Ethical Issues In The Movie Gattaca

In the movie Gattaca, a futuristic world is illustrated where people have the opportunity to choose the exact personality traits, physical features, and abilities their baby will have. One scene in the movie shows how DNA can be used to test for one’s inclination towards disease, as well as personality. This brings up several ethical issues about investigating others’ DNA, and brings up the question: “Is this a violation of privacy?” Gattaca depicts a scene where a woman was able to test the saliva from a recent kiss to determine their qualities and chance of disease. Because she was able to see everything about the person, it is a violation of their privacy rights. People have a right not to be have other individuals collect information about them without their consent. Moreover, there is a right to control how much personal information is communicated to others. Since this woman didn’t ask for permission to learn his personal traits, this was definitely a violation of rights. This is worse than a background check, as background checks regard crime, which are on public record, and for the actual safety of a person. In this case, someone checking someone’s personality or inclination towards disease is for trivial purposes, and reveals much more information which has

In fact, in the movie Gattaca, Eugene, even with his near-perfect DNA, was at his best, able to achieve a silver medal. This demonstrates there must be other factors which affect personality, and ability, such as environment, and experience. On that note, there is much more to be learned regarding genes and their influence on human behaviour. While society is very technologically advanced, there is still much more to be