Director and writer of Gattaca, Andrew Niccol, spoke volumes in an interview concerning the genre of science fiction: “I’m drawn to science fiction because it’s sort of a Trojan Horse approach to ideas. It’s easier to deal with serious ideas when you wrap them in some futuristic setting, and people think that this world they’re watching has nothing to do with them, but it actually has everything to do with them.”

No matter how Niccol intended his answer to sound, his words are nothing less than prophetic. Vincent Freeman, protagonist in Gattaca, is a natural born “invalid” with a heart condition and bad eyesight. His credentials are weak when compared to his “valid” peers— individuals who were hand picked as embryos, perfected in a lab, and then implanted in the mother. Motivated by a dream of traveling outer space, Freeman is willing to do anything to join the elite “valids” at the world-renowned observatory named Gattaca. Director Niccol conveys an extraordinary scientific theory through an artful depiction of Vincent, the underdog in a society dominated by genetic prejudices. In Gattaca, the future of our potential children lies in human hands. What is equally exciting as it is unsettling, however, is that the science to do so in our world today is definitely and undeniably possible. Dr. Jeffery Steinberg, director of The Fertility Institutes stated, “In the last two years since we’ve offered gender selection, we’ve seen a huge international onslaught of people that are just interested in balancing their families.”

To understand how modern geneticists can conduct such highly sophisticated surgeries, we must first understand that there was once a humble beginning. In the 1850’s, Gregor Mendel discovered heredity— the tracing of characteristics passed down to successive generations by means of DNA or genes. In other words, heredity is the blonde hair, the brown eyes, and the detached earlobes I got from my parents. Mendel crossbred pea plants and observed their interaction (or lack there of) with the environment to find that genetics had nothing to do with the surrounding area, but all to do with the parent-plants’ traits. In 1904, Charles Davenport ran the biological research station at Cold Spring Harbor, New York. He took fascinated interest in Mendel’s work and furthered the research under the large unknown umbrella of heredity. Genetic variation, hybridization, and natural selection all developed from Davenport’s work, leading researchers to dig deeper into the discovery of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)—the stuff that represents different traits like my blonde hair or my brown eyes. In 1953, researchers James Watson and Francis Crick uncovered another milestone: the double-helix structure of DNA. Similar to a spiraled ladder, its “rungs” contain important genetic coding. From here, it was only a matter of time before the Human Genome Project (HGP) was declared complete in 2003. The HGP attempted and succeeded to identify and map all genes associated with humans. Watson, recipient of the Nobel Prize for the HGP, famously stated, "We used to think our future was in the stars. Now we know it is in our genes."

All these scientists devoted their careers to understanding what genes are and how they work. Dictionary.com offers the definition of evolution as: “the gradual development of something, especially from a simple to a more complex form.” Although evolution is obvious when observed in nature and biology, it is not so apparent when applied to the evolution of ideas: In this case, the idea of genetic

engineering. The HGP mapped out and profiled all human traits possible, which seemed like an ending point for geneticists. Paradoxically, it was the beginning of an entirely new—and controversial—science.

In Gattaca, Vincent’s parents decided against society’s pressure to have an In Vitro Fertilized child of choice, at least for their first kid. What that means is the “archaic” method of natural childbirth in Gattaca stands no chance against the implantation of a perfectly healthy, hand picked embryo into a mother’s uterus. IVF, or “test tube babies,” is an actual method originally developed for couples struggling with infertility. In the 1980s, Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) was developed as a counterpart to the IVF process. PGD screens embryos created from the mother’s egg and the father’s sperm for any life-threatening diseases. PGD, however, is capable of much more than screening just for disease. It can now predict the gender of an embryo, and has potential to predict other traits such as hair color, eye color, and even height. Dr. Mike Hughes played an important role in the development of PGD; however, his skepticism of PGD’s unprecedented abilities does not match the optimism of the doctors’ in Gattaca. Hughes states, “I went into medicine, into science, to diagnose and treat and hopefully cure disease. Your gender is not a disease last time I checked. There’s no pathology, there’s no suffering, there’s no illness. And I don’t think doctors have any business being there.”

I like to think of Gattaca as a house without stairs. The bottom floor is where the supporters of science, the curious researchers, the left-brainers all live. The top floor dwellers are subjective thinkers, the creative intellectuals, and the right-brainers. They live happily, except for the fact that there is no staircase to connect the two floors. Like my unfortunate house, Gattaca offers this idea that science is now so sophisticated that making humans or “playing God” is an actual, feasible feat. Which is to say, quite literally, extraordinary. The other idea that Gattaca offers, although not so blatantly, is the idea that a person’s will or determination can out-do their genetic predisposition. Through the story of Vincent Freeman, the viewer is able to understand emotionally the prejudices, the loneliness, and the ultimate separation that “designer babies” could unintentionally force upon our society, should technology and ethics one day agree to genetic profiling.

Niccol commented on the theme of Gattaca, noting some insightful observations: "I would hate for anyone to look at my film and think it is advocating that you never tamper with genes, because there have been and will be many positive things to come out of this kind of science in terms of curing diseases. But the problem is that blurred line between health and enhancement. How far do you go? Do you consider short-sightedness a disease? Premature balding? Crooked teeth? Where do you draw the line?"