高考英语《流行话题 语境识词 4500》Unit 74 Will We Follow Dolly, the Sheep 素材Unit 74 Will We Follow Dolly, the Sheep? Hearing Scottish scientists' success in cloning a sheep from a single adult cell, the world cones to an unsettling realization: the science is the easy part. it's not that the breakthrough was not decades in the making. It's that once you figured out how to transfer the genes from an adult cell into a living ovum and keep the fragile embryo alive throughout gestation -- most of your basic biological work was finished. The social and philosophical tremors it triggers, however, have merely begun. How will the new technology be regulated? What does the sudden ability to make carbon copies of ourselves say about the concept of individuality? Or is there something about the individual that is lost when the mystical act of conceiving a person becomes standardized into a mere act of photocopying one? Of all the reasons for using the new technology, pure ego raises the most hackles. The Pharaohs built their pyramids, the Emperors built Rome, and Napoleon built his Arc de Triomphe -- all, at least in part, to make the permanence of stone compensate for the impermanence of the flesh. But big buildings and big tombs would be a poor second choice if the flesh cou ld be made to go on forever. Now it appears, it can. However, it's one thing to want to be remembered after you are gone; it's quite another to manufacture a living monument to ensure that you are. Some observers claim to be shocked that anyone would contemplate such a thing . But that's naive. It's obvious that a lot of people would be eager to clone themselves. Especially those who think the world could use ...
