- I'm going to introduce the notion idea of progress to you today, but first of all, let's define it : a progress is the fact of improving something. In other words, a progress is an advance or a development. A progress can be social, technical or scientific. Indeed a progress is made to make things better so as to improve people's living conditions and so to allow the development of humankind. We will try to explain how the authors try to warn us about the limits and risks of science progress. To do this, we will begin by analyzing the document Clone R Us which has unknown author and publication date, an extract from A Brave New World writen by Aldous Huxley in 1932, and a personal document which will be an extract from Gattaca directed and written by Andrew Niccol in 1997.
- The document Clone R Us is an graphic document representing a factory where several clones of the same person are on a conveyor belt. In the middle is a "failed" clone because it doesn't look like the others, it's not tall, muscular or brown haired. He gets caught by a claw that will certainly throw him into the dumpster of the " Rejects ": those who do not conform to the other clones. We are talking about sorting out different individuals to pick up those who will be most able to survive.
- In contrast to the previous document, A Brave New World is a Science Fiction short-story. In our extract, they tell us about eugenics, which refers to all the methods and practices used to improve the genetic structure of the human race, and they explain how it is possible to produce ninety-six identical human beings with a single embryo. In the extract, the doctor names these clones "identical machines", so we can assume that the selection is not based on a need, but only to use them as tools, like robots.
- In these two documents, there is a notion of eugenics that seems to return to a single point: the non-diversity of people, so we can ask ourselves what risks are incurred if this diversity ends up being lost? Can we consider eugenics as a form of discrimination? We can legitimately ask ourselves this question by looking at our latest document: Gattaca[/u] which is an American science fiction film inspired by A Brave New World. In this film, people who do not have a sufficient genetic code do not have the same privileges as others. They usually end up with a miserable life doing ungrateful tasks that "Valid " people won't do.