Blog #4- Essay 1 (complete draft)

Santos Chavarria                                                                

ENGL 101- 0768

Dr. Vasileiou

Essay 1 complete draft

Who are ‘The Others’

    Imagine a world with genetically engineered humans to be the best of their parent’s genes known as the super humans or the valid and the regular normal humans known as the invalids, according to George J. Annas one side will seek to control or destroy the other. I will have to say I agree with Annas because having just two sides with the world’s population rather than having over hundreds of others will lead to chaos because they will not just focus about that one other group. Having the super humans will bring all the normal humans together no matter where they might be from, what culture, race, etc. it will bring them together to seek back control from super humans once they have taken away all the good things they once had. The movie Gattaca shows how the normal and super human’s way of life are different from each other and how super humans strive better than the normal humans, and that science isn’t always what they make it seem to be perfect.

     The normal humans would see the super humans as the others because they would see them as the ones who took over what was once theirs and are now the cleanup crew to clean after the super humans messes. In the movie Gattaca to get a high class job as an astronaut you would have to be genetically engineered to be fit to go to space. There was a normal human named Vincent who was born with a 99% chance of dying from a heart disorder at about the age of 30 who dreamed of going to space but no matter if he lied on his resume the employer saw he was an invalid just by seeing his DNA profile. Invalids will soon after feel discriminated not on race, gender, culture etc. but discriminated by “geneialism” (as Vincent called it) because their DNA weren't built for certain types of jobs when long before they had those jobs before the super humans came to be.       

     In the near future having the genetically super humans will cause a war between the two groups and with the technology so advanced the war machines could end up destroying the world. If I were able to pick a side honestly I would be the regular human I am now, even if genetically super human live in a world where diseases are myths and death is only caused by old aged. In the movie Gattaca there is a young lady named Irene who works in Gattaca and was genetically engineered but ended up having a heart condition. Vincent who also had a heart condition was said to die by the age of 30 lived beyond the doctors expectations and he says to Irene “I’m 1000’s of beats passed my expiration date.” This goes to show you that science is not perfect and not the solution to everything in life.

     If we go back a few decades to the 1930’s and 40’s during the WWII era when Adolf Hitler dictated Germany we can see an easily identify who were seen as the others. Annas also speaks of this in his essay on how “Nazis philosophy was founded on the belief that Germans were a superior race whose destiny was to subjugate and rule the inferior races.” Germans believed this and sought out to eliminate “the others” and they were the Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs. Germans wanted to be pure and superior so they eliminated the others causing casualties very high in the millions.

     To conclude my opinion on the ideal genetically ‘superior’ humans will cause repercussions to the world we live in now. Also if science isn’t perfect why try to change the human race, and according to Gattaca it was a successful new world for those who lived in it but what about the unfortunate who will suffer only because their genes weren’t altered.