When the most famous lamb in history emerged into the world in 1996, she brought with her a host of ethical and scientific dilemmas. The modest shed where she was born near the Roslin Institute in Scotland, may prove to be one of the most significant sites of scientific history. Today, Dolly lives inside a locked concrete building. She has never eaten grass or been in the open air for fear that she might get ill, and questions still remain about her true age: “Is she her chronological age, or the age of the sheep from which she was cloned?”.
Cloning raises a huge number of pressing questions and some ethical dilemmas. Firstly, it has raised the possibility of deliberately altering parental chromosomes to favour selected creative talents, a resistance to disease and ageing, or even a predisposition towards crime, that is to say, engineering another Mozart or Al Capone.
Secondly, cloning challenges our sense of ourselves in a more ambiguous way. In fact, our belief in our unique selves is all we have, the one reassurance that our lives have some kind of special meaning simply simply by being unique. Even when we shrink into virtual anonymity, at a football match or political rally, we still sense that our own particular bundle of quirks and reflexes give us our chief reason for being alive at all.
Finally, cloning interferes with the process of nature and in some way seems to threaten our idea of the soul. As parents we are delighted when our children resemble us, but do we want them to be our replicas, with our same dreams, ambitions and fears?
1 comment:
1. State in your own words what the author means when he says: “Cloning raises a huge number of pressing questions and some ethical dilemmas”.
2. Find and quote evidence in the text to support the following statements:
a) The fact that Dolly may get diseases spread by other animals makes her live in captivity.
b) Dolly was born two years ago.
c) The actual age of Dolly is not known yet.
d) Cloning defies Nature.
3. Say in each case wheter the statement is true or false according to the text. Write “T” or “F”. If the answer is not mentioned in the text, mark it as false.
a) Like other sheep, Dolly leads a normal life in the open air.
b) Parents would like their children to have the same dreams, ambitions and fears.
c) Cloning is a highly controversial topic.
d) The human race could be improved
through cloning.
e) There is general agreement over the applications of cloning.
f) The applications of cloning could be disastrous.
g) Cloning has meant a true scientific revolution.
h) Cloning poses a threat to the concept of the soul.
i) Being unique is an essential feature of human beings.
j) Dolly was born in Wales.
4. Find and copy words or expressions in the passage which mean the same as the followings:
a) Questions the rightness or validity of something.
b) Critical questions.
c) Moral.
d) Thought.
5. State your opinion about cloning. State reasons for and against cloning. Illustrate your answer with an example. Discuss one or more of these points in your composition. Write your plan (one mark) and then your composition (two marks).
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