Gattaca RAR!

[Hawkwings]

Congratulations, you now live in the world of Gattaca!

A simple premise: you want to have a child. There is a system set up for you to genetically fix your baby to have no genes for health imperfections, and perhaps even insert genes for certain types of genius. This system is so commonplace that people who decide to have babies the old fashioned way are very rare, and the resulting children are pretty much outcasts from society.

Question 1: Given the society in the movie, would you have a genetically enhanced baby?

Question 2: Would you pay extra for your baby to have superior skills in mathematics? Music? Olympic underwater basket-weaving? If so, what skills, and how much would you pay? Remember, other people have this option too, and who knows how deep their pockets are compared to yours.

And now for the real thinker:

Question 3: Rewind! It is the beginning of the genetically engineered baby craze. People are still having natural babies, but the technology is available to have a gene-modded baby. Assume that the procedure is completely safe and that there are no side-effects. Would you still tweak your child? And would you pay extra for more tweaks?

[adam_grif]

1: Yes
2: Yes
3: Yes

Unless I'm too poor.

[Sarevok]

Do they genetically engineer babies in Gattaca ? I thought they just decided the right combination of genes from both parents. So if you and your wife were chineese and wanted a blue eyed baby you are going to be out of luck. They dont have the tech to introduce new genetic information or edit what is already there. To be frank the whole Gattaca premise was better done in Battletech of all places. As battletech demonstrated being a trueborn Mech pilot confers limited advantage only since you just have the genes of some very good people but you are still human as anyone. Still there is no harm in every extra one or two percent edge over average person. Plus unengineered kids have no future in their weird society. So why would not one engineer their child ? How is this even worth a question ?

[Hawkwings]

They can get rid of unwanted bad things, and they can also add wanted good genes. So they can insert a gene for blue eyes and savant-level mathematical brain, then yes you could have it, if you were willing to pay.

[adam_grif]

There's no geneng going on, it's just embryonic screening. They get multiple fertilized embryos then pick the best, don't they?

[Serafina]

Wait, you ask if i want my child to have a good (either better than average or average (worste without) chance?
Hell yes!

Seriously, if i know it is safe, i would give my child every enhancement possible. There is nothing bad about being stonger, more intelligent and/or durable or healthier.
If that means they have to discard dozens or more fertilized eggs - so what? It's not like the eggs can feel that or anything.

In fact, i would say that it is immoral to deny this chance to your child. That's like deliberately damaging your child during pregnancy because you want a child with down syndrome or something like that.
(as long as it is safe or carries a low risk).
Or, to be less extreme - that's like deliberately dening your child a higher education because you do not want it to be "better than you".

[Lord of the Abyss]

Given the choice, I'd improve my hypothetical child as much as the technology and my pocketbook allowed, in all three scenarios. I'd regard it as irresponsible to not do so. As for which improvements to be made, assuming that "all of them" isn't an option; I'd go for a general enhancement of ability rather than paying extra for the "genius at X field" package. What if it turns out that there's little demand in that field by the time the kid is an adult, and he underperforms everywhere else because you blew everything on one talent? Not to mention that the kids groomed from toddlerhood to be sports stars/models/whatever have always struck me as borderline abuse victims.

[The Spartan]

There's no geneng going on, it's just embryonic screening. They get multiple fertilized embryos then pick the best, don't they?

In the movie there is gene-engineering going on. Remember the pianist in the movie with 12 fingers?

[Twoyboy]

In the movie they seem to go through a progression from the technology being adopted to the technology to choose the best of both parents being commonplace to outright genetic engineering.

I would absolutely take advantage of this technology in all the scenarios you've described. Why would I give my child a disadvantage in life because I know all the other parents are doing it? And I think I'd focus on two or three elite modifications, there's no point in my kids being good at everything if they can't do it all. Maybe choose one instrument, one sport and one field of academic endeavour and spend as much as I can afford improving these attributes. In today's money, I'd be willing to throw in as much as I'd pay for a car ($20-30k, taking out a loan if I have to) so long as I saw the benefit.

[Shroom Man 777]

There's no geneng going on, it's just embryonic screening. They get multiple fertilized embryos then pick the best, don't they?

In the movie there is gene-engineering going on. Remember the pianist in the movie with 12 fingers?

The pianist was not a genetic-engineered creation. He was a mutant, a god-child with a deformity that allowed him to play piano sublimely. The point of the twelve-fingered pianist was to show that gene-engineering to eliminate defectivities might not be so good because his twelve fingers was a defect that was actually wonderful, and if he were gene-engineered then he would've never gotten his twelve fingers or his piano playing abilities.

[Hawkwings]

um... no. The pianist was a genetically-engineered child designed for the sole purpose of being a virtuoso pianist, so much so that either A) a piece was written just for him and his twelve fingers or even more scarily, B) he was created specifically to play this piece written for twelve fingers. The point of the twelve-fingered pianist was to outwardly show the "enhancements" that people in the society are getting in order to attempt to be the best in their field, and show how they are possibly becoming something other than human.

Like Vincent said, "One finger or twelve, it's how you play."
To which Irene responds "That piece can only be played with twelve fingers."

[Guardsman Bass]

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes

I'm not sure exactly how much I would put towards it, since it really depends on what my income would be in the situation (I'm figuring maybe the equivalent to a years' worth of pay, or more).

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

The piano piece is supposed to be a variant of a piece of Schubert's rewritten for 12 fingers ("Impromptu for 12 Fingers" is indeed the title), but just because a piece of music was written for or by a pianist doesn't mean he was literally made for it. This thread is the first place I've ever seen that would suggest that the pianist wasn't there as an example of an unengineered person with something unique and special, something we could lose with certain implementations of genetic engineering/screening. Did the movie have any (other?) examples of people engineered beyond the human ideal? I thought the idea in Gattaca was healthy, perfect genetic supermen, not transhumanity.

[adam_grif]

um... no. The pianist was a genetically-engineered child designed for the sole purpose of being a virtuoso pianist,

You can't conclude that. All we saw was a 12 fingered pianist. Although rare, genetic mutations that result in extra digits are possible, are they not? The parents may well have just selected the 12 fingered baby from their embryo selection when they saw how unique it would make him.

It's possible it was engineered, but we don't have any conclusive evidence to suggest that he was.

[Bakustra]

um... no. The pianist was a genetically-engineered child designed for the sole purpose of being a virtuoso pianist,

You can't conclude that. All we saw was a 12 fingered pianist. Although rare, genetic mutations that result in extra digits are possible, are they not? The parents may well have just selected the 12 fingered baby from their embryo selection when they saw how unique it would make him.

It's possible it was engineered, but we don't have any conclusive evidence to suggest that he was.

In virtually all of those cases, the sixth digit is nonfunctional, which would make the idea of a piano piece written only for the twelve-fingered a cruel joke. Besides, splicing in said mutations would count as genetic engineering, unless the parents themselves also were twelve-fingered or carried an unexpressed allele for the trait.

[adam_grif]

Fully functional extra digits are rare, but have occurred.

Some searching has yielded the following:

http://www.ktvu.com/news/18608582/detail.html

12 functioning fingers, 12 functioning toes. It looks pretty much exactly how it happened in Gattaca.

[Bakustra]

Fully functional extra digits are rare, but have occurred.

Some searching has yielded the following:

http://www.ktvu.com/news/18608582/detail.html

12 functioning fingers, 12 functioning toes. It looks pretty much exactly how it happened in Gattaca.

Yes, and that is such a stunningly rare event and dependent on genetic predispositions from family members that the second part of my post still stands. Polydactyly is relatively common, but fully formed extra digits are somewhat rare, and functioning ones far more rare. Unless his parents carried all the alleles necessary to produce fully-functional polydactyly, the pianist would count as genetically altered/engineered.

[Guardsman Bass]

Fully functional extra digits are rare, but have occurred.

Some searching has yielded the following:

http://www.ktvu.com/news/18608582/detail.html

12 functioning fingers, 12 functioning toes. It looks pretty much exactly how it happened in Gattaca.

Yes, and that is such a stunningly rare event and dependent on genetic predispositions from family members that the second part of my post still stands. Polydactyly is relatively common, but fully formed extra digits are somewhat rare, and functioning ones far more rare. Unless his parents carried all the alleles necessary to produce fully-functional polydactyly, the pianist would count as genetically altered/engineered.

What makes you think they didn't? It's not as if we get to actually see the parents of the pianist, and we know that the Gattaca society has a very good ability to see how certain traits will play out. Perhaps the doctors told his parents "Hey, one of your embryos is going to have twelve fully functional fingers instead of ten", and they said "Okay, let's do it"? They could have written the 12-finger version of the piece later, once it became clear he was a skilled pianist.

[Bakustra]

Fully functional extra digits are rare, but have occurred.

Some searching has yielded the following:

http://www.ktvu.com/news/18608582/detail.html

12 functioning fingers, 12 functioning toes. It looks pretty much exactly how it happened in Gattaca.

Yes, and that is such a stunningly rare event and dependent on genetic predispositions from family members that the second part of my post still stands. Polydactyly is relatively common, but fully formed extra digits are somewhat rare, and functioning ones far more rare. Unless his parents carried all the alleles necessary to produce fully-functional polydactyly, the pianist would count as genetically altered/engineered.

What makes you think they didn't? It's not as if we get to actually see the parents of the pianist, and we know that the Gattaca society has a very good ability to see how certain traits will play out. Perhaps the doctors told his parents "Hey, one of your embryos is going to have twelve fully functional fingers instead of ten", and they said "Okay, let's do it"? They could have written the 12-finger version of the piece later, once it became clear he was a skilled pianist.

That wouldn't be genetic engineering in the sense we were talking about, then, though still technically genetic engineering via artificial selection. My point was that he would have to have parents with the necessary alleles to count as not being genetically engineered, not that this was an unlikely scenario.

[Honeyed Pomegranate]

I'd vote for legislation making this enhancement and editing mandatory at the expense of tax-payers. I really don't see any valid excuse for why we would want to continue breeding inferior specimen if given the option.
Considering how genetic sequencing went from a 100,000,000,000 enterprise to something that my peers in the bio chem department can do in their basement for their families, I doubt that the technology would be prohibitively expensive.

[The Kernel]

um... no. The pianist was a genetically-engineered child designed for the sole purpose of being a virtuoso pianist,

You can't conclude that. All we saw was a 12 fingered pianist. Although rare, genetic mutations that result in extra digits are possible, are they not? The parents may well have just selected the 12 fingered baby from their embryo selection when they saw how unique it would make him.

It's possible it was engineered, but we don't have any conclusive evidence to suggest that he was.

Oh for fuck's sake did you actually WATCH the movie? God children were NOT allowed into the upper echelons of society like that, they were strictly low class people. Furthermore, it doesn't fit at ALL with the tone and message of what the movie was trying to say.

As for the genetic engineering question, they were not just embryo screening they were doing full blow genetic engineering. True they talked about screening embryos but that was purely after they had already created a set of perfect children. Watch the scene with the geneticist again--it is clear exactly what is happening.

[sirocco]

Question 1: Given the society in the movie, would you have a genetically enhanced baby?

Well yes! For him to fit in.

Question 2: Would you pay extra for your baby to have superior skills in mathematics? Music? Olympic underwater basket-weaving? If so, what skills, and how much would you pay? Remember, other people have this option too, and who knows how deep their pockets are compared to yours.

Superior skills? not really sure. It's the same as having to choose now between a general school and a specific skill-oriented school. If you choose wrong (and you will 9 out of 10 times), your little guy or girl will certainly have a very crappy life. I'd rather have him be the everyday enhanced kid then trust my education to make him smart enough to use his natural skills.

Question 3: Rewind! It is the beginning of the genetically engineered baby craze. People are still having natural babies, but the technology is available to have a gene-modded baby. Assume that the procedure is completely safe and that there are no side-effects. Would you still tweak your child? And would you pay extra for more tweaks?

As a parent I probably would be torn between wanting to have the best future for my baby and feeling that I am the worst person in the universe for even thinking that he is faulty and should be 'tweaked'. I think that I least I would look for genetic diseases then see with the girlfriend what's best.

[adam_grif]

Oh for fuck's sake did you actually WATCH the movie?

Yeah, I've seen the movie perhaps 6 times.

God children were NOT allowed into the upper echelons of society like that, they were strictly low class people. Furthermore, it doesn't fit at ALL with the tone and message of what the movie was trying to say.

We could do case studies about leaps in logic based on this post. What makes you think that he was one of "god's children" or that I was insinuating he was? The parents probably chose that embryo. Genetic screening with multiple fertilizations massively increases the probability of such a rare condition coming about, and the parents are thus given the option of keeping it if they want it.

As for the genetic engineering question, they were not just embryo screening they were doing full blow genetic engineering. True they talked about screening embryos but that was purely after they had already created a set of perfect children. Watch the scene with the geneticist again--it is clear exactly what is happening.

No, it's not clear that they're doing genetic engineering. He outright says that it's not inserting new traits, it's just selecting the best possible embryo after they eliminate the obviously unacceptable ones such as those with hereditary diseases.

The wiki plot summary is as follows:

The film presents a biopunk vision of a society driven by liberal eugenics. Children of the middle and upper classes are selected through preimplantation genetic diagnosis to ensure they possess the best hereditary traits of their parents.

Please post direct quotes from the film or screen-caps supporting your claims.

[The Kernel]

We could do case studies about leaps in logic based on this post. What makes you think that he was one of "god's children" or that I was insinuating he was? The parents probably chose that embryo. Genetic screening with multiple fertilizations massively increases the probability of such a rare condition coming about, and the parents are thus given the option of keeping it if they want it.

I was actually responding to ShroomMan on this.

No, it's not clear that they're doing genetic engineering. He outright says that it's not inserting new traits, it's just selecting the best possible embryo after they eliminate the obviously unacceptable ones such as those with hereditary diseases.

Idiot, read the goddamn script.

GENETICIST
Your extracted eggs...
(noting the couple's names from
data along the edge of the screen)
...Maria, have been fertilized with...
Antonio's sperm and we have performed an
analysis of the resulting pre-embryos.
After screening we're left with two healthy
boys and two healthy girls. Naturally, no
critical pre-dispositions to any of the major
inheritable diseases. All that remains is
to select the most compatible candidate.

Maria and Antonio exchange a nervous smile.

GENETICIST
First, we may as well decide on gender.
Have you given it any thought?

MARIA
(referring to the toddler
on her knee)
We would like Vincent to have a brother...
you know, to play with.

The Geneticist nods. He scans the data around the edge of the
screen.

GENETICIST
You've already specified blue eyes, dark
hair and fair skin. I have taken the liberty
of eradicating any potentially prejudicial
conditions - premature baldness, myopia,
alcoholism and addictive susceptibility,
propensity for violence and obesity--

MARIA
(interrupting, anxious)
--We didn't want--diseases, yes.

ANTONIO
(more diplomatic)
We were wondering if we should leave some
things to chance.

GENETICIST
(reassuring)
You want to give your child the best possible
start. Believe me, we have enough imperfection
built-in already. Your child doesn't need
any additional burdens. And keep in mind,
this child is still you, simply the best of you.
You could conceive naturally a thousand times
and never get such a result.

Do you honestly think that they did the above without genetic engineering? The guy admitted himself you could conceive naturally a thousand times and not get this result so you think that they managed it with a measly four fertilized eggs? Sure he mentioned that they got four successful candidates out of the procedure so there must have been SOME embryo screening but clearly it wasn't limited to that alone.

And what do you think he meant about taking the liberty to "eradicate prejudicial conditions"? You think he did this as well as let them specify gender, skin color, hair color and intelligence purely through weeding out fertilized embryos? Jesus you are dense.

[The Kernel]

BTW, adam_grif, I found this fascinating piece from the original script that was unfilmed, but clearly shows the intent of the writers. I guess the filmmakers thought the audience would be smart enough to pick up on the genetic engineering thing without it but for the mentally retarded here it is.

GENETICIST
(conspiratorial smile)
I understand. That's already been taken
care of.
(an afterthought)
Now you appreciate I can only work with
the raw material I have at my disposal but
for a little extra...I could also attempt to
insert sequences associated with enhanced
mathematical or musical ability.

MARIA
(suddenly enthused)
Antonio, the choir...

GENETICIST
(interjecting, covering himself)
I have to caution you it's not fool-proof.
With multi-gene traits there can be no guarantees.

ANTONIO
How much extra?

GENETICIST
It would be five thousand more.

Antonio's face falls.

ANTONIO
I'm sorry, there's no way we can.

GENETICIST
Don't worry. You'll probably do just
as well singing to him in the womb.
(rising to end the appointment)
We can implant the most successful
pre-embryo tomorrow afternoon.

Emphasis mine. Are you done denying the obvious?