The War on 'Defective' Children
Genetic Selection In the 1998 film Gattaca, the hero says that he will never know what possessed his mother to put her faith in God instead of a geneticist. That’s because, in this science-fiction film, he lives in a world where prospective parents can screen their would-be children for “defects” before they are implanted in the womb. In this world, “defects” aren’t limited to life-threatening conditions; they also include things like near-sightedness. In the world of Gattaca, people who weren’t screened before birth form a permanent underclass called “in-valids.” Since the film’s release, the biotech industry and their paid shills have insisted that Gattaca is fiction and that nothing like that could happen in real life. Well, something like it just did. In May, Britain’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority authorized a London clinic to screen for a condition called “squint.” Squint causes the affected eye to look inwards or outwards instead of straight ahead. Squint can be t...