Gattaca (1997)

Last night, on a colleague's recommendation I watched Gattaca(1997). A very interesting film indeed, and one that provides a surprisingly mature and humanistic take on the complex issues surrounding the use of genetic screening.

You are wondering why "complex", isnt it an open and shut case of being plainly wrong?

There is an operational issue associated with genetic screening (to make hiring decisions), that I think hasnt been resolved even today.

As an example: suppose there is a job requiring a person to look at a flashing light and based on it's color press the appropriate button -- when the color flashes red, a red button on the panel is to be pressed within 5 seconds, and when the light is green or not flashing, no action is to be performed. So, it turns out that there is a single vacancy available for this job and we seek to find the "appropriate" candidate. What would be a rational approach to pick the one appropriate from the 50 applications for the job?

As such, to perform this job a person would need to have the basic physical capability for color identification and a certain level of eye-hand coordination. So, at the basic level, the very job description results in a separation of the group of 50 candidates into two groups -- A, those who possess the physical capability to perform the task, and B, those who do not have these capabilities. With regard to human categories, A would tend to coincide with a notion of "normal" people, and B coincide with those who have physical disabilities related to color-vision and eye-hand coordination, whether due to age or "abnormalities". This separation is based on a rational considerations of competence alone but at the same time it is also clearly discriminatory in the sense of separating the "capables" from the "incapables". Is this fair/acceptable? Is there a consistent way to conceptually resolve this scenario (no, Social Darwinism is not an acceptable solution!!)?

In Gattaca, this is taken several steps further where genetic screening is used to discriminate between those suited for space-expeditions and those who are not. At every step it is apparent that the "valids" are indeed physically "superior" to Vincent (the protagonist) who is an "in-valid" (i.e. they can run faster, swim faster, etc). However, the issue in the movie is that genetic screening as the only method of screening results in false negatives (i.e. could say that X is "incapable", when X is indeed capable). It is this operational shortcoming -- the possibility for false negatives -- that forms the basis for the film.

Now, on operational grounds one could argue that if the battery of tests were more comprehensive then such false negatives would be impossible, and an act of fraud like what Vincent perpetrates would in fact be unethical and dangerous putting other lives at risk. So to return to my main point: While the operational limitations and the possibility of mistakes is often the source for outcry, even in our present times discrimination based on the criterion of "competence" to resolve competition wouldnt make many people cringe especially when performed accurately with the tools and methods of science. How is this to be resolved?