How can transplants from other animals help humans?

In one famous case, a British girl born with a rare bone condition that left her with only one ear, had a new one grown for her at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in the USA. By taking cells from her existing ear and transplanting them onto the back of a mouse, scientists grew her another one, which could then be transplanted back. American scientists have also used sheep blood cells to make a universal blood which could be given to any patient, regardless of their blood group while British scientists are close to manufacturing artificial blood, with the aid of milk from genetically-altered cows and sheep. Scientists have also transplanted monkeys' heads on to new bodies, paving the way for head transplants to be performed on humans. The monkeys were able to eat, drink and sleep normally. Robert White, head of neurosurgery at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio said the operation could be available to humans within thirty years, but the experiment has been condemned as an example of 'the disastrous route Western medicine is taking, in which prolonging individual life takes precedence over everything'.

Exercise 11.Answer the questions below.

a) Will it ever be possible to produce exact copies of human beings?

b) What are the possible advantages of cloning human beings?

c) What cells have used American scientists?

d) Why do some people criticise the idea of head transplants?

e) Which ideas in the text do you think:

· are positive steps forward?

· are worrying, from an ethical point of view?

· should be prohibited?

Explain why.

Exercise 12. Read the poem

<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
Key questions about modern medical science	\|	The Horrid Voice of Science

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