
Are We Too Close to Making Gattaca a Reality? - diwank
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/2013/10/28/are-we-too-close-to-making-gattaca-a-reality/
======
noonespecial
Huh. I always thought Gattaca was a commentary on what we _already_ have. It
seemed to me an allegory about poor minorities making it into the rich upper
class.

The genetically engineered angle seemed like a small plot device, not a
central feature. If we take health and wealth of the typical first worlder and
compare it with that of the average third worlder, it already looks pretty
Gattaca to me.

~~~
Fargren
Good science fiction is almost always about the present, not the future. As
Ursula Le Guin put in the introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness[1]
"Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive. (...)Prediction is the
business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business
of novelists. A novelist’s business is lying."

[1]Full text here:
[http://somethingcompletelydifferent.wordpress.com/2011/02/15...](http://somethingcompletelydifferent.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/science-
fiction-isnt-about-the-future-or-the-past/)

~~~
bradleyland
Sometimes it's about both. When I watched Gattaca, I was really impressed with
how well they tied together a broad social commentary on the present with a
more literal warning about the impending future.

~~~
kbenson
It's about both because they are often the same thing. How we deal with the
present informs us how we may react to the future, and how we view
hypothetical future situations tells us something about our present, often by
drawing parallels that point out the ways in which our assumed (often
inherited) beliefs are often in opposition with our stated, rational beliefs.

It's always boggled my mind that some authors have such little regard for
science fiction. In my opinion, it's one of the most powerful contexts you can
use, when done well.

------
jdmitch
_Despite laws meant to prevent genetic discrimination, the world of Gattaca is
a highly stratified one with two distinct classes: the valids—who have the
right genes, the most prestigious jobs and the highest quality of life—and the
in-valids, who were conceived in the typical fashion and are relegated to
menial work and relative poverty. Eugenics also risks creating a genetically
homogenous population that is far more vulnerable to disease and freak
deleterious mutations than a diverse one._

Isn't their significant evidence that more diverse gene pools, even unexpected
combinations of genes are usually more adapted in several ways, because of
heterosis [0]. It seems foolish that this one new factor would make eugenics
any more successful than its last phase of popular. Not to mention it the
deeply-held 'moral repugnance'[1] aspect.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis)

[1]
[http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/2624677/Roth_Repu...](http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/2624677/Roth_Repugnance.pdf?sequence=6)

~~~
pfortuny
There is some history to be learned from the genetic variability problem of
Ireland's potatoes in the XIX Century.

Apart from other -more serious- problems, obviously, but genetic similarity is
not necessarily a good thing.

~~~
JVIDEL
I was just going to mention that: given economies of scale custom babies will
probably share a lot of identical _prefab_ genetic blocks for every
specification since it would be far cheaper than engineering every trait from
scratch.

At that point there would be enough GM humans walking around that a virus
might evolve to attack only them, and it would spread like wildfire among the
population given the lack of genetic variation, the only exception being old
regular humans and maybe a few of those with parents wealthy enough to get
them _tailor-made_ without any of the preexisting "parts" that the majority
uses.

------
comrade_ogilvy
Yes, I think it will happen. There is a market for this stuff, and, in time,
when and why to say N-O will become less and less obvious.

There are problems with genetic selection. But I think the larger problem will
be the personal toll of new found ways of negatively assessing ourselves, and
pointlessly diagnosing our inevitable sundry personal weaknesses as medical
syndromes.

------
cliveowen
I know this might sound bad but I actually think the reality portrayed in
Gattaca is not that bad. I mean, if you put aside the discrimination faced by
that part of the population born the natural way, you have a society where
almost everyone is healthy and will live longer than previously possible, and
is of great contribution to the community. I think that's our future and it
doesn't scare me that much, what actually scares me are the endless genetic
mutations that result in a wide array of tumors and untreatable diseases.

~~~
adeptus
One of the problems is that it will create an environment where individuals
are strongly encouraged and pressured into pursuing a particular type of
career or avoid XYZ other activities. Reminds me of the stereotypical asian
parent forcing their children to become lawyers or doctors, when the
individual would much rather pursue sports, arts or something else entirely.
One of the most critical aspects of success is motivation and desire to
accomplish X. When everyone around you is saying you should do Y because of
your genetic makeup it could lead to a lot more dissatisfied human beings.

~~~
PeterisP
This is an interesting avenue to explore - one thing is features that are
general improvements (say, not having some deadly disease); but there are many
features that would facilitate specialization - helping you in one way while
hurting in another.

A mild example in Gattaca is the six-fingered pianist - which in essence means
that 'being a pianist' has to be chosen by others before you are able to think
and decide.

And there are obviously horrible possibilities of specialization, like
deliberately creating conscience-less embryos for military needs or autism-
squared embryos for specialized uses (as suggested in Frank Herbert's Dune,
for example).

------
josefresco
Forget the custom-baby angle, did anyone catch this little nugget?

" Their tests cannot recognize every possible shade, but they are specific
enough to distinguish between brown, blue and mottled brown-blue eyes, as well
as brown, black, blonde and red hair. Such studies are intended to help solve
crimes, but clinicians at fertility clinics could easily adapt the strategies
for PGD. "

Sounds like a lot sooner (now?) law enforcement will be able to determine a
lot more about a potential suspect with just DNA. Or am I not reading that
correctly?

~~~
PeterisP
That's exactly what the're saying - law enforcement has had that ability (DNA
-> likelihoods of visual properties, not 100% accurate of course) for some
time already, and they can use it on embryos as well.

------
hyperion2010
The 'science' in Gattaca is just an excuse for segregating human beings based
on some arbitrary criteria. As others have pointed out this is nothing new.

What is extremely irritating is that people actually think that genetics works
the way it is portrayed in the film. This is patently false. Yes, some portion
of what an organism is is determined by the primary sequence of its DNA. It
turns out that the contribution of primary sequence alone is quite small. Look
at all the naive genome wide association data sets that have revealed that
primary DNA sequences are in most cases very poor predictors of phenotype.
This should't be surprising to anyone who has even a cursory understanding of
evolution and the interaction between ecology and development. Yes, this is
classic nurture vs nature stuff.

The fact that people want to claim that science could actually give us a
universal, deterministic and predictive answer about the future should quickly
alert us that the principles on which they are basing their predictions is not
science and not predictive, but instead an ideology based on prejudice rather
than evidence.

~~~
Apocryphon
'Remember, genes are NOT blueprints. This means you can't, for example, insert
"the genes for an elephant's trunk" into a giraffe and get a giraffe with a
trunk. There -are- no genes for trunks. What you CAN do with genes is
chemistry, since DNA codes for chemicals.' \- Academician Prokhor Zakharov,
"Nonlinear Genetics"

------
devx
I wonder if say 50 years from now, we'll be like those religious conservatives
who don't want to let women do whatever they want with their bodies (mainly
talking about abortion here).

Will we also be the ones demanding that the new generations have _no right_ to
design their children, while they'd argue that we should just "mind our own
business" and that it's not government's place to decide how to effectively
"create" _their_ own children.

I think this century will see a lot of interesting changes, and not just
technological, but also societal. Can we design our own children? Can we marry
robots? Can we change our gender? Should the government be able to monitor our
thoughts to protect us from terrorism? Will we still have the nonsense "war on
terror" even 50 years from now, or will we end all "war on abstracts" by then,
just like we are about to end the war on drugs?

A lot of new questions will need a lot of new answers as new technologies
start making all sorts of new things possible.

~~~
protomyth
I don't see this as anywhere near the same argument as abortion and I think
trying to tie it into the abortion debate will not be helpful or truthful for
anyone.

------
carsongross
Can someone give me a non-religious moral reason not to pursue this?

~~~
Ygg2
Here is one. Humans suck at predicting stuff.

What makes you think you know what is better for your off-springs than random
chance?

I consider diseases and human frailties a great part of what makes us humans.
If we all had sharp teeth and powerful bite, we wouldn't drive cars, we'd
chase furry animals and bite them with our powerful jaws. Occasionally
stopping to hang around in the trees and eat fruits.

~~~
mayanksinghal
> Humans suck at predicting stuff.

But surely humans beat randomness at many if not most tasks. This argument is
not as much about whether we get sharper teeth or not, as it is about possibly
saving a kid about a genetically inherited disorder. You may consider human
suffering to be what defines humanity, but those who suffer most certainly
don't.

~~~
crpatino
The article explicitly mention that this is not the case. If anything, it
poses the question of how much genetic engineering is too much.

And about betting randomness... I recall sometime reading about this certain
ethnic group, which is taboo to single out and which has a disproportionate
amount of Nobel prize winners (amongst other interesting features). The work
describe how this people had both, compared to baseline population, higher
than average IQ and higher than average propensity to some rare autoimmune
disease that affects the brain. It turns out they had a higher incidence of
several genetic mutations that each individually made you smarter (thus
adaptive), but when found in the same individual made him sick.

Now, extrapolate this to a bunch of helicopter parents, micromanaging
optimization to this or that characteristics in their own kids genotype. To me
it sounds to much like a bunch of script kiddies merging commits to an arcane,
critical, undocumented legacy system.

------
applecore
_> If the past is irrelevant, then we are equally irrelevant to the people
living in 2113. They don’t care what we think about morality, public policy,
fashion, economics, or anything else. It doesn’t matter what we “decide” about
designer babies or anything else. It’s their world. They will view us with
contempt. Or with pity. Get used to it._

[http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=24266](http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=24266)

------
gmuslera
Culture and life (what you eat, how you exercise, how you live) weights more
than genetics, unless you get visibly impaired by some genetic problem. For
the by far big majority of people those are the factors that should be taken
into account, not the base material, but how you grow up, what you learn, how
you are.

Of course, if you have enough money to genetically design your children,
probably have enough money to feed and raise them right, give them access to
the best education, and probably have time to be with them, and is that what
will make the difference, not so much to have the best of the best genes. But
even without the designer genes, nor growing in a rich family normal people
still have the potential to be great in whatever they do.

But is not designing the problem, is being discrimined later by people with
access to your genetic info (something not very private as we leave traces of
it everywhere), if that impairs your access to education or work, that will
affect what you are too. Just labeling those that discriminate based on
genetics as aryan race fans could put those practices in a negative enough
light to avoid it to spread.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
> Culture and life (what you eat, how you exercise, how you live) weights more
> than genetics, ...

To what extent you have been outsmarted by robots is determined mostly by
genetics. But if slum-dwellers were given basic income and a negative income
tax, it would be impossible to farm them for votes, so they have been
indoctrinated to believe that they are smarter than robots and have been
cheated out of jobs. This keeps them voting for the next handout, keeping the
welfare bureaucracy and its "leaders" in power.

We are living in a vicious genetic dystopia today.

Naturally you will read not a word of this in Scientific American. They are
hyper-leftist and cannot imagine a future of automated prosperity without
their kind to centrally plan it. (One of the reasons they continue to moonbat
against Reagan to this day was his vast expansion of the negative income tax.)

------
negamax
My favourite line from the movie

Vincent: You want to know how I did it? This is how I did it, Anton: I never
saved anything for the swim back.

------
blowski
One reason why it might _not_ happen - lack of demand. Clearly I have a very
small sample so it's merely an anecdote, but I haven't met anybody that wants
this for themselves, even if they think other people will want it.

I know some people will want it, but it would need to be near universal for
something like Gattaca to become reality.

~~~
redthrowaway
If I had the financial resources, and the science was well understood, I'd
definitely consider it. I hold no sentimental attachment to the "natural" way
of doing things -- cancer is natural, but that doesn't preclude me from
seeking chemotherapy. Similarly, why _wouldn 't_ you use new medical science
to make your baby as healthy as possible? And, if you've accepted "screening
for genetic defects" as an acceptable use of the technology, why would
"selecting for the most desirable traits" not be?

Nature and nurture are just two factors that contribute to a child's wellbeing
and success in life. If you'd be willing to send your child to a private
school in the hopes of giving them a better education and a leg-up on the
competition, why not give them better looks and higher intelligence (were it
possible), as well?

I've yet to see any convincing ethical arguments as to why this would be
wrong. So far, every argument made in opposition to designer babies seems to
boil down to "it's not natural". Well, neither is agriculture, medicine, the
Internet... as a species, we've gotten to where we are by changing nature to
suit us. Why should procreation be any different?

~~~
blowski
I think this is a very big conversation for me to fire off a quick HN comment.
I'm mostly ignorant about this, and my Christian faith probably clouds my
judgement, so it's difficult to say whether I'm being objective and rational.

However, I'm not convinced that medical science is there yet, so my child is
just an iteration for big pharma. Perhaps we produce a whole generation of
intelligent children who develop Alzheimer's when they're 25. I realise that
argument is made against every new technology (especially medical), but making
an active choice somehow makes me culpable and it would be harder to live with
it.

Also, there's the idea of what happens if this becomes universal. Since some
traits seem universally desirable, all parents will choose to grant them. So
if everyone is given the genes to be massively intelligent, is that a good
thing?

Then there's the quality of life argument, which makes me deeply
uncomfortable. Essentially, choosing a fully-sighted embryo over a partially-
sighted one implicitly says "partially-sighted people are likely to have lower
quality of life than fully-sighted ones", and that sounds wrong both ethically
and practically.

This is a really difficult debate, though. Put in the hypothetical situation
of having to choose, I guess I would end up choosing the best possible embryo,
but I'd rather not have to make the choice to begin with.

~~~
redthrowaway
> I'm not convinced that medical science is there yet

Agreed, but I think it's a matter of if, not when. As our knowledge of gene
expression, epigenetics, protein folding, and the like increases, the set of
things we can't do will shrink.

>Perhaps we produce a whole generation of intelligent children who develop
Alzheimer's when they're 25

It's certainly possible that we'll leap before we look, but I'd hope not.
We've had examples of that in the past, but the result of those tragedies is
that research processes have improved. They're far from perfect, but they've
certainly gotten better.

>So if everyone is given the genes to be massively intelligent, is that a good
thing?

I'd say so, yes.

>choosing a fully-sighted embryo over a partially-sighted one implicitly says
"partially-sighted people are likely to have lower quality of life than fully-
sighted ones", and that sounds wrong both ethically and practically.

I think, on average, it's simply an objective fact that "full-sighted people
have a better quality of life than partially-sighted people". I can't think of
any way that astigmatism has improved my life, and it's something I plan on
rectifying permanently once my finances allow it.

As for being ethically wrong, I don't see it. Just because someone is
perfectly capable of living a happy and fulfilled life with a birth defect
doesn't mean the lack thereof wouldn't be preferable.

>I'd rather not have to make the choice to begin with.

Keep in mind, not choosing is itself a choice. Just as you'd feel guilty if
the procedure caused a birth defect, I think you'd also feel guilty if your
child was born with a birth defect that you chose not to screen for or take
steps to select against. That said, _there_ we finally find an ethical
quandary: the nature of the procedure would mean choosing to select against
that defect would mean choosing not to have your child, and that's not
something most parents would care to think about when looking at their kid.
There's a big difference between choosing which fertilized egg to implant and
looking at your kid and wishing you had chose not to have them. I think most
people would be okay with the former, but would likely (and rightly) recoil in
horror at the latter.

~~~
blowski
> So if everyone is given the genes to be massively intelligent, is that a
> good thing? > I'd say so, yes.

My thoughts on this are overshadowed by Brave New World. I realise how
enormously snobbish and arrogant this sounds, but there are some jobs where
having an enormous intellect would definitely be a burden. So either we have
to automate those jobs (not necessarily possible), accept that some people are
going to be very unhappy, or breed a specific group of people with lower
intellects.

I guess this is a variation on the 'tragedy of the commons' \- something
that's wonderful for your child and my child would probably be a disaster if
it were given to everybody's child.

> Just because someone is perfectly capable of living a happy and fulfilled
> life with a birth defect doesn't mean the lack thereof wouldn't be
> preferable.

I think sometimes disabilities are part of what make them amazing people.
Would Beethoven have written such wonderful music if he had full hearing? From
what I've read of Dame Evelyn Glennie, she seems to say that her deafness
taught her to hear the music in a different way. So I'm worried that removing
everything we perceive to be a defect results in a rather bland human race. It
would be better to work on improving society so that being blind didn't cause
many people to become depressed, for example. Adding lifts and ramps to
buildings as well.

> Keep in mind, not choosing is itself a choice.

I'd like that the choice is not even possible. If the choice can be made
confidently by a large proportion of the population, then it would inevitably
go this way.

Yes you're right, a lot of this does depend on what we're considering a defect
and at what stage. We have obviously done the whole Down's Syndrome scan, and
we had no idea what we would have done if it had come back positive. If I
could have done this pre-conception, then it would be a more comfortable
decision. But if the question was about being short-sighted (which both my
wife and I are), or whether we'd prefer a more athletic child, then the
question gets much harder.

------
tokenadult
The eye-color part of the article must not be factually correct, unless there
have been some very recent developments in understanding genetic influence on
eye color. Craig Venter, the first human being to have his genome sequenced,
pointed out in interviews[1] that even after the sequencing, no one could tell
for sure from the sequence that he has blue eyes. Just in the last day, an
article following up on last week's American Society of Human Genetics
conference[2] pointed out that genetic studies have continually overpromised
and underdelivered, and there are still many very basic issues of human
genetics that are embedded in deep uncertainty.

As the article kindly submitted here points out, people are already demanding
designer babies. They used to try to get those by looking for sperm donations
from the Nobel laureate sperm bank,[3] but that project had disappointing
results, and the sperm bank is no longer in operation.

Researchers on human genetics I know locally (who analyze the data from the
Minnesota Twin Families Study) use a photograph of two identical (monozygotic)
twins from Germany[4] (from a different source, I think the original medical
journal source, rather than the blog I link to here) to show that although
genes are certainly very influential on human development, environment,
including differing choices of lifestyle, matters too.

[1] [http://health.usnews.com/health-
news/articles/2007/09/11/cra...](http://health.usnews.com/health-
news/articles/2007/09/11/craig-venter-discusses-his-genome)

[2]
[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_genom...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_genome/2013/10/human_genetics_successes_and_failures_ashg_stories_of_disease_genes.html)

[3]
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4700156](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4700156)

[4] [http://thesameffect.com/check-out-identical-twins-otto-
and-e...](http://thesameffect.com/check-out-identical-twins-otto-and-ewald/)

------
andrewcooke
vaguely related - i recently read margaret atwood's _oryx and crake_ , which
is another dystopian biotech future, and i rather enjoyed it. she's pretty
cynical (and quite amusing at times) and while you can pick holes in many of
her arguments the overall jaundiced view of stupid selfish humans screwing
themselves over is pretty convincing.

(weirdly, some of what she predicted - about 10 years ago now - seems to be
coming more true in software. you can't help but think of google when you read
descriptions of the biotech corporations, with their compounds designed to
isolate superior employees ;o).

~~~
Apocryphon
A dystopian novel about some hip Silicon Valley company finding the secret
sauce to objectively rank human beings with software, because of the
difficulty in hiring good programmers, is just too painfully apt to imagine.

