Congratulations, It Will Be A Boy! Until just a few years ago, making a baby boy or a girl was pretty much a hit-or-miss aff

admin2015-08-08  30

问题                         Congratulations, It Will Be A Boy!
    Until just a few years ago, making a baby boy or a girl was pretty much a hit-or-miss affair. Not anymore. Parents who have access to the latest genetic testing techniques can now predetermine their baby’s sex with great accuracy, as Monique and Scott Collins learned to their delight two years ago, when their long-wished-for daughter Jessica was born after genetic prescreening(基因筛选).
    And baby Jessica is just the beginning. Within a decade or two, it may be possible to screen kids almost before conception(怀孕)for an enormous range of attributes(特性), such as how tall they are likely to be, what body type they will have, their hair and eye color, what sort of illness they will be naturally resistant to, and even, conceivably(可想见地), their IQ and personality type.
    In fact, if gene therapy lives up to its promise, parents may someday be able to go beyond weeding out(筛去)undesirable traits and start actually inserting the genes they want—perhaps e-ven genes that have been crafted(创造)in a lab. Before the new millennium is many years old, parents may be going to fertility clinics(生殖诊所)and picking from a list of options the way car buyers order air conditioning and chrome-alloy(铬合金)wheels. "It is the ultimate shopping experience : designing your baby," says biotechnology critic Jeremy Rifkin, who is appalled by the prospect. "But in a society used to cosmetic surgery(整容手术), this is not a big step. "
    The prospect of designer(定制)babies, like many of the ethnical conundrums(难题)posed by the genetic revolution, is confronting the world so rapidly that doctors, ethicists(伦理学家), religious leaders and politicians are just starting to grapple with(与......进行格斗)the implications—and trying to decide how they feel about it all.
    They still have a bit of time. Aside from gender, the only traits they can now be identified at the earliest stages of development are about a dozen of the most serious genetic diseases. Gene therapy in embryos(胚胎)is at least a few years away. And the gene or combination of genes responsible for most of our physical and mental attributes has not even been identified yet. Besides, say clinicians, even if the techniques for making designer babies are perfected within the next decade, they should be applied in the service of disease prevention, not improving on nature.
What can scientists do now?

选项 A、Prescreen a baby’s sex.
B、Screen babies for desirable attributes.
C、Insert genes that parents want.
D、Craft genes in a lab.

答案A

解析 根据第二段可知“在怀孕前挑选婴儿的优良品质”是一二十年后的事,排除B。根据第三段可知“在婴儿基因中加入父母希望孩子拥有的基因——甚至是在实验室中人为创造的基因”,这是基因疗法按照预期不断发展、走向成熟后才能实现的事情,由此可以排除C和D。而根据第一段“as Monique and Scott Collins learned to their delight twoyears ago,when their long—wished—for daughter Jessica was born after genetic prescreening”,可以知道选项A符合题意。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/0w1d777K
0

随机试题
最新回复(0)