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When a Scottish research team startled the world by revealing 3 months ago that it had cloned an adult sheep, President Clinton moved swiftly. Declaring that he was opposed to using this unusual animal husbandry technique to clone humans, he ordered that federal funds not he used for such an experiment, although no one had proposed to do so, and asked an independent panel of experts chaired by Princeton President Harold Shapiro to report back to the White House in 90 days with recommendations for a national policy on human cloning. That group -- the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) has been working feverishly to put its wisdom on paper, and at a meeting on 17 May, members agreed on a near final draft of their recommendations.
NBAC will ask that Clinton’s 90-day ban on federal funds for human cloning be extended indefinitely, and possibly that it be made a law. But NBAC members are planning to word the recommendation narrowly to avoid new restrictions on research that involves the cloning of human DNA or cells-routine in molecular biology. The panel has not yet reached agree ment on a crucial question, however, whether to recommend legislation that would make it a crime for private funding to be used for human cloning.
In a draft preface to the recommendations, discussed at the 17 May meeting. Shapiro suggested that the panel had found a broad consensus that it would be "morally unacceptable to attempt to create a human child by adult nuclear cloning." Shapiro explained during the meeting that the moral doubt stems mainly from fears about the risk to the health of the child. The panel then informally accepted several general conclusions, although some details have not been settled.
NBAC plans to call for a continued ban on federal government funding for any attempt to clone body cell nuclear to ere ate a child. Because current federal law already forbids the use of federal funds to create embryos (the earliest stage of human offspring before birth) for research or to knowingly endanger an embryo’s life, NBAC will remain silent on embryo re search.
NBAC members also indicated that they will appeal to privately funded researchers and clinics not to try to clone hu mans by body cell nuclear transfer. But they were divided on whether to go further by calling for a federal law that would impose a complete ban on human cloning. Shapiro and most members favored an appeal for such legislation, but in a phone interview, he said this issue was still "up in the air".
We can learn from the first paragraph that ______.
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SECTION B INTERVIEW
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions.
Now listen to the interview.
听力原文：Interviewer: Hello, everyone. Welcome to our programme Worldly Wise. Today our attention turns to pollution. We are lucky to have with us here our guest, Miss Catherine White, the youngest woman director of the Environmental Protection Agency. Good morning, Miss White.
Catherine: Good morning.
Interviewer: Well, Miss White, nowadays, most people believe it is the air outdoors that presents us, particularly those most sensitive to unhealthy air, with the greatest risk. But according to your group’s recent research, there seems to be something different.
Catherine: Yes, our research shows that it is not the air outdoors that takes us the risk. However, it is actually the air in side our homes, schools, and other buildings that is most harmful.
Interviewer: Really？
Catherine: Really! According to a recent report made by my colleague, 50% of all illnesses is aggravated or caused by polluted indoor air. The indoor air is anywhere from 2 to 10 times more hazardous than the outdoor air. And the indoor air quality epidemic has become the nation’s number one environmental health problem.
Interviewer: Why is such a big problem not noticed before？
Catherine: Because it was not as serious as today. As a result of the energy crisis of the 1970s, with energy-efficiency in mind, today's homes and buildings are built air-tight. Their air-tight construction keeps airborne pollutants trapped inside, and nature’s air-cleansing agents outside. Statistics for asthma problems began rising sharply around the same time that homes and buildings began to be built his way. In fact, a recent study found that the allergen level in super-insulated homes is 200% higher than it is in ordinary homes.
Interviewer: Besides the insulation of homes, is there anything else that worsens the indoor air？
Catherine: Yes, carpets, molds, mildews, fungi, dust mites, and many many others. A baby crawling on the floor in hales the equivalent of 4 cigarettes a day!
Interviewer: But most people spend most of their time inside.
Catherine: Yeah. Some are over 90%. In this case, the indoor air is going to affect our health far more than the outdoor air. Virtually everyone is affected, especially asthmatics and others who are particularly sensitive to allergens and dirty particles in the air. Keep in mind that no home or building is immune to the indoor air quality epidemic. 6 out of 10 homes and buildings are "sick".
Interviewer: Sick？ Do you mean the air in the house is in bad quality？
Catherine: Not only bad, but it is hazardous to your health. And even the Environmental Protection Agency’s very own headquarters, constructed a few years ago, was determined to be "sick". Many EPA employees could not work inside the building without becoming sick. If the headquarters of the EPA can fall victim to the indoor air quality epidemic, the very government agency that is charged with finding solutions to this problem, then any home or building can be afflicted. In fact, every home and building is affected by the indoor air quality epidemic to one degree or another, regardless of how clean it may appear.
Interviewer: But if my house looks really clean, how did it become that way？
Catherine: Did you use aerosols, floor or furniture polish, bleach, bathroom cleaners, etc. ？ If so, these products give off harmful chemical vapors into the air. Most homes or buildings also have carpets, painted walls, chemically treated furnishings, dust, insects, moist or damp things, food, people, and...
Interviewer: People？!
Catherine: Yes, humans shed more than just about any other animal, but our skin flakes are
The study also found that the type of alcohol consumed -- beer, wine or liqour -- was unimportant. Any of them, or a combination, was protective, researchers reported in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association. "No study has shown benefit in recommending alcohol consumption to those who do not drink", cautioned the authors, led by Dr. Ralph L. Sacco of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. But the new data support the guidelines of the National Stroke Association, which say moderate drinkers may protect themselves from strokes by continuing to consume alcohol, the authors said.
The protective effect of moderate drinking against heart attacks is well established, but the data has been conflicting a bout alcohol and strokes, the authors said. The new study helps settle the question and is the first to find blacks and His panics benefit as well as whites, according to the authors. Further research is needed among other groups, such as Asian, whom past studies suggest may get no stroke protection from alcohol or may even be put at greater risk.
Among groups where the protective effect exists, its mechanism appears to differ from the protective effect against heart attacks, which occurs through boosts in levels of so-called "good" cholesterol, the authors said. They speculated alcohol may protect against stroke by acting on some other blood trait, such as the tendency of blood platelets to clump, which is key in forming the blood trait, such as the tendency of blood platelets to clump, which is key in forming the blood dots that can cause strikes.
The researchers studied 677 New York residents who lived in the northern part of Manhattan and had strokes between July 1,1993, and June, 1997. After taking into account differences in other factors that could affect stroke risk, such as high blood pressure, the researchers estimated that subjects who consumed up to two alcoholic drinks daily were only half as likely to have suffered dot-type strokes as nondrinkers. Clot-type strokes account for 80 percent of all strokes, a leading cause of US deaths and disability. Stroke risk increased with heavier drinking. At seven drinks per day, risk was almost triple that of moderate drinkers.
An expert spokesman for the American Heart Association, Who was not involved in the study, said it was well-done and important information. But it shouldn’t be interpreted to mean, "I can have two drinks and therefore not worry about my high blood pressure or worry about my cholesterol," said Dr. Edgar J. Kenton, an associate professor of clinical neurology at Thomas Jefferson University Medical College in Philadelphia. Instead, he said, the study provides good reason to do further research and to add alcohol to the list of modifiable risk factors for stroke.
The new study conducted by Dr. Sacco and his colleagues is unique in that ______.
Some heartening statistics were reported last year by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute: the mortality rate for breast cancer dropped nearly five percent between 1989 and 1992, the largest decline since 1950. The numbers were even more dramatic for young women: between 1987 and 1992, the mortality rate plummeted nearly 18 percent among white women younger than 40.
But discouraging news also surfaced: the mortality rate among black women has gone up, and the number of reported breast cancer cases is rising as well. Twenty years ago a woman s lifetime risk of breast cancer was one in 12; now it’s one in eight.
Nevertheless, we' re on the verge of a revolution in treating this disease. Researchers now have a clear picture of how a cancer cell becomes a tumor -- and how cells break free from a tumor and glide through the bloodstream to seed a new one in another part of the body. And they better understand how the female hormone estrogen makes breast cancer cells grow. "I think we're going to get this disease licked in my lifetime, "says Dr. Susan M. Love, director of the Revlon/U. C. L. A. Breast Cancer Center in Los Angeles.
Until that time, information is a woman’s most powerful tool. "A cancer diagnosis isn’t an emergency." Dr. Love says. "A patient should take time to educate herself and find out what the options are. "Most of all, a woman needs to re member that breast cancer is not death sentence, and that more than half of all women who develop it will live at least 15 years after their diagnosis.
Much of today’s. good news centers on refining old therapies. Here’s where we stand in treating breast cancer.
Surgery and Radiation. The most dramatic change in breast cancer treatment in the past 20 years is that mastectomy removal of the entire breast and often part of the underlying chest muscle -- is no longer considered the only safe course. The chances of survival are no greater after a mastectomy that after the less disfiguring lumpectomy -- in which just the tumor is removed and the breast is left intact -followed by radiation. "There are good reasons to choose mastectomy," says Dr. Larry Norton, chief of breast cancer medicine Manhattan’s Memorial Sloan-kettring Cancer Center. "But if you' re a good candidate for lumpectomy, increasing your chances of a cure isn’t one of those reasons."
For about 30 percent of women, mastectomy is the only reasonable choice -- for example, a woman with small breasts and a large tumor, or one whose tumor is disseminated throughout the breast. But concerns about which procedure to choose often have more to do with life-style. and attitudes. A lumpectomy requires radiation following surgery to kill any remaining cancer cells, which can mean outpatient visits five days a week for five to seven weeks. Scheduling could be a problem. Nancy Reagan, for instance, decided to have a mastectomy because radiation treatments would have taken too much time.
Many women, however, choose mastectomy out of fear and lack of information. Some patients are terrified of radiation and need to understand what it’s really all about, says Carol Fred, a clinical social worker at U. C. L. A’s Rhonda Fleming Mann Resource Center for Women with Cancer.
After a lumpectomy the machine that administers the treatment aims radioactive particles at the affected breast only. The treatments make most women tired and can sometimes leave the skin feeling sunburned. But the breast is not left radioactive.
Which statement cannot be inferred from the passage？
African bushmen are being given computers so they can use their skill at tracking wild animals to take part in a project that will help conservation and tourism.
The project is being run by Louis Liebenberg, a South African tracking expert, who has teamed up with Lindsay Steventon, a computer expert. They are equipping bushmen with handheld PalmPilot computers so they can record sightings of animals in the wild. The computers, known as Cyber Trackers, can then be taken to a base and the information down loaded onto a PC.
The project will create a remarkable database for scientists, who will have wildlife information c6llated throughout the year by bushmen whose knowledge of local animals is unrivalled.
To make the system easy to use for the largely illiterate bushmen, each type of animal is given a screen icon that cone spends to its appearance. Different breeds of the same animal are stored as sub menus, again using icons to note their distinguishing features.
Once an animal is spotted and its icon is pressed, the tracker can make further observations about the creature. Option include the pace at which it is moving, what it is eating, whether it is fighting or sleeping, the condition of its droppings and its apparent state of health.
If only the tracks of an animal are spotted, the bushmen can enter details of the species and which direction it was moving in. This may lead to later sightings and additional data. When an entry is to be committed to the PalmPilot’s memory, the bushman presses a button and a GPS receiver stamps a position on the data. To ensure accuracy the tracker has to estimate how far away the animal is so its position and not his is recorded.
The bushmen will also use the PalmPilots to record water levels and how plants are faring. Fluctuations in either can harm animal populations.
When the PalmPilot is attached to a base PC, the sightings can be downloaded and displayed on its screen as lines showing the movement and behaviour of individual animals as well as groups. This allows movement and feeding patterns to be examined.
Liebenberg hopes that as well as building a useful research tool these maps will give guidance on where tourists should be taken to optimise their chances of seeing elusive animals such as leopards and rhinos.
"A tracker could check on the PC where the latest sightings have been recorded and get a good idea where the best place would be to take tourists, "he says. "It could mean that instead of having to pay for three days in the bush, tourists need only budget for two days. "
The system is now being tested on a small scale but Liebenberg says that it has already given more insight into changes in the feeding patterns of the desert species of the endangered black rhino.
"What happened before was that a scientist would come down from a university for a few days a year, make some observations and that would be it -- the total knowledge of rhino eating patterns," he says, "With the Cyber Tracker the bushmen were able to log where the rhinos were, what they were eating, and how much of that food was left. We found the rhinos change food every couple of months as a new type of plant flourishes. It was always assumed they ate the same sorts of leaves and grass after the end of the dry season."
"This has huge implications for rhino populations because the trackers’data can show which other animals are eating what the rhinos feed on. In this case it was kudu, a common type of antelope, which is often served in restaurants. In future, the park ranger will be able to look at the rhino population and what they are eating and , if there are too many kudu in the area, he can cull some so there is less competition for food. It may sound harsh, but kudu are common and this relative of the black rhino is not, so you don’t want them to start losing condition. '
Steventon, w
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