Congratulations, It Will Be A Boy! Until just a few years ago, making a baby boy or a girl was pretty much a hit-or-miss aff

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问题                     Congratulations, It Will Be A Boy!
    Until just a few years ago, making a baby boy or a girl was pretty much a hit-or-miss affair. Not anymore. Parents who have access to the latest genetic testing techniques can now predetermine their baby’s sex with great accuracy, as Monique and Scott Collins learned to their delight two years ago, when their long-wished-for daughter Jessica was born after genetic prescreening(基因筛选).
    And baby Jessica is just the beginning. Within a decade or two, it may be possible to screen kids almost before conception(怀孕)for an enormous range of attributes(特性), such as how tall they are likely to be, what body type they will have, their hair and eye color, what sort of illness they will be naturally resistant to, and even, conceivably(可想见地), their IQ and personality type.
    In fact, if gene therapy lives up to its promise, parents may someday be able to go beyond weeding out(筛去)undesirable traits and start actually inserting the genes they want—perhaps e-ven genes that have been crafted(创造)in a lab. Before the new millennium is many years old, parents may be going to fertility clinics(生殖诊所)and picking from a list of options the way car buyers order air conditioning and chrome alloy(铬合金)wheels. "It is the ultimate shopping experience: designing your baby," says biotechnology critic Jeremy Rifkin, who is appalled by the prospect. "But in a society used to cosmetic surgery(整容手术), this is not a big step. "
    The prospect of designer(定制)babies, like many of the ethnical conundrums(难题)posed by the genetic revolution, is confronting the world so rapidly that doctors, ethicists(伦理学家), religious leaders and politicians are just starting to grapple with(与......进行格斗)the implications—and trying to decide how they feel about it all.
    They still have a bit of time. Aside from gender, the only traits they can now be identified at the earliest stages of development are about a dozen of the most serious genetic diseases. Gene therapy in embryos(胚胎)is at least a few years away. And the gene or combination of genes responsible for most of our physical and mental attributes has not even been identified yet. Besides, say clinicians, even if the techniques for making designer babies are perfected within the next decade, they should be applied in the service of disease prevention, not improving on nature.
Which of the following best expresses Jeremy Rifkin’s attitude toward designing babies through gene therapy?

选项 A、Strongly supportive.
B、Cautiously welcome.
C、Uncommitted.
D、Critical.

答案D

解析 阅读完题干后应立即回到原文,细读Jeremy Rifkins的那一番话,前半句“It is theultimate shopping experience:designing your baby”还不能确切体会出他的态度,但接下来,作者描述Rifkins为基因技术的发展前景所震惊“who is appalled by the prospect”,震惊一词至少可以说明Rifkins是不赞成先将基因技术用于胚胎的。而后半句“But in asociety used to cosmetic surgery,this is not a big step.”就明确表明了Rifkins的立场:这一技术并不稀奇,不值得大肆宣扬,从这里可以看出其态度是批评性的。
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