Influence on In Time
Writer-director Andrew Niccol has called his 2011 film In Time a "bastard child of Gattaca".[33][34] Both films feature classic cars in a futuristic dystopia as well as a caste privilege schism which the protagonist challenges and which prejudices the authorities into neglecting a thorough investigation in favor of condemning the protagonist.
Political references
U.S. Senator Rand Paul used near-verbatim portions of the plot summary from the English Wikipedia entry on Gattaca in a speech at Liberty University on October 28, 2013, in support of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's campaign for Governor of Virginia. Paul said that abortion rights advocates are advancing eugenics in a manner similar to the events in Gattaca.[35][36]
Transhumanism
In the 2004 democratic transhumanist book Citizen Cyborg, bioethicist James Hughes criticized the premise and influence of the film as fear-mongering, arguing:
- Astronaut-training programs are entirely justified in attempting to screen out people with heart problems for safety reasons;
- In the United States, people are already screened by insurance companies on the basis of their propensities to disease, for actuarial purposes;
- Rather than banning genetic testing or genetic enhancement, society should develop genetic information privacy laws, such as the U.S. Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act signed into law on May 21, 2008, that allow justified forms of genetic testing and data aggregation, but forbid those that are judged to result in genetic discrimination. Citizens should then be able to make a complaint to the appropriate authority if they believe they have been discriminated against because of their genotype.[37]
