The Negative Effects Of Genetic Testing In The Movie Gattaca

Genetic testing is a developing field of study. It allows for doctors to read the human genome and see different traits about a person or zygote. “The genome is an organism’s complete set of genetic instructions”(What is a genome). Genetic testing lets the doctor see if their patient is likely to have a genetic disease and makes choosing a medicine that will help treat it much easier. The knowledge of this will help doctors and the patient be better prepared for possible illnesses but has some negative effects. People who have found out that they may be more susceptible to certain diseases and illnesses could experience discrimination while trying to get life insurance and applying for a job(Medscape). Doctors now have the ability to look

This may turn having children into a competition to who can make the “best child”. Which would result in unhappiness as it did in the movie Gattaca. Gattaca is a perfect example of a society driven away from happiness and love because genetic manipulation and is portrayed well by the actions of the characters and the dullness of their surroundings/ workplace. Genetic manipulation has the possibility of improving the health and wellbeing of our future offspring but it may come at a cost of the loss of natural birth, social discrimination, and the loss of freedom and happiness. Should we, as a society, be able to alter the genetic makeup of our offspring prior to

Genetic manipulation would allow doctors and healthcare officials to alter the genome of a zygote to eliminate the possibility of certain diseases that could cause harmful diseases that would be passed down from the parents. It would change the way that babies are conceived and essentially let us engineer perfect offspring. The genome is responsible for everything from looks to body composition. As stated before, genetic manipulations prior to birth would eliminate the chance of contracting anything from inherited diseases to cancers of any kind. Cancer is contracted by about 150,00 people a year and claims the life of roughly 50,000 (Cancer.net). The manipulations that doctors performed would take the best genes of each parent and combine them to make the best offspring. Parents would even have the ability to make their child very smart or athletic. This could make a huge, positive, impact on not only that individual, but the society as a whole. With smarter, more productive, and a more focused body of people around, society could be much more productive and focused. The things that humans could do would be extraordinary. Space travel would likely be as common as a car ride is today and natural resources would certainly be able to be engineered in a matter of seconds. To put it in perspective, think of the