Émilie Wouters - DESMA9

  Extra Credit Event 5 The event for Biotech + Art was a watch party of the 1997 film Gattaca. The film is set in a time where eugenics are common, where children’s genetic traits are selected for. It follows the hardships of a boy whose parents chose not to follow the widespread practice of choosing their children’s traits. That society holds a ton of value to genetics, and attributes a large part of who a person is to their genetic makeup. Now. While it is true that genetics play an enormous role in our lives, they do not determine our destiny. You could be given a great genetic makeup, and still turn out bad. You could be dealt some crappy genetic cards, and end up happy and successful. It just depends on what you choose to do with what you are given, though it is also dependent on how a society treats and accommodates the “less desirable” traits. After all, in the end, it is the society that chooses what is considered desirable. Who decides what is a good trait and a bad trait,...

  Extra Credit Event 4 Joel Barish getting the memories of Clementine erased in the film      The film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” raises several philosophical and neuroscientific questions. I will focus on philosophy, as I have already done an event blog that looked at medical accuracy. I will admit that I am doing this blog almost a month after seeing the film, so I jogged my memory and rewatched it. This movie is about a couple who erases their memories of the other person to forget about the hurt the relationship caused them. Memory Erasure      Should memories be erased? What are the pros and cons of this invention? A memory eraser could be good for treating trauma related problems that cannot be helped by the usual methods. However, your brain naturally does that with repression. For example, a huge indicator of childhood trauma is that someone doesn’t remember their childhood, or are missing chunks of memory associated with a certain...

  Event Blog 3: Contagion For this event blog, I will be discussing the (now all too relatable) film Contagion. It follows the spread of an infectious and deadly virus, and how the world dealt with it. It’s eerily similar to what happened with the COVID-19 pandemic, from its bat origin to the conspiracy theorists who think it’s all a hoax, to its method of spreading, to the general government response/strategy. However, I will not focus on the ties between this movie and the COVID-19 world. Anyone who hasn’t been in a coma for the past year and two months can see how they’re connected. And those off the grid. And the Amish. Anyway, I’d like to discuss the medical accuracy/plausibility of the movie.                    Bat eats food             Bat drops food into pigpen                 ...