Genetic Lottery, Harden introduces readers to the latest genetic science, dismantling dangerous ideas about racial superiority and challenging us to grapple with what equality really means in a world where people are born different. Weaving together personal stories with scientific evidence, Harden shows why our refusal to recognize the power of DNA perpetuates the myth of meritocracy, and argues that we must acknowledge the role of genetic luck if we are ever to create a fair society.
As a professor of clinical psychology, Harden is well situated to introduce us laypersons to the overwhelming strong evidence that genes matter. Notably, even biological siblings only share 50% of their genes with each other. Therefore the randomization in genetic combination alone can create differences in innate strengths and weaknesses among children with the same parents. A lottery is the appropriate metaphor for the lack of control any of us have in the genes we’re bestowed at conception.
Genetic engineering may offer an equalizer, but that presents its own ethical challenges. Harden instead argues that we should design a sufficiently robust welfare state to counteract these natural inequities. She presents a Rawlian framework (ie, veil of ignorance) to argue for why we should not accept genetic privileges and disadvantages anymore than we’d accept other injustices.
> I mean what is the message supposed to be? For one thing the main character has a heart condition and absolutely should be weeded out of the space mission he is trying to get on.
Why? Their discriminatory predictions were incorrect. Space travel is clearly quite routine in this future, so to put it in today's terms, would you forbid people with heart conditions from driving cars or trucks?
> We discriminate like that based on genetics now. It's just that it comes from random chance at birth rather than human modification, but really what's the difference?
Interesting tidbit about the movie: Andrew Niccol, the director, wanted to make The Truman Show, but he couldn't get funding for it without enough of a track record. So instead, he made Gattaca which had a low budget. Its success allowed him to fund The Truman Show.
We can do some editing of some of the somatic cells in adults, and those edits have some effect. Reaching all of the somatic cells is actually quite difficult. We have had significantly better results with germline genetic engineering in animal models.
If you really need to reach all the cells, that's how you'll do it. For example, if your trait is developmental in nature.
There is a bit of survivorship bias. Sci-fi has imagined every possible universe, some of the predictions feel very close to what is transpiring. And if we focus entirely on the human stories behind technological facades or other cultural variability, some people claim that all possible stories have been written already.
Is it really? Changes to biological intelligence are irrelevant in a world with one decade timelines until human level artificial general intelligence.
If you genetically engineer your kids they still need to slowly grow up. By the time they turn 18 years old the world may already be dominated by machines.
[+] [-] anonporridge|3 years ago|reply
A lot of great sci-fi is marred by cheap effects that look incredibly dated only a decade later. Gattaca chose to focus on the story and create a minimalist future environment that still looks beautiful 25 years later.
[+] [-] giberson|3 years ago|reply
With IVF, the doctor harvests as many eggs from the woman as possible. Then after taking the make sample and cleaning, selecting the semen with best modality , fertilize each embryo. Then let the embryo grow for a couple of days then freeze the embryo until it’s ready to be implanted (likely during the woman’s next cycle). If you choose, and generally for a fee, you can have each embryo tested for chromosome mutations.
After the process your doctor will call you and let you know how many eggs were harvested and how many were fertilized. They can then give you a report card for the embryos that represent likelihood of live birth, chromosome evaluation, male/female etc.
You then make a selection of which embryo (s) to insert.
Obviously, given the expense of IVF it’s hard to imagine a scenario of not telling the doctor to pick the highest rated (male or female) embryo just for best chance of success.
Felt very reminiscent of gattaca. And that was just selecting the best that we produced. I can easily see myself saying yes to “The best embryo you have had a chromosome defect that will likely result in condition X, but we can fix the defect with a small gene modification, and give the child the best chance for a healthy life, should we modify the embryo?”
And then the slippery slope, “we can also improve the odds of higher intellect, being taller , thinner, etc”.
[+] [-] cm2187|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonymouskimmer|3 years ago|reply
> "Even the selection of mating partner is a form of eugenics."
Only when the selection is done by those who aren't the two partners (e.g. arranged marriages, theoretically rape in the absence of abortion). Otherwise it's natural selection between partners - there's no guarantee the aspects two people find attractive in each other are genetically heritable.
> "College graduates only marrying college graduates, repeat that for many generations and it is bound to have an effect."
Assortative mating per se isn't necessarily eugenics. It takes an instruction from the outside on what mating partners should consider attractive in a potential mate. Without this instruction people will find a variety of differing, and even mutually exclusive, traits attractive, and will assort on these variety of traits, not on a hierarchy of traits.
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/topics_fs.pl?theme=3...
"Eugenicists realized that assortative mating did not always produce the best offspring, so sought ways to popularize what they considered to be good marriages. Francis Galton urged the brightest and the healthiest individuals to marry each other. He found an ideal situation in German university professors <emphasis mine> (then all male) who tended to marry the daughters of professors or their female graduate students <emphasis mine>. This positive expression of eugenics encouraged the selection of good mates through popular health books and Fitter Families Contests held at state fairs. The training of field workers at the Eugenics Record Office included exercises to help them analyze mate preferences and make better eugenic choices."
[+] [-] Manuel_D|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rlpb|3 years ago|reply
I think there's enough infidelity around to cancel out this effect. You have around a million n*great grandparents at n=20. How many of those are likely fathered by "somebody else"? And that's just at n=20; evolution runs much slower than that. Even with perfect class-based marriage, good genes have inevitably worked their way across the social ladder through infidelity by now. "Bad" inbred lines only exist as lines; when measuring the total effect, illegitimate children need to be included, but of course they are invisible.
[+] [-] ladyattis|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] meindnoch|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smrtinsert|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flavius29663|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Apofis|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrown_43|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Vecr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] landryraccoon|3 years ago|reply
In the real world, the vast majority of people are quick to misinterpret scientific findings to reinforce their own biases. Gattaca is the story of a world where the "Others" in that society are those who are not genetically engineered to culturally acceptable standards.
IMHO it is a very human and believable part of the story that most of society will simply choose to go along with being bigoted against the out group, and not spend the extra time and effort to figure out if their biases are actually correct. In the story, Anton tells Vincent his parents died assuming that he had died young, because the doctors told them he would.
[+] [-] akira2501|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naasking|3 years ago|reply
The movie was very explicit about reading out high probabilities for Vincent's problems. So they're not certainties, but they are treated as such by the wider society which is why he narrated it as if it was a certainty.
[+] [-] wonderwonder|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giantg2|3 years ago|reply
Even today some doctors dumb-down and overvalued their own opinion. I assume someone who thinks they're basically playing god would think similarly.
[+] [-] whatshisface|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxerickson|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skeeter2020|3 years ago|reply
It may be a movie based in science and still relevant, but it is still first and primarily a movie for entertainment. Add in the fact that "doctors knew the exact time of his death just seconds after he was born" can be interpreted as how long his body will last, not predicting the future, and I'm not sure your request for explaining the math behind this statement would contribute much to the movie.
[+] [-] goatlover|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] supercheetah|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wonderwonder|3 years ago|reply
I'm not advocating for this, just describing what I see as the most likely scenario.
[+] [-] andruby|3 years ago|reply
The style, human spirit and perseverance are a bonus. I rewatch it when I need to put things and life in perspective.
[+] [-] snissn|3 years ago|reply
"You want to know how I did it? I never saved anything for the swim back"
[+] [-] Frummy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rzzzt|3 years ago|reply
How literally should the audience take this cautionary tale?
[+] [-] anderber|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wonderwonder|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fallingknife|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mejutoco|3 years ago|reply
I think it is a movie about life and how ruthless it is.
[+] [-] hagy|3 years ago|reply
> In recent years, scientists like Kathryn Paige Harden have shown that DNA makes us different, in our personalities and in our health—and in ways that matter for educational and economic success in our current society.
> In The Genetic Lottery, Harden introduces readers to the latest genetic science, dismantling dangerous ideas about racial superiority and challenging us to grapple with what equality really means in a world where people are born different. Weaving together personal stories with scientific evidence, Harden shows why our refusal to recognize the power of DNA perpetuates the myth of meritocracy, and argues that we must acknowledge the role of genetic luck if we are ever to create a fair society.
As a professor of clinical psychology, Harden is well situated to introduce us laypersons to the overwhelming strong evidence that genes matter. Notably, even biological siblings only share 50% of their genes with each other. Therefore the randomization in genetic combination alone can create differences in innate strengths and weaknesses among children with the same parents. A lottery is the appropriate metaphor for the lack of control any of us have in the genes we’re bestowed at conception.
Genetic engineering may offer an equalizer, but that presents its own ethical challenges. Harden instead argues that we should design a sufficiently robust welfare state to counteract these natural inequities. She presents a Rawlian framework (ie, veil of ignorance) to argue for why we should not accept genetic privileges and disadvantages anymore than we’d accept other injustices.
[+] [-] naasking|3 years ago|reply
Why? Their discriminatory predictions were incorrect. Space travel is clearly quite routine in this future, so to put it in today's terms, would you forbid people with heart conditions from driving cars or trucks?
[+] [-] purple_ferret|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chordalkeyboard|3 years ago|reply
What are you alluding to here?
[+] [-] stewx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] narrator|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kanzure|3 years ago|reply
If you really need to reach all the cells, that's how you'll do it. For example, if your trait is developmental in nature.
Try it at home: https://diyhpl.us/wiki/genetic-modifications/
[+] [-] OnionBlender|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bni|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lifeisstillgood|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darksfall|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonplackett|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klyrs|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] college_physics|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qualudeheart|3 years ago|reply
If you genetically engineer your kids they still need to slowly grow up. By the time they turn 18 years old the world may already be dominated by machines.