职称英语卫生类考试考前每日一练 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 babys 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. And baby Jessica is just the beginning. Within a decade or two, it may be possible to screen kids almost before conception for an enormous range of attributes , 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, their IQ and personality type. In fact, if gene therapy lives up to its promise, parents may someday be able to go be-yond weeding out undesirable traits and start actually inserting the genes they want-- perhaps even genes that have been crafted in a lab. Before the new millennium is many years old, parents may be going to fertility clinics and picking from a list of options the way car buyers order air conditioning and chrome-alloy wheels. It is the ultimate shopping experience: designing your baby, says biotechnology critic Jere - my Rifkin, who is appalled by the prospect. But in a society used to cosmetic surgery, this is not a big step. |