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GATTACA is wrong. Gene editing marks a new beginning — not the end — of humanity.
In 2012, an incidental discovery made at UC Berkeley changed the face of human history. Located in her lab above Latimer Hall, Jennifer Doudna uncovered something so remarkable that it would result in her receiving the Nobel Prize a mere eight years later. A protein complex from Streptococcus Pyogenes, which is as a part of the bacteria’s immune system, was discovered to be capable of editing DNA in living cells with incredibly high accuracy. Perplexed by this, a multinational team of researchers located in California, Massachusetts, and France sought to learn more about this mysterious protein. They uncovered DNA sequences corresponding to the unique protein complex and went on to describe them as Clustered, with Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, which would be called CRISPR. As such, the name of the protein capable of editing genes became CRISPR Associated Protein 9 (Cas9). What makes Cas proteins so unique is their ability to be directed by something called a single guide RNA. While there have been numerous attempts to edit the genome of living things in the past, ensuring on-target specificity and flexibility remained an insurmountable challenge. That all changed in 2012, when it became possible to lead gene editing machinery to the right place for a small price — just 7$ per sgRNA. For such a low cost and high precision, genome editing has never looked more promising.
How do things look in GATTACA?
The film GATTACA depicts a grim future for humanity upon the advent of gene editing. In the movie, the widespread use and application of genome engineering only served to divide our already classist society. While we currently use genomic engineering to tackle some incredibly tough diseases, the people in GATTACA use it for self-enhancement. Sadly, only the elites are able to adopt this technology. This results in a massive amount of inequality, wherein the middle class are not able to have the privilege of employing gene editing because of its high cost. As such, discrimination takes place in the film on the basis of one’s genetic code, with only the most fit being able to land high-profile jobs. Furthermore, the desire for having perfect genes ultimately contributes to many parents opting to edit their children’s “bad” genes in utero.
