Gattaca is one of my favourite science-fiction movies of all time. If you haven’t seen it you really should rent it. It deals with issues regarding genetic engineering, and in the movie parents are able to handpick the traits they want their children to have and manipulate their genes to guarantee that they will be as healthy as possible. What parent wouldn’t want that? As a result, however, babies that are born through natural methods are at a severe disadvantage and are discriminated against throughout their lives.

It may sound silly (and yes the movie has some loopholes in its logic), but I think this may become a very real issue in the near future. Now keep in mind, I am not coming at this from any sort of religious standpoint. It’s not about “playing god”. To me this is just a mind-blowing moral dilemma with a very slippery slope.

I just read a few days ago that in the U.K. a large number of babies are now starting to be aborted due to “minor, treatable birth defects”. Webbed fingers and extra digits were a couple of the examples given. More and more parents, it seems, are desperate for a perfect child. The article comes courtesy of The Daily Mail (a paper whose reliability I cannot vouch for) and some of the details seem vague. However, if this is even partly true, it’s pretty scary to think that the genetic discrimination may have already begun.

Source: The Daily Mail