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  3. Combining animal and human genes provokes unease among some philosophers, theologians, and ordinary citizens. Currently, scienti

Combining animal and human genes provokes unease among some philosophers, theologians, and ordinary citizens. Currently, scienti

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问题     Combining animal and human genes provokes unease among some philosophers, theologians, and ordinary citizens. Currently, scientists want to inject the nuclei of human cells into animal eggs— generally from cows and rabbits—that have been stripped of their nuclei to create cell hybrids, or cybrids.
    No one knows if such cybrid embryos might grow into human babies if implanted in an appropriate womb. Would such cybrid babies suffer some physical or mental problems as a result of their animal genetic heritage? The real risks of creating physically and mentally diminished human beings mean that it would be immoral to grow human-animal cybrids into full-term babies.
    But let’s flip the question—instead of diminishing humans, what about uplifting animals by boosting their intelligence and physical dexterity?
    Would it be wrong to uplift animals and make them happy slaves? Creating happy uplifted animal slaves faces two chief moral objections. First, I would not want to be a happy slave. If I wouldn’t want to be one then I assume no one else, including uplifted animals, would want to be. Second, a society dependent on happy slaves would be morally corrosive.
    So why wouldn’t I want to be a happy slave—after all I would be, by definition, happy. I reject happy servitude because I don’ t want limitations placed on my capacities and my aspirations. But of course, my genes and environment have already limited my intellectual and physical capacities and aspirations. However, living as a human discontented with my shortcomings, I know that it is "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven". When sufficient progress has been made later this century, I hope to have the power of choosing how to use new technologies to enhance my capacities and even at the risk of overwhelming and destroying my own identity.
    On the point of moral corrosion, consider the plot of The Planet of the Apes. What has happened is that the humans uplifted the apes and became so dependent upon their simian servants that their intellects decayed. There are, of course, lots of confounding factors, but history features no economically and technologically robust slave-holding civilizations. In any case, I suspect humanity will become deeply integrated with our increasingly powerful computational technologies so that happy animal slaves will be basically useless anyway.
    A rich speculative literature makes it clear that there are a plenty of ways in which uplift technologies could be misused or go awry, but there is no bright moral line forbidding the uplift of animals to human-level intelligence. Successfully uplifted animals would have to be treated with the same moral respect that we owe to human persons.
By referring to the plot of The Planet of the Apes, the author intends to show that______.
选项 A、new technologies are more powerful than happy animal slaves
B、happy animal slaves are not useful at all in modern civilization
C、human intellects may decay with the use of happy animal slaves
D、it is morally damaging for any society to depend on happy slaves
答案D
解析 根据第四段最后一句“Second，a society dependent on happy slaves would be morallycorrosive”和第六段第一句“On the point of moral corrosion，consider the plot of The Planet of theApes”，D应为答案。
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