Genetics, Monstrosity, and the Pursuit of Perfection

Overview: DNA in Modern Society

The growth of the corporate police state has always been a recurring theme throughout the genre of science fiction. While most of these sci-fi depictions of futuristic dystopias are rooted in paranoia and imaginations run rampant from simple initial premises, with the advancement of technology in the modern age many of the scenarios depicted in previous generations of science fiction seem more and more like a plausible reality. Chief among these is the mapping of the human genome, and the vast wealth of information discovered in DNA.

DNA, or Deoxyribonucleic acid contains the genetic information which guides the development and growth of almost all living organisms. In humans, DNA has been found to contain information determining a number of traits, including physical attributes such as eye or hair color, as well as physiological information such as an individual’s susceptibility to various diseases. Since the DNA structure of every individual is different, DNA also serves as a unique “genetic fingerprint” that has been developed into one of the most reliable methods of identification, something which has seen applications in forensic investigations.

The advent of DNA technology has made many positive contributions to society. In the field of forensics, DNA evidence is now regularly used to identify and convict criminals, as well as exonerate wrongfully convicted ones. Genetic testing for susceptibility to diseases has enabled individuals to make better health choices; for example, those genetically at risk for diabetes can plan their dietary lifestyles accordingly to avoid developing the disease. Widespread genetic screening has also become common – currently in all hospitals in the United States newborn infants are genetically tested for the genetic disorder phenylketonuria, a disorder which can lead to brain damage if left undetected, but which can be effectively treated if the disorder is known.

Despite the numerous positive contributions of DNA technology, the general populace has also come to identify a “dark side” of the technology. Many contemporary commentators raise policy concerns over the rapid expansion of its use and the prevalence of DNA information, emphasizing the need for safeguards to protect privacy and restrict wanton access to individual’s genetic information. Fiction writers and alarmists, meanwhile, imagine the current state of DNA technology taken to their most extreme potential extents. Whether the worlds they paint are actually plausible in the end do not matter – they provoke thoughts of and are representations themselves of the actual fears and fantasies of the technology, painting various perverted pictures of a potential future reality; thus the fears presented in fiction closely echo and feed the actual fears of the public. In most of these visions, an uncontrollable human construct, enabled by technology, is the monster which has taken over and perverts the traditional human way of life.

Analyzing Monstrosity through Fiction: Unadulterated Fears

One of the most prominent examples of this fatalistic future world-view is presented in the 1997 film Gattaca. In this film, the same life-saving genetic screening technology which today helps prevent disease has been taken to its extreme form: genetic screening not only marks potential disease, nor simply defines physiological traits, but now defines the entirety of the individual itself – its qualities, its temperament, its potential in life. As an infant, the main protagonist, Ethan Hawke’s character Vincent, is genetically screened and is found to have nearsightedness, a congenital heart defect, and a life expectancy of 30.2 years, dooming him to a life among the genetically inferior “invalid” caste. In contrast, the upper caste of “valids” is a pure product of rampant DNA technology and the pursuit of perfection - gene therapy, used today to help treat disorders, is presented in extreme form by the proliferation of ‘designer babies’, or babies with selectable traits based on gene manipulation.

The advancement of DNA technology, like all technology, is an effort on the part of humans as a race to extend their capabilities. While the natural capabilities of humans are locked in place by innate physiology, it is through technology that humans are able to extend their capabilities, in an effort to become more productive, to do work with greater ease or at a faster rate, to achieve more comprehensive thought and understanding, to strive toward bettering and ultimately perfecting human society and the human race. The world in Gattaca is formed precisely out of that pursuit for perfection, using DNA technology as a means to achieve it. When Vincent, his parents’ first child, is conceived and born naturally (without the aid of modern genetic technology), he is a human filled with genetic imperfection, determined to develop disease and die young. This repulsed and horrified his parents, so much so that Vincent’s father refused to name his son after him. “Like most other parents then, they wanted their next child to be conceived in what has become the natural way” – for their second child, Anton, Vincent’s parents embraced genetic manipulation as a means to create a better, or even perfect child – a “son worthy of my (Vincent’s) father’s name.”

By pursuing perfection so relentlessly however, Vincent’s parents and the human society of Gattaca ultimately pervert the concept of humanity. While humans have always strived for success and perfection, in the society of Gattaca the ideals of success and perfection have been confined to a single parameter: the quality of the individual’s genetic profile. The understanding of DNA allows for it to be comprehended as such a measure of quality; the technology developed to manipulate it allows for society to pursue that quality to the greatest possible extent. The human race’s traditional strive to improve and perfect itself is subsequently replaced with the singular quest to perfect the human genome, and as a result allows DNA to replace the human itself. In the world of Gattaca, DNA rather than humanity takes a dominant role. It, more than either parent, “creates” the human, wholly determines physiological makeup and the course of an individual’s life, and defines humans into a distinct upper-caste and sub-human lower caste. Unlike the dynamic and ever-evolving nature of humans with free thought and will, the DNA-defined human is static, with genetic code hard-wired permanently in his body, defining a person’s traits and behaviors, much like a programmed computer. With genetic code being static, there is no advancement beyond the defined potential of abilities, no latitude in the individual’s pre-determined course of life, and no social mobility between castes. Confined to only what DNA mandates them to be, humans to an extent have no free will, and rather than dynamic, free-thinking individuals with intangible and unique individual traits, become simple constructs defined and created by various combinations of genetic code. In the world of Gattaca, the pursuit of perfection through genetics redefines the perfection of humanity and the human individual to be like a machine or computer program – a simple amalgamation of interchangeable genetic code and an assembly of lesser, modulated parts, rather than any independent, individual entity represented by a sentient human mind.

While this society presented in Gattaca is monstrous, the actual monster which creates this world is the DNA technology itself. DNA technology enables society to fixate and depend on the information provided by genetic code, and exploit the power to manipulate DNA. The information about an individual which can be gleamed from genetic code itself provides the basis for society to base itself upon genetics, prejudging individuals based on DNA, defining the class division between the genetically perfect (“valids”) and the genetically imperfect (“invalids”), and creating the perverted, genetics-dependent society that is presented.

The ability to manipulate DNA enables society to fully exploit this knowledge. Knowing which genes are “best”, society cannot resist the opportunity to actively breed “perfect” humans (that is, humans with perfect genetic code), further reinforcing the divide between the genetic haves and have-nots. Lastly, the abundantly available access to individual DNA information, by compliance or force, enables this society to be enforced – it has become societal norm and even expectation for individuals to submit to DNA tests at nearly every junction, from DNA used by employers to assess a potential job candidate or by men and women to assess a potential mate, to regular urine sample tests during the workday, to blood sample verification just to gain admittance into a building. With this information readily available, the information gleamed from DNA and the uses of technology can be readily applied.

This runaway imagination of what DNA technology may become, and may transform society into, isn’t only limited to the realm of fiction. In an article in the technology and science journal The New Atlantis, Christine Rosen describes the ultimate effect of a universal DNA database, and the mass collection of genetic information, “We may come to know too much about ourselves to truly live in freedom; and our public and private institutions may know so much about us that equal treatment and personal liberty may become impossible.” While Rosen may be a bit hyperbolic and alarmist, she echoes many of the same fears realized in Gattaca in discussing a very real development today: the buildup of a universal DNA database, containing the genetic code of every person.

The creation of a universal DNA database is perhaps one of the largest developments in the power of DNA since its development as an identification tool in crime investigations. A universal DNA database would eventually keep genetic records of every individual in the world, and presently several large national or state databases are maintained and developed for the purposes of identification in forensics investigations. To Christine Rosen, such a database, providing knowledge of every individual’s genetic information, would enable the society presented in Gattaca: by accessing and examining the DNA which may foretell our lives, “we may come to know too much about ourselves to truly live in freedom”, and governments and businesses accessing this same DNA information about individuals “may know so much about us that equal treatment and personal liberty may become impossible.” In the present day, these concerns may sound exaggerated – the dystopian world of Gattaca seems far removed from what society could possibly transform into in the near future. The underlying fears that Gattaca is based on, however, are still very real in present-day society. A very real contemporary example of the ramifications of predeterminism encountered in Gattaca is the modern diagnosis of Huntington’s disease – a debilitating genetic disorder leading to inevitable death, presently without any known cure. Though learning of such a disease would not change any outcome, the bliss of ignorance affords a certain liberty, whereas knowledge strips away personal freedom by making death by the disease inevitable – fate is no longer within the hands of the individual, but rather has already been determined by one’s genetic code.

Policing the Borders of the Possible: Changes in the Genetics-based Society

DNA technology is a monster which “polices the borders of the possible”. The potential of the information and uses contained within genetic code are enormous. With the power to predict genetic diseases, identify people, and the possible potential to cure disease, grow organs, predict outcomes of human life, clone humans, create humans outright, and modify or enhance the human species, are all capabilities of DNA which have the power to greatly benefit society. DNA technology can revolutionize the medical world and save lives, all but eliminate crime, streamline economy, and evolve the human species as a whole – the exact utopia which humans strive to pursue through technology. At the same time, each of those same powers can lead society to complete ruin, plunging the human world into the various dystopias imagined in fiction – a world which strives for perfection so hard that it loses or sacrifices its humanity, and enslaves individuals to the ‘greater society’ governed by technology and the pursuit of perfection.

More generally, the great hope and fear of DNA technology is the dual potential of technology, and even Power itself, to create both gods and slaves: in well-meaning hands, it can empower society and allow it to achieve great things, but in corrupt or ignorant hands the abuse of such power instead threatens to enslave the population under it. Thus, the fear of DNA technology is actually comprised of two elements: the scary capabilities of the technology itself, and fear of its misuse or misemployment by the potentially corrupt or ignorant intentions of those who wield it, both fears that feed into the vision of a totalitarian police state enforced by technology and stem from a single, common insecurity: the loss of the individual.

The darker capabilities of DNA technology – or what they may grow into – are both frightful and dominating. DNA technology enables genetic tests which can reveal information about a person’s entire life, enables genetic manipulation to selectively breed new children, but most importantly and more horrendously, provides for a society to be built based upon the capabilities of this technology. Like the advent of money, and the capitalist system, or motorized transports, or computers, and then the internet, DNA technology represents much more than simply the tool that it is; DNA technology, like all technology, represents a way of life, a revolutionized one from one without it, and a change pervaded at all levels. With the development and implementation of such technologies, it soon becomes a normal and expected mode of life. Today society expects individuals to do business and be productive occupations in order to attain wealth, to travel with the speed of motorized transport, and proficiently use all the resources provided by computers and the internet; those who refuse to live a lifestyle involving the attainment of wealth to support oneself (derisively called “lazy”) or use computers as a resource (derisively called “technophobic” or “archaic”), indeed anyone who refuses to utilize the technology provided for them, are rejected from society for not meeting the societal standard, whether that be defined in terms of productivity or knowledge or morality or sociability. Genetics, conceivably could become just such a revolutionary technology, allowing for enhancement in humans that is no longer merely an enhancement, but a new raised standard, defined in productivity, knowledge, morality, or sociability quantified by one’s genetic profile, that leaves behind those that are unwilling to embrace such enhancements of genetic technology.

At one level, the personal level, DNA technology can, and already has, changed the personal lifestyles of individuals. In Gattaca, the discovery of Vincent’s fragility through his genetic testing as a newborn caused the rest of his childhood to become overly sheltered and protected, with his parents treating him as if “every skinned knee and runny nose was treated as a fatal threat.” In real-life, similar situations are also created in the diagnosis of terminal genetic diseases. Like the diagnosis of Huntington’s disease mentioned before, such a disease is incurable; a positive diagnosis may mean that the patient is put into a hospitable in palliative care, to have his inevitably deteriorating health monitored and cared for, rather than freely living the life he would have. Like the society in Gattaca, DNA technology threatens to dominate the personal life of individuals. Telling a presently healthy individual that his DNA reveals that his probability of developing heart disease is 90% is quite a shock, not only because of the severity of the disease but because it can be foretold with such certainty: a 90% certainty, ascertained by undeniable, unchangeable, factual DNA evidence. That individual now leads a life exceedingly aware of his condition, which likely influences him to be exceedingly aware of his dietary habits, his exercise regimen, his weight, his blood tests – a life completely centered around his 90% certain diagnosis of life-threatening heart disease, and a life spent pursuing the other 10% chance that he will avoid it. In discussing ethical issues of the diagnosis of terminal disease, medical student Michael Hemphill poses the very same issue: “… a positive test may leave a person at age 20 faced with radical choices concerning marriage, progeny, vocation – without any vestige of the former hope of remaining one of the unaffected.” Though it is, if anything, a psychological confinement, the knowledge afforded by DNA as a predictor of life binds the individual to it – where before there were, in the individual’s mind, endless possibilities to life, the certainty of DNA traps the individual to the course it predicts as the only possible outcome; the predeterminism of DNA is presented in the stead of the freedom to determine one’s own destiny.

At a greater level, DNA technology threatens to drastically change society. Society, essentially, is nothing more than a set of expectations for the conduct of its denizens. Thus, a change in society is still a change in the lifestyle of the individual – not one imposed by the individual’s own reaction to technology, but one imposed on individuals by society’s reaction.

Like the society seen in Gattaca, DNA technology is not simply a tool – the human genome becomes the sole basis of society and governs the way of life. Fictional depictions like the movie Gattaca and contemporary discussions and examples provide glimpses of what people fear will happen:

In Gattaca, the same ultra-precaution that Vincent’s parents take with his health transcends into society’s precaution too – the school that Vincent initially attends expels him after he falls on the ground, telling his parents that “the insurance won’t cover it” given Vincent’s fragile health. The same concern is echoed in Christine Rosen’s concerns about individual’s genetic information being availably known, where she tells the hypothetical story of a woman who had herself genetically tested for breast cancer:

“The company that performed the test assured her that her sample would remain anonymous, the results known only to her, although the disclaimer she signed offered few specifics about these privacy protections. Four years later, she is denied insurance coverage. Why? The insurance company purchased the private lab’s DNA database, ostensibly for research purposes, and cross-referenced it with its own. They red-flagged the names of people who had been tested for breast cancer.”

In both cases, all of the traditional reasoning and evidence is thrown out – there are no prior medical history or present-day symptoms considered. The decisions to deny the woman insurance coverage and expel Vincent because of his medical liability are based solely on the risks that the DNA predicts are probable.

In the worlds of Gattaca and Minority Report, a futuristic film about using precognition to detect “pre-crime”, or crimes before they occur, genetic, and more broadly biometric, testing has enabled criminal investigations to evolve into mass dragnets, substituting the traditional merit of suspicion based on evidence with a broad suspicion that every member of a community is guilty until they are cleared, reversing the traditional judicial ideal that suspects are “innocent until proven guilty.” In Gattaca, Vincent is inexplicably linked to a murder, with the only evidence for his suspicion being a stray piece of genetic information, which itself offers at best a dubious link to the crime. Nonetheless, his identity is hunted down relentlessly – in and out of work each day he passes through entry gates that take blood samples from his thumb, has urine samples taken at work on a regular basis, and faces roadblocks checking blood samples and cheek swabs, all searching to find a match for his genetic information. Similarly, in Minority Report, Tom Cruise’s fugitive character John Anderton is hunted down as he travels through a futuristic world filled with ubiquitous optical scanners, which, among other things scan for a match to Anderton’s identity. In either case, both characters must go to extra-ordinary extremes to avoid detection: Anderton must remove and transplant in a new set of eyes to avoid the optical scanners which search for him; Vincent adopts the entire genetic identity of another person, using another’s blood, urine, hair, skin, and heartbeat to substitute for his own. Arguably, however, the pursuits of Vincent and John Anderton are justifiable and reasonable applications of available technology. Both characters are linked, however tenuously and erroneously, to crimes, and the relentlessness of their pursuit isn’t as far removed from standard criminal pursuits with solid evidence in the present as it is a reflection of the type of pursuit the capabilities of biometric technology allow. Though both stories focus on the journeys of their respective protagonists, the real distortion of the futuristic societies portrayed is not that the main characters, who have at least some modicum of suspicion, are pursued, but that every other member of society is simultaneously being screened and searched and pursued in the exact same manner, as if they, too, bore the same incriminating evidence and level of suspicion. The evocations of the police state are readily apparent – law enforcement not only subjects criminals, and those with behavioral situations or in circumstances similar to criminals, to its control, but now also subjects the everyday citizen, whose freedom is no longer a guaranteed and protected right, but one that must be constantly earned through a biometric validation that the individual does not possess the identity of a wanted criminal. As much as the worlds of Gattaca and Minority Report reflect the totalitarian police state, they more importantly reflect a police state dominated by and based upon genetics. In the new world, the innocent are no longer defined as those having no evidence linking them to the crime, and similarly suspicion is no longer defined by the evidence that proves it. The new society is based on genetics, and its infallibility as an identifier, making the definition of guilt and innocence clear and simple: the innocent are simply those whose genetic profiles do not match the suspect being sought; the suspected are those who have not yet validated their genetic identity as innocent; and the guilty are those whose genetic profiles validate as a match.

Such a prospect is in fact far from fiction, and not so far removed from the present. In 1987, Alec Jeffries, a British geneticist, conducted the first use of DNA profiling in a criminal investigation, two unsolved rape cases in Narborough, Leicestershire in central England. Much like the 1997 Gattaca, and a decade before the film was produced, Jeffries conducted a dragnet-type screen of all the males in the areas surrounding the crime scene, over 4,000 samples in total, attempting to find a genetic match to the semen evidence found on the victim. The investigative mindset was much the same as the one that would be presented in fictionalized worlds to come – individuals would clear their name by testing out negative for a match, and the guilty would be found eventually by testing out positive or being found out from a group of suspects narrowed down to those who had not yet proven their innocence through genetics. Since then, the history of criminal investigations has seen the same scene continually repeated, and with increasing frequency. In recent years, the growth of and push for a universal database, with genetic profiles of every person in a population would allow for complete universal dragnets. As far off into the future as most science fiction plots are portrayed, the reality, or at least the beginnings, of genetic drag-netting and a world with innocence and guilt judged on genetic identity, is already here.

The information that one’s genetic profile holds about one’s future life also paves the way for a society that judges its individuals solely on what his or her genetics predict. Gattaca presents the complete embodiment of this mindset – DNA serves as the only measure of quality in any individual. As a child, Vincent was told to give up on his hopes of becoming an astronaut by his parents who, looking at his genes, had already resigned him to heart failure and an early death – “You have to be realistic.” Interviewing for jobs, Vincent soon discovers that none of his other credentials or skills or education meant anything to employers – “My real résumé was in my cells.” Returning later, this time a “borrowed ladder” with the superior genetic profile of another man, Vincent now finds acceptance into the elite society which had previously shunned him because of his lowly genetics. Whereas before he was rejected everywhere he applied, no matter what was listed on his resume, in applying to the Gattaca space agency he is accepted as soon as a urine sample verifies that he is a genetic “valid” – genetically qualified enough to work at the Gattaca space agency – without any need for a resume or interview or any other qualifications.

More than an expectation of large, faceless entities like corporations and the government, however, the genetic qualification is also an expectation of society that pervades even into the community level, the level of individual relationships between people. Vincent’s father, Antonio, changes his mind about naming his first-born son after himself, after he discovers the horrendous condition of Vincent’s genetic profile, and the kind of person it would mean he would grow into. He reserves his name for his second-born son, who this time is genetically engineered to be the child Antonio envisioned his son to be. Later on, a woman appears at a DNA profiling lab, with the saliva of a man she just kissed fresh on her lips, attempting to evaluate his qualities as a potential mate based upon the genetic profiling and analysis the lab returns. In both of these cases, the quality of the individual is not judged by anything else but their genetic profile. At birth, Vincent’s father already assumes his first son to be a failure, and his second to be a success the moment their genetic profiles are analyzed. The woman at the profiling lab obviously wishes to judge the potential of her mate not by any of his manifested characteristics in real life, but by what his genetic profile says that he really is.

Beyond DNA developing into a measuring stick for individual quality is the ramifications this has on the way society treats individuals. At all societal, communal, and personal levels, the people of Gattaca have come to equate quality of genes with the quality of a person, and have subsequently come to expect quality genes in order for a person to be acceptable to society. Those who don’t have the genes to qualify are deemed unacceptable, or “invalid”, and are outcasted into an inferior workforce and an inferior social community. This is similar to modern times, where societal standards exist that make requirements for acceptability into that society: there are standards of morality, standards of productivity, standards of sociability, and those who don’t meet those standards are similarly shunned and outcasted. The difference lies in the definition of such “standards” – where as in today’s society, such standards exist in a general sense, but are ambiguous and most importantly open to interpretation, genetic profiling allows the society portrayed in Gattaca to make clear definitions of its standards of acceptability, and individuals who do and do not meet them. In Vincent’s words, “Today discrimination is a science.”

The result is a distinct class system, between the have and have-nots, not unlike caste systems which exist today and have existed ever since the advent of human societies. The distinction between classes is different from modern, Western, and capitalist societies, however, and is similar to older, more brutal distinctions because the distinguishing feature of future society is one’s own DNA profile, as intrinsic and innate and static as marks such as race or nobility ever were. Though such divisions occurred in modern society, the redeeming aspect was societal mobility – no matter how lowly the individual or what the parameter of success, it remained within possibility and hope that success and acceptance was attainable. Even if one were not born into the wealthy class, the openness of a largely capitalist and free-market economy allowed almost anyone with enough dedication, business-saviness, or sheer luck to improve their own financial status until they could be accepted into the society of wealth. The openness of democratic government allowed anyone with enough dedication and charisma to attain influential power. With morality and sociability ascribed to the actions and temperament of any individual, it was simply a matter of willingness on the individual’s part to be morally and socially accepted, or even redeemed, into society. Alternatively, the ambiguity of such societal standards always made it possible that society itself may change and evolve its standards. The key difference of a futuristic, DNA-dominated society is that its divisions are neither dynamic nor permeable: the science and factuality behind DNA allows it to be a clear and resolute dividing line in society’s standard of acceptability, and the innate and static nature of DNA means that there is nothing any individual can do to change their acceptability.

The Monstrous Utopia: Inherent Monstrosity in Lack of Appropriate Societal Context

Each of these changes that DNA technology brings forth may in fact have perfect merit - in principle. Already, and conceivably to an even greater extent in the future, genetics play a major role in the risk of a large number of diseases – a valid informative tool that insurance companies can use to assess risk. Similarly in forensics, although the link between DNA evidence at the scene and the crime itself may be tenuous, the pursuit of someone who appears likely to have been at the scene and may have had involvement is quite within the realm of police interests, and the use of DNA identification, even in mass dragnets or with a universal database, is an extremely accurate method of linking a person with such genetic evidence. Even the prospect of evaluating genetic profiles to assess qualities of an individual is sound – if technology were to develop to the point where truly accurate evaluations could be made on skill levels or predispositions, these findings could be just as valid as test scores or resume credentials to assess an individual. The many potential pitfalls aside, the genetics based society, in principle, seems perfectly logical and fair. Why then, is such technology never perceived in such positive light?

As monstrous as the world may seem to a modern-day audience, the society in Gattaca is obviously a functioning one – the world is orderly and operations hum along, driven by an elite workforce which has been perfected by engineered genetics. The monstrosity perceived in Gattaca’s perfect-society-in-principle is a personal one, and one brought about partially by viewing society from a present-day rather than futuristic context. Vincent is the personification of the modern-day individual in such a society, a genetically inferior individual compared to humans engineered to perfection, attempting to make his place and prove his capability despite what his genetics mandate, and thus modern audiences identify themselves in the same role. The monstrous injustice to Vincent is the denial of his right to opportunity – because DNA is static, he is viewed as a pre-programmed, unchangeable machine limited to his intrinsic DNA. However valid this assessment may be, and however accurately society can evaluate Vincent through genetics, neither Vincent nor modern audiences are able to accept this because they frame the views of such a society into contemporary Western society, where free-market capitalism, democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and equal opportunity are sacred and long-held tenets that have long allowed for the potential of societal mobility and boundless capability. Gattacan society strips these rights away, and assigns a static, quantified societal status and finite capability based on DNA. Though the principle of Gattacan society may be sound, with regard to realistic human limits and creating the most efficient and harmonious society, it is one that contemporary audiences refuse to accept because it, by definition of a society based solely on genetics, necessarily removes rights which are considered sacred and unalienable.

The Sum of All Fears: Genetics-based Totalitarian Society

Principle aside, each of the changes possibly brought on by DNA technology have ramifications that evoke various degrees of concern, alarm, and fear in and of themselves. In the medical world the risk-assessment-based insurance companies may be transformed or disappear entirely in the face of definite DNA evidence. In forensics, the development of genetic evidence may develop into a reliance on genetic evidence and dragnet profiling, depicted in Gattaca and voiced by many, a reliance that may ultimately weaken forensic science and leave it open for exploit. Taken on their own, these changes affect only one aspect of life, and the consequences are relatively trivial. Taken together however, the individual changes brought on by DNA technology accumulate to result in a fundamentally changed society that places the human genome as a governing body – the basis for a totalitarian government, if you will – that governs the lifestyle of individuals and removes the autonomy to govern themselves.

In a future world where lives are lived under a foretold and unvarying course, under a society that operates under the expectation that individuals can only follow their foretold course, a world where work and social prospects are evaluated by genetic profile rather than any actual achievement or merit, where the distinction between guilt and innocence must be continually validated by a test of DNA, each of these changes from our present society is frightening in its own way. True monstrosity isn’t realized, however, until all of these changes in society are brought together. Alone, the changes brought forth by DNA technology are only individual fears – the fear of discovering some debilitating, incurable disease; the fear of being turned down for health insurance; the fear of being unqualified for work for want of genetics; the fear of being inexplicably linked to crime solely because of a tie to genetic evidence – but taken together those changes define a new society that is wholly dependent on genetics as the basis under which it operates. Where society today is dynamic and diverse, the genetics-based society of the future appears singular and rigid. In modern society the goals of individuals and ideals of “perfection” or “success” are highly variable, and though current society is still a very scientific and logic-based one, conclusions can be founded upon different paths of logic that are subject to open interpretations. In contrast, in the futuristic genetics-based society there is only one ideal – the highest quality genetic profile – and success is similarly defined as possessing such genes. This mindset is entrenched with the full confidence and belief of society’s denizens; except for our rebellious protagonists, no one ever recognizes the possibility that genetics and pre-crime may not be as absolute and definitive as thought. In Gattaca, Vincent’s genetic profile is assumed to be definitive of his life. Before he ever has a chance to prove his failure and validate his DNA’s prediction, his aspirations are rejected by his family throughout childhood; he is already rejected by his father at birth; and already rejected by employers before any job interview – all decisions operating under the singular logic that the only possibility for success is the potential that one’s genes allow for; Gore Vidal’s character of Director Josef of the Gattaca space agency, emblematic of the film’s gene-based culture, remarks, “No one exceeds their potential.” The future world is perhaps the scientific and logic-based society of today taken to an extreme, with facts and logic pointing to one single conclusion which is taken, almost fanatically, as an absolute truth. Similarly, in the pre-crime society presented in Minority Report, the belief in precognition’s ability to prophesize future crimes is absolute – perpetrators are never allowed for the possibility that their free will may still allow them to change or stop their actions.

In this way, the genetics-based society very much resembles the totalitarian police state. Unlike the free and open society which is composed of and defined by its citizens, the totalitarian police state is a governing body of society removed from its actual constituents, who rather than composing society are now merely living under it. The genetics society is not the traditional totalitarian police state, however – unlike Stalin’s Soviet Union, the society based on DNA technology is not one borne out of fear or force, but is rather one that the denizens willingly impose upon themselves. Like Hitler’s Nazi Germany was built upon a fervent hyper-nationalism, the genetics society is built upon an infallible and almost religious confidence in the truth offered by DNA and its factual, scientific backing.

What makes the threat of a genetics-based society especially potent, however, is that while most all of the old fanaticsm and prejudice based on race, religion, nationality were simple ignorance and delusions of self-superiority – and in time could be rationalized away and resolved – DNA promises to be the first form of discrimination with a logical and scientific basis. Genes, unlike skin color or nationality or religion, actually do tell something about the human individual, and distinguishing “desirable” and “undesirable” characteristics of individuals is certainly conceivable. If the severe yet ultimately fallacious prejudices of anti-semitism allowed Hitler to commit atrocious crimes against humanities, or centuries of baseless racism allowed African slaves in the Americas to be subjugated as second-class citizens, even after legal emancipation, then the threat of genetic discrimination to impose its will on members of society is not only entirely plausible, but made all the more dangerous because its basis cannot be refuted as mere ignorance or injustice.

Thus, the advancements in DNA technology which allow genetic profiles to become informative and quantifiable measures of individuals enables the creation of a society which fixates and even defines itself on these traits, something made more palatable by the fact that genetic quantification is substantiated by reason and science, rather than base human prejudice. Subsequently this genetic society, if taken far enough, has the potential to become a totalitarian society dominated by such genetic quantifications. As shown in Gattaca, such a society creates a dividing line between the societally acceptable and unacceptable that is imposed on the population – in this case the division was between the genetically superior “valids” and the genetically inferior “invalid” castes. The “invalid” Vincent is unfit for society, and thus he is entirely excluded from having aspirations, from having social relationships with those genetically superior, from joining the respectable workforce. In totalitarian societies, however, where standards are not simple societal expectations but societal impositions, discrimination runs both ways. In Hitler’s totalitarian Third Reich, the genetic discrimination of Gattaca took the form of hyper-racism, resulting in vast numbers of minority and “undesireable” groups like the Jewish, the Gypsies, and the disabled or mutilated to not only be excluded from everyday acceptable society, but excluded from being human beings as well. At the same time, however, the same standards that excluded the unacceptable were imposed on those members of accepted society who had to uphold the superiority and righteousness of the ‘master Aryan race’. Max Schmeling, a celebrated – and societally acceptable – German boxer during the pre-WWII era, fell into disgrace with Hitler after he lost his boxing championship, and thus a claim of pride and supremacy, to an “unacceptable” – the African-American Jack Johnson. Though they were acceptable by the societal standard, this acceptability needed to be constantly validated; in the case of Nazi Germany, members of society needed to constantly assert a superiority over inferior races. In the DNA-based society of Gattaca, the genetically gifted face the same imposition of the genetic standard. Jude Law’s character, Jerome Eugene Morrow, whose identity Vince assumes, was an elite member of society possessing a nearly perfect genetic profile. After an accident leaves his legs paralyzed, Jerome loses his one asset in life – the ability to use his superior genetics to perform as a top athlete, and privately falls from grace into a life of alcohol and prostitutes. With the capability to utilize his genetics lost, at the end of the film the broken-down Jerome commits suicide, no longer acceptable to the societal standard and thus no longer belonging in society.

Ultimately, the monstrosity of such a totalitarian genetic society is the same as any society governed by totalitarianism – the imposed societal standards strip away much of the freedom of the individual. The monstrosity of the genetic totalitarian society is compounded by the inherent monstrosity of DNA technology – even beyond the societal standards imposed by ideal genetics, DNA technology carries ramifications at the personal level: the complex issues of genetic predeterminism – knowing the future, and having that future set in stone; or human-definition issues that break individuals down to combinations of genetic code and make them more machines or programs than living, sentient organisms with independent thought and being. DNA technology polices the border of the possible – at the personal level, developing and understanding this technology would give rise to inevitable questions of purpose, whenever the prospect of predeterminism and the definition of being are encountered; at the societal level, it enables the conception of a totalitarian society based on genetics that threatens to enslave the human race under the very technology it uses. In both cases, free will and the autonomy of the individual is stripped away, either by a scientific predeterminism or an overbearing totalitarian society. Thus, DNA technology is a forbidden monster because its rampant development threatens to bring about the downfall of humanity. At the same time, it is for those very same reasons that the technology excites fascination – the human race, constantly striving to improve itself in the pursuit of perfection, can not help but indulge in optimism, and wonder what utopia technology may bring.