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  3. " I believe I can build a human liver," proclaims an exhausted Dr. Joseph Va

" I believe I can build a human liver," proclaims an exhausted Dr. Joseph Va

游客2024-08-10  39
问题     " I believe I can build a human liver," proclaims an exhausted Dr. Joseph Vacanti, collapsing into his office chair at Children’s Hospital in Boston.
    There’s something disquieting about hearing a doctor say such a thing. One can’t help thinking ghastly monster created by Dr. Frankenstein, with its translucent yellow skin, shriveled face and black misshapen lips.

    But Dr. Vacanti is no Dr. Frankenstein. Still in his scrubs, he has just come from the operating room where he performed lifesaving surgery on an infant. His body is spent, but his eyes flash with energy as he talks about his dream, " It has never seemed like science fiction to me," says Vacanti, a professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. " My professional goal is to solve the problem of vital organ shortage. " More than 50,000 Americans are currently in need of organ transplants, and 4,000 of them are likely to die before a donor is located. Vacanti’s solution is simple: Instead of replacing a faltering organ with one harvested from someone else, why not take a few healthy cells from the sick person and grow him or her a new one? Such an organ would probably work better, too, since the body is less likely to reject tissue made of its own genetic material.
    It sounds too good to be true. But it’s beginning to look like it just might work. And if it does, tissue regeneration could revolutionize the practice of medicine.
    Apothecaries have experimented with tissue replacement for centuries: As early as the sixth century B. C. , Hindu surgeons began using arm skin to repair mangled noses. It wasn’t until the late 1970s that John Burke of Massachusetts General Hospital and Ioannis Yannas of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology succeeded in growing skin in a laboratory. Recently, several brands of artificial skin have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment of ulcers and severe burns.
    Still, as an organized field of inquiry, with an international professional society and a journal to report its progress, the science of tissue engineering has been around for little more than a decade. There is quite a difference between growing a relatively simple organ such as skin and growing a complex one like a liver. For the liver is a congeries of many different types of tissues, all of which work together to accomplish a host of complicated tasks. "When I started trying to do this," says Vacanti, 49, the son of a Nebraska dental surgeon, " a lot of people thought I was crazy. Some still think so. "
Questions 56 to 60
Complete the table using no more than three words for each blank.
[br]
选项
答案 tissue
解析 (根据文章第三段的最后一句可知，人类是不会对自体产生的组织有排异反应，故此处填tissue，意为“组织”。)
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