I recently watched the movie GATTACA, a look at one possible outcome of an advanced eugenics driven world. Eugenics is just a fancy word for improving the genetic population,usually used only for humans populations. This can be done through selective breeding, or other high tech methods like designer babies.
Alright so back to GATTACA, in the movie children are primary genetically superior test tube babies and the entire application process to jobs, schools, even dates has been replaced by a simple genetic code reading to test for aptitude. So the plot of the movie is that a child born by normal conception fakes his identity and genes to get a high profile job and he excels at it proving that hard work and determination are better than superior genes. A point I agree whole heartedly with.
So can this future really happen? First of all can your genes really determine aptitude? Many studies are coming out that determine the cause for mental handicaps and what in our genes cause them, but I do not see this drastically improving intelligence for those without handicaps. If you know of any studies that say differently please let me know. Secondly the eugenics done in GATTACA does not make super-humans, it just takes the best traits from each parent and applies them to the child. Even the parents best attributes combined could make a below average human. Finally humans have been practicing eugenics since their existence. We natural strive to find the best mate possible. This ensure that other half of the genes our child receives are the best possible and our progeny will excel. And even after 25000 years the human species has not broken itself into classes.
Right now we have no idea why people like Albert Einstein and Descartes were so smart. Did their genes predispose them to their genius or was it events in their life drove them genius? I feel that genes may have played a small role in their success but the majority came from their persistence.
I agree with you that it is mostly working hard at it. The genes may be important to some extent but they by no way dictate how smart you are or can be.
ReplyDeleteThere's an interesting post over at Gene Cuisine that talks about pharmaceutical companies having access to our genetic information so they can design custom-made medicines for us. Not the same as Gattaca, but my concern there is similar--if you give corporations that much information about you, can it change the way society is organized? Perhaps we would begin to self-segregate by life-expectancy or by disease. It makes me uneasy.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, it's estimated that Einstein had an IQ of "only" 150. Not that I take much stalk in IQ as a measure, but I feel like most of Einstein's genius was his creativity and his way of looking at things differently. He was certainly good at math and physics, but most of what we see of his work has been polished up by other people (e.g. the special theory of relativity was rather ugly until Minkowski came along an geometrized it.)
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