Did Gattaca Come True? A Claim-by-Claim Check, Plus 3 Stories to Read Next

Gorgeous to look at: a 1960s-styled future with a Frank Lloyd Wright building as its aerospace headquarters. It is weaker to listen to. Our review finds the murder plot generates little tension, and Uma Thurman's character is given a heart condition and not much else. It flopped on release, and became the reference point for every argument about human genetics since. Watch it for the design and the premise.

Claim by claim

Embryos ranked by predicted disease risk: ARRIVED, 2021. Orchid sells whole-genome embryo reports with risk scores. By December 2021 the European Society of Human Genetics reported at least one child born after such selection, and called the practice unproven. The product exists; the prediction is weak.

Employers screen DNA for the best jobs: DIVERGED. The US Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 bars employers from using genetic information in hiring, firing or promotion. The UK insurance code bars insurers from using predictive test results, with a narrow exception for Huntington's disease on life cover over £500,000.

DNA identity checks at a checkpoint: ARRIVED, 2019. Rapid DNA instruments give a profile in under two hours. In 2019 US immigration authorities piloted them at the Mexican border to test whether children were related to the adults with them. A single shed eyelash at a crime scene is still harder.

Every newborn's genome read: ARRIVING. Genomics England's Generation Study is sequencing 100,000 newborns for more than 200 rare conditions, and the 2025 health plan commits to universal newborn genomic testing. We put universal sequencing in England in the early 2030s. It is an ambition without a funded date.

If you want more

Ishiguro's polite horror: children raised to give up their organs. The cloning has diverged, since nobody clones people. The need has been met another way: a gene-edited pig kidney went into a living patient in March 2024, and England made organ donation opt-out in 2020. Its real subject, how institutions win consent from those they use, needs no clone. Scores 8.7.

Atwood saw biotech arriving as consumer products rather than a mad scientist's castle. Gene-edited pig kidneys are in clinical trials, and cultivated chicken was cleared for sale in the US in 2023. A designed replacement species is rated FAR. In 2018 gene-edited children were born in China once, and the scientist was jailed. Scores 7.6.

Bacigalupi's Bangkok is about ownership of life rather than bodies. Two firms held over half of US corn, soybean and cotton seed sales in 2018 to 2020, and a banana wilt disease has reached 23 countries. The engineered servant is rated FAR. Scores 8.1.