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  3. In 2010, Pamela Fink, an employee of a Connecticut energy company, made a new kind of discrimination claim: she charged that she

In 2010, Pamela Fink, an employee of a Connecticut energy company, made a new kind of discrimination claim: she charged that she

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问题     In 2010, Pamela Fink, an employee of a Connecticut energy company, made a new kind of discrimination claim: she charged that she had been fired because she carries genes that predispose her to cancer. Fink quickly became the public face for the cutting edge of civil rights: genetic discrimination.
    The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which was passed out of concern for just such cases in the wake of huge advances in genetics testing, took effect in late 2009. GINA, as it is known, makes it illegal for employers to fire or refuse to hire workers based on their "genetic information"— including genetic tests and family history of disease. GINA doesn’t just apply to employers; health-insurance companies can be sued for using genetic information to set rates or even just for investigating people’s genes.
    The numbers of genetic-discrimination complaints will almost certainly increase greatly in coming years, for the reason that, as biological science advances, there is likely to be even more genetic information available about people. Even though this sort of medical information should remain private, employers and insurance companies will have strong financial incentives to get access to it—and to use it to avoid people who are most likely to get sick.
    When genetic-discrimination claims start showing up in the courts in significant numbers, they are likely to get a sympathetic hearing. There are two major reasons that so many people—even congressional Republicans who are highly skeptical of civil rights laws—like GINA. First, there is the kind of discrimination it is aimed at: penalizing people for strands of DNA and RNA that they inherited from their parents through no fault of their own. In general, our society has decided to protect people for qualities that are " immutable" that is, something about them that is impossible or, at least, very difficult to change.
    So we make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, skin color and sex. On the other hand, we generally do not protect people who are not hired because they lack a high school diploma or because they wear a beard. Our response to those people is that if you want the job you should get more education or shave. Genes are a classic immutable characteristic: outside of some complicated medical procedures, we’re pretty much stuck with the genes we were born with.
    The second major reason genetic-cliscrimination laws are popular is that this is a kind of bias everyone feels they could be exposed to. None of us has perfect genes—and for the most part, we have no idea what is lurking in our DNA and RNA. Our genes are complex enough that we all have some negative information Hooded in there—and none of us wants to lose a job or be denied insurance over it. When juries begin to hear these cases, they are far more likely to identify with the plaintiffs than with the companies that discriminate. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be plenty of companies looking to benefit from genetic information, but if they use it, they may well have to pay.
The word"immutable" is closest in meaning to______.
选项 A、unalterable
B、inheritable
C、infective
D、unchanged
答案A
解析 题干中的immutable一词出现在文章的第四段。第四段提到了美国上下一致认同《反基因歧视法》的第一个原因。那就是这部法律针对的是对因从父母那里继承DNA、RNA基因链而受难的无辜人群的歧视。通常来说，美国社会会保护那些具有immutable特质的人群。immutable特质指的就是无法改变或难以改变的特质(something about them that is impossible or，at least，very difficult to change)。四个选项中，只有[A]选项unalterable表示“无法变更的，不可改变的”，因此为正确答案。[D]选项具有一定的迷惑性，unchanged的意思不是“不可变更的”，而是指某个东西长期以来“保持不变的，依然如故的”。
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