Brian Alexander The Remastered Race Analysis

“The Remastered Race” is an article written by Brian Alexander a journalist who won the John Bartlow Martin award for Public interest journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill school of Journalism. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Esquire and Wired amongst others. The Remastered race is an article about genetic engineering and how to use it to the advantage of humans. Throughout this article, Alexander mentioned different ways Eugenics has evolved from time and how it is still evolving but stated his main concern as to how far geneticist should go in reference to engineering embryos.

To begin with, Alexander’s mainframe for this article comes from two books, Our Posthuman future by social and political

theorist Francis Fukuyama and Redesigning humans by the director of UCLA school of Medicine Technology and Society: Gregory stock. Fukuyama’s book warns of “class war” and eventual obliteration of what it means to be human as a direct result of genetic fiddling. On the other hand, Stock’s book celebrates the promise of genetic engineering in respect to longer lifespan, better health, and smarter kids. Alexander’s main argument is not “should we have eugenics?” but rather “how far should we go?”.
As we go further into the article Alexander gives us an insight of different ways genetic engineering has changed and how it could be used for human benefit.

An example is the growing of artificial chromosomes by a Vancouver company called Chromos. Chromos farms the chromosomes and separates the artificial chromosomes from the natural ones using a flow cytometer. Just like natural chromosomes, the artificial ones are made of chromatin but the difference is what makes it unique and helpful. The artificial chromosomes are not prerecorded with genes that tell cells what to do rather they are blank; this means you can put whatever genes you want in the blank chromosomes. This is great because if you are a sick patient, the artificial chromosomes might be recorded with correct copies of the malfunctioning gene and placed amongst blood-making cells in order to correct it thereby treating the sickness. Another example is the pre-implantation genetic diagnosis; this test supersedes common prenatal test called chorionic villus sampling and amniocenteses. P.G.D is done by analyzing embryos for disease-causing genetic mutations before they become fetuses and only the embryos that are disease free are implanted in the uterus. As a result of this, 1000 babies worldwide have been born healthy and the numbers are growing

exponentially.
Furthermore, Alexander explains how enhancement can be looked at as preventive medicine from Theodore Friedmann’s perspective; When it comes to the implications of genetic manipulation, Friedmann has a reputation as one of the most thoughtful scientists in the field: He holds an ethics chair at U.C.S.D and serves on the government's Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee.

However, Fukuyama disagrees because from his point of view enhancement is different from preventive medicine. His example is Ritalin, it is illegal when used as a study aid but not when prescribed to treat attention deficit disorder. Fukuyama believes that humans should slow down on enhancement and regulate it because enhancement betrays human nature; destroying something he calls Factor X. He insists that if we continue mucking around with our genes we would lose whatever it is that makes us human. Leon Kass, the chair of the White House's Council on Bioethics, seconds Fukuyama who also sits on the council, calling the argument "the wisdom of

repugnance."
In conclusion, Alexander’s standpoint on the topic of eugenics is clear as he provides more reasons why genetic engineering should continue, appealing to emotions as well as reasoning while Fukuyama’s perspective appealed to morality. In my own opinion that makes this article bias as Fukuyama and Kass’ perspective were the only opposing perspectives and provided no examples as to why genetic fiddling might actually be bad in comparison to the different examples of how it has helped. I personally, find this article interesting and exciting because it has provided an insight on ways of creating a better gene pool for the future generations but I do not think it is persuasive enough because there was not enough comparative evidence to balance the pros and cons of genetic modification.