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Comment by TrainedMonkey | Hacker News Reader

Genetic testing is a really cool concept. There is a parallel with the internet, is that for every new person tested value of testing increases for everyone. Sufficient number of people tested should allow us to identify really subtle patterns in genetic code and will be a boon in healthcare and family planning. For example a dating site, that takes genes into account while matching people. Unfortunately there are huge privacy implications to consider.

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It raises a lot of ethical questions. There was a great movie that touched those issues: "Gattaca".

Gattaca was very prescient and thought-provoking movie, one of my favorites. The story described a future where individuals are allowed or denied opportunity based on a genetic test at birth. I think the point was that technology cannot predict or limit the human heart.

That same idea applies here too. This article illustrates that there will be other, nuanced perils to bioinformatics besides rewarding genetic lottery winners and punishing losers. Genetic testing is a powerful tool that should be used wisely. Of course, it will be a bumpy road until society settles on what "wisely" means.

Well, Gattaca raises a bigger point that just "Should we discriminate based on DNA?" In Gattaca, people can choose to genetically enhance their offspring to attain certain qualities. The protagonist's parents chose to make him in a "natural" way and hence he was considered to be the less extreme version of Untermensch. The director chose to portray such policies / societal norms as morally wrong (primarily through an emotional appeal). But it doesn't touch upon the other side of this issue. How well did humanity perform after humans were artificially evolved into what by some could be considered a new species. Except a few discriminatory cases -- much less than say Women and other minorities experience at the moment -- Gattaca doesn't seem too horrible, with space ships and space colonization. The movie can be thought of as depicting a Neanderthal that happens to be stuck in a Homo Sapiens Sapiens dominated society, and after facing adversity -- eventually succeeds. I think the issue is larger than that. Perhaps it's trying to make us consider the possible collective benefits of Humankind as a whole if it were allowed to fast-track its natural evolutionary processes. After all, if all humans became "Homo Sapiens Sapiens Sapiens" wouldn't we be better off?

People are still forced to work under threat of starvation, upper class people still work in open plan offices, lower class people still handle dangerous chemicals.

Despite space ships the depicted civilization didn't improve a lot. (and that's just the work conditions - leisure time practically doesn't exist in the movie)

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