大学体验英语第三册Unit4-Passage A

Not Now, Dr. Miracle
Severino Antinori is a rich Italian doctor with a string of private fertility clinics to his name. He likes watching football and claims the Catholic faith. Yet the Vatican is no fan of his science.

In his clinics, Antinori already offers every IVF treatment under the sun, but still there are couples he cannot help. So now the man Italians call Dr Miracle is offering to clone his patients to create the babies they so desperately¹ want.

And of course it's created quite a stir, with other scientists rounding on Antinori as religious leaders line up to attack his cloning plan as an insult to human dignity. Yet it's an ambition Antinori has expressed many times before. What's new is that finally it seems to be building a head of steam. Like-minded scientists from the US have joined Antinori in his cloning adventure. At a conference in Rome last week they claimed hundreds of couples have already volunteered for the experiments.

Antinori shot to fame seven years ago helping² grandmothers give birth using donor³ eggs. Later he pioneered the use of mice to nurture⁴ the sperm⁵ of men with poor fertility. He is clearly no ordinary scientist but a showman who thrives on controversy⁶ and pushing reproductive biology to the limits. And that of course is one reason why he's seen as being so dangerous.

However, his idea of using cloning to combat infertility⁷ is not as mad as it sounds. Many people have a hard job seeing the point of reproductive cloning. But for some couples, cloning represents the only hope of having a child carrying their genes⁸, and scientists like Antinori are probably right to say that much of our opposition⁹ to cloning as a fertility treatment is irrational¹⁰. In future we may want to change our minds and allow it in special circumstances.

But only when the science is ready. And that's the real problem. Five years on from Dolly, the science of cloning is still stuck in the dark ages. The failure rate is a shocking 97 per cent and deformed¹¹ babies all too common. Even when cloning works, nobody understands why. So forget the complex moral arguments. To begin cloning people now, before even the most basic questions have been answered, is simply a waste of time and energy.

This is not to say that Antinori will fail, only that if he succeeds it is likely to be at an unacceptably high price. Hundreds of eggs and embryos¹² will be wasted and lots of women will go through difficult pregnancies¹³ resulting in miscarriages¹⁴ or abortions¹⁵. A few years from now techniques will have improved and the wasteful¹⁶ loss won't be as excessive. But right now there seems to be little anyone can do to keep the cloners at bay.
And it's not just Antinori and his team who are eager to go. A religious group called the Raelians believes cloning is the key to achieving immortality¹⁷, and it, too, claims to have the necessary egg donors¹⁸ and volunteers willing to be implanted with cloned embryos.
So what about tougher laws? Implanting cloned human embryos is already illegal in many countries but it will never be prohibited everywhere. In any case, the prohibition¹⁹ of cloning is more likely to drive it underground than stamp it out. Secrecy²⁰ is already a problem. Antinori and his team are refusing to name the country they'll be using as their base. Like it or not, the research is going ahead. Sooner or later we are going to have to decide whether regulation is safer than prohibition.
Antinori would go for regulation, of course. He believes it is only a matter of time before we lose our hang-ups about reproductive cloning and accept it as just another IVF technique. Once the first baby is born and it cries, he said last week, the world will embrace it.
But the world will never embrace the first cloned baby if it is unhealthy or deformed or the sole survivor²¹ of hundreds of pregnancies. In jumping the gun, Dr Miracle and his colleagues are taking one hell of a risk. If their instincts are wrong, the backlash against cloning - and indeed science as a whole - could be catastrophic.

1 desperately   

adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地

参考例句：

• He was desperately seeking a way to see her again.他正拼命想办法再见她一面。
• He longed desperately to be back at home.他非常渴望回家。

2 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

3 donor   

n.捐献者；赠送人；(组织、器官等的)供体

参考例句：

• In these cases,the recipient usually takes care of the donor afterwards.在这类情况下，接受捐献者以后通常会照顾捐赠者。
• The Doctor transplanted the donor's heart to Mike's chest cavity.医生将捐赠者的心脏移植进麦克的胸腔。

4 nurture   

n.养育，照顾，教育；滋养，营养品；vt.养育，给与营养物，教养，扶持

参考例句：

• The tree grows well in his nurture.在他的培育下这棵树长得很好。
• The two sisters had received very different nurture.这俩个姊妹接受过极不同的教育。

5 sperm   

n.精子，精液

参考例句：

• Only one sperm fertilises an egg.只有一个精子使卵子受精。
• In human reproduction,one female egg is usually fertilized by one sperm.在人体生殖过程中，一个精子使一个卵子受精。

6 controversy   

n.争论，辩论，争吵

参考例句：

• That is a fact beyond controversy.那是一个无可争论的事实。
• We ran the risk of becoming the butt of every controversy.我们要冒使自己在所有的纷争中都成为众矢之的的风险。

7 infertility   

n.不肥沃，不毛；不育

参考例句：

• It is the Geneva, Switzerland-based Biotech Company's second recombinant infertility drug. 它是瑞士生物技术公司在日内瓦的公司生产的第二种重组治疗不孕症的药。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 生物技术制药疫苗
• Endometritis is a cause of infertility. 子宫内膜炎是不育的原子。 来自辞典例句

8 genes   

n.基因( gene的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• You have good genes from your parents, so you should live a long time. 你从父母那儿获得优良的基因，所以能够活得很长。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Differences will help to reveal the functions of the genes. 它们间的差异将会帮助我们揭开基因多种功能。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 生物技术的世纪

9 opposition   

n.反对，敌对

参考例句：

• The party leader is facing opposition in his own backyard.该党领袖在自己的党內遇到了反对。
• The police tried to break down the prisoner's opposition.警察设法制住了那个囚犯的反抗。

10 irrational   

adj.无理性的，失去理性的

参考例句：

• After taking the drug she became completely irrational.她在吸毒后变得完全失去了理性。
• There are also signs of irrational exuberance among some investors.在某些投资者中是存在非理性繁荣的征象的。

11 deformed   

adj.畸形的；变形的；丑的，破相了的

参考例句：

• He was born with a deformed right leg.他出生时右腿畸形。
• His body was deformed by leprosy.他的身体因为麻风病变形了。

12 embryos   

n.晶胚；胚，胚胎( embryo的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Somatic cells of angiosperms enter a regenerative phase and behave like embryos. 被子植物体细胞进入一个生殖阶段，而且其行为象胚。 来自辞典例句
• Evolution can explain why human embryos look like gilled fishes. 进化论能够解释为什么人类的胚胎看起来象除去了内脏的鱼一样。 来自辞典例句

13 pregnancies   

怀孕，妊娠( pregnancy的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Since the wartime population needed replenishment, pregnancies were a good sign. 最后一桩倒不失为好现象，战时人口正该补充。
• She's had three pregnancies in four years. 她在四年中怀孕叁次。

14 miscarriages   

流产( miscarriage的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Miscarriages are usually caused by abnormal chromosome patterns in the fetus. 流产通常是因为胎儿的染色体异常造成的。
• Criminals go unpunishedareconvicted and are miscarriages of justice. 罪犯会逍遥法外，法律会伤及无辜，审判不公时有发生。

15 abortions   

n.小产( abortion的名词复数 )；小产胎儿；（计划）等中止或夭折；败育

参考例句：

• The Venerable Master: By not having abortions, by not killing living beings. 上人：不堕胎、不杀生。 来自互联网
• Conclusion Chromosome abnormality is one of the causes of spontaneous abortions. 结论：染色体异常是导致反复自然流产的原因之一。 来自互联网

16 wasteful   

adj.（造成）浪费的，挥霍的

参考例句：

• It is a shame to be so wasteful.这样浪费太可惜了。
• Duties have been reassigned to avoid wasteful duplication of work.为避免重复劳动浪费资源，任务已经重新分派。

17 immortality   

n.不死，不朽

参考例句：

• belief in the immortality of the soul 灵魂不灭的信念
• It was like having immortality while you were still alive. 仿佛是当你仍然活着的时候就得到了永生。

18 donors   

n.捐赠者( donor的名词复数 )；献血者；捐血者；器官捐献者

参考例句：

• Please email us to be removed from our active list of blood donors. 假如你想把自己的名字从献血联系人名单中删去，请给我们发电子邮件。
• About half this amount comes from individual donors and bequests. 这笔钱大约有一半来自个人捐赠及遗赠。 来自《简明英汉词典》

19 prohibition   

n.禁止；禁令，禁律

参考例句：

• The prohibition against drunken driving will save many lives.禁止酒后开车将会减少许多死亡事故。
• They voted in favour of the prohibition of smoking in public areas.他们投票赞成禁止在公共场所吸烟。

20 secrecy   

n.秘密，保密，隐蔽

参考例句：

• All the researchers on the project are sworn to secrecy.该项目的所有研究人员都按要求起誓保守秘密。
• Complete secrecy surrounded the meeting.会议在绝对机密的环境中进行。

21 survivor   

n.生存者，残存者，幸存者

参考例句：

• The sole survivor of the crash was an infant.这次撞车的惟一幸存者是一个婴儿。
• There was only one survivor of the plane crash.这次飞机失事中只有一名幸存者。