Silver’s Remaking Eden and the Silver Screen

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Silver’s Remaking Eden and the Silver Screen

In Remaking Eden, Lee M. Silver asks three central questions: Who controls life? What

counts as life? And what will human life look like in the future? The question Silver does not ask is

whether or not human life as we now know and define it will change. Silver sees the advance of

genetic engineering as inevitable, due to consumer demand for it as a technology and the unrelenting

curiosity of scientists. Power resides in science, according to Silver, and that power is “enormous.”

In the closing chapter to Remaking Eden, entitled “Tomorrow’s Children,” he recounts how “a single

eccentric scientist named Kary Mullis” obliterated all “preconceived notions of scientific

limitations” with his invention of the Polymerase Chain Reaction or “PCR” (240). As Silver describes

it:

More than any other technique invented during the twentieth century, PCR has changed

the course of the biological and medical sciences. In addition to the enormous power

that it added to gene discovery and analysis . . . PCR has made it possible to obtain rapid

genetic profiles not only on humans but other animals and plants as well, with an

enormous impact on both agriculture and environmental science. PCR has also had an

enormous impact on forensics with its power to provide genetic profiles on even single

hairs left behind at the scene of a crime. And PCR has provided us with the ability to

look back into the past, to demonstrate that skeletons found buried in an isolated

Siberian town really did belong to the last Russian Czar and his family, and much further

back to derive genetic profiles on insects and plants that have been extinct for millions

of years [emphases added]. (241)

For all his sc...

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Lemonick, Michael D. “Cloning Classics.” Time 8 Nov. 1993: 70. Expanded Academic ASAP. InfoTrac.

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Silver, Lee M. Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American

Family. 1997. New York: Perennial-Harper, 2002.

Vergano, Dan, and Susan Wloszczyna. “Genetics Take Starring Role on Silver Screen.” USA Today

17 June 2002. 12 August 2005
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