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

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

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