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  3. The never-ceasing pace of scientific accomplishment often surpasses the prog

The never-ceasing pace of scientific accomplishment often surpasses the prog

游客2024-09-22  9
问题     The never-ceasing pace of scientific accomplishment often surpasses the progress of moral thought, leaving people struggling to make sense, initially at least, of whether heart transplants are ethical or test-tube babies desirable. Over the past three decades scientists have begun to investigate a branch of medicine that offers astonishing promise—the ability to repair the human body and even grow new organs—but which destroys early-stage embryos to do so. In "The Stem Cell Hope" Alice Park, a science writer at Time magazine, chronicles the scientific, political, ethical and personal struggles of those involved in the work.
    Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent(多能性的): they have the ability to change into any one of the 200-odd types of cell that compose the human body; but they can do so only at a very early stage. Once the bundle has reached more than about 150 cells, they start to specialize. Research into repairing severed spinal cords or growing new hearts has thus needed a supply of stem cells that come from entities that, given a more favorable environment, could instead grow into a baby.
    Immediately after the announcement of the birth of Dolly the sheep—the clone of an adult ewe whose mammary(乳腺的)cells Ian Wilmut had tricked into behaving like a developing embryo— American scientists were hauled before the nation’s politicians who were uneasy at the implication that people might also be cloned. Concern at the speed of scientific progress had previously stalled publicly funded research into controversial topics, for example, into in vitro fertilization. But it did not stop the work from taking place: instead the IVF industry blossomed in the private sector, funded by couples desperate for a baby and investors who had spotted a profitable new market.
    That is also what happened with human stem cells. After a prolonged struggle over whether to ban research outright—which pitted Nancy Reagan, whose husband suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, against a father who asked George Bush’s advisers, "Which one of my children would you kill?"—Mr. Bush blocked the use of government money to fund research on any new human embryonic stem-cell cultures. But research did not halt completely: Geron, a biopharmaceutical(生物制药的)company based in Menlo Park, California, had started "to mop up this orphaned innovation" , as Ms Park puts it, by recruiting researchers whose work brought them into conflict with the funding restrictions.
    Meanwhile, in South Korea a scientist claimed not only to have cloned human embryos but also to have created patient-specific cultures that could, in theory, be used to patch up brain damage or grow a kidney. Alas, he was wrong. But a Japanese scientist did manage to persuade adult skin cells to act like stem cells. If it proves possible to scale up his techniques, that would remove the source of the controversy over stem-cell research.
    Three months after he took office, Barack Obama lifted restrictions on federal funding for research on new stem-cell cultures, saying that he thought sound science and moral values were consistent with one another. But progress has been slow: the first human trials in America, involving two people with spinal-cord injuries who have been injected with stem cells developed by Geron, are only just under way. The sick children who first inspired scientists to conduct research into stem cells in order to develop treatments that might help them are now young adults. As Ms Park notes, the fight over stem-cell research is not over, and those who might benefit from stem-cell medicine remain in need.  [br] As a result of the birth of Dolly and an adult ewe,______.
选项 A、American scientists were strongly criticized for human cloning
B、government-funded researches were banned from controversial topics
C、American universities started to conduct similar research overseas
D、the IVF industry is starting to disappear in the U. S.
答案 B
解析 细节题。第三段首先提到，多利的诞生以及威尔穆特成功克隆了一只成年的母羊，之后提到这样做产生的后果，即美国科学家被立刻传唤到政客面前，他们对于人可能会被克隆的潜在影响感到不安。对科学进步速度的忧虑使得美国政府停止了对诸如试管受精等有争议性领域的科研资助，故[B]为正确答案，同时可知，[A]是对此句的曲解和无根据的引申，故排除。[C]“美国大学开始在海外进行类似的研究”文中未提及，故排除；根据本段最后一句提到的(美国政府对试管受精研究资助的暂停)并没有使该研究停滞；相反的是，试管受精：亡业在私营经济领域繁荣起来，而急切想要孩子的夫妇们和看到新市场有利可图的投资者为其提供了资金，由此可知，[D]的陈述与原文不符，故排除。
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