Cinematic Genetics: GATTACA, Essentially Yours, and the Rhetoric of Genetic Determinism

Abstract

This essay investigates the Australian Law Reform Commission's (ALRC) use of the fictional film GATTACA in the policy brief, “Essentially Yours,” as a rhetorical commonplace to frame various ethical, legal, and scientific issues related to genetic technologies. Because emerging genetic therapy technologies invite both fear and fascination, the ALRC faces the rhetorical challenge of maintaining a distinction between genetic science and its fictional representations. I argue that their use of GATTACA expands the rhetorical landscape by allowing argument forms traditionally absent from scientific discourses. “Essentially Yours” employs GATTACA to illuminate social, legal, and ethical considerations that both challenge deterministic discourses and to promote the value of genetic science. This expansion of the rhetorical landscape identifies new avenues for scientists and nonscientists to converse about the ethical and social dimensions of science policy even as explicit scientific knowledge remains elusive to nonscientific audiences.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Mary Stuckey and two anonymous reviewers for their feedback on this essay.

Notes

The breadth and comprehensiveness of the Inquiry has received international celebration. ALRC President David Weisbrot, in his speech to the 8th Australia Institute of Health Law and Ethics (AIHLE), shares that “the report [ALRC 96] has been getting great amounts of attention and high praise over the world—including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, China, Korea, and Japan—and in international forums such as the OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation] and HUGO [Human Genome Organization]” (Weisbrot, 2003b, p. 3). He also notes that Dr. Thomas Murray, the chair of the Human Genome Project's first Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues Working Group wrote, “the ALRC and the AHEC have done an extraordinarily fine job of explaining the science, identifying what is important for the people of Australia, and offering sensible advice…. Essentially Yours sets a standard for advice to the public and policy makers on how to understand and protect genetic information” (qtd. in Weisbrot, 2003b, p. 4).

While the terms “genetic essentialism” and “genetic determinism” are not interchangeable, they both ascribe genetic information primacy in characterizing human behavior and physical conditions. “Genetic essentialism” describes the notion that human identity can be understood in terms of one's genetic makeup; “genetic determinism” suggests that mental or physical condition is determined by one's genetic composition.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ron Von Burg

Ron Von Burg, Department of Communication Studies, Christopher Newport University.