To clone or not to clone.docVIP

To clone or not to clone, is that the question? Nov 26th 2001?From The Economist Global Agenda An American biotech company has claimed that it has created the first human embryos (胚胎）ever produced by cloning, provoking a storm of criticism and reigniting (再点燃，重新激起）the ethical （伦理的）debate about the promises and dangers of biology’s most controversial new technologyADVANCED CELL TECHNOLOGY may be a small, privately financed company that few outside the rarefied （纯净的, 稀薄的）world of biotechnology, and not many within it, have ever heard of. But whatever else that can be said about the firm, its managers certainly know how to make a splash（发出溅泼声）. On November 25th, the company claimed to have created the first cloned human embryos, and made the announcement with all the skill of a Hollywood publicist（时事评论员; 新闻发布官员）. It published its results not in a major scientific journal such as Nature or Science, but in an obscure online journal called e-biomed: The Journal of Regenerative Medicine, which many leading medical scientists don’t read. To make sure that the wider world paid attention, the three scientists behind the experiments wrote a dramatic first-person account of their research for Scientific American, a popular journal for lay （外行）readers, and they seem to have given a thorough advanced briefing to US News World Report, a mass-market news magazine, which portrayed the three as intrepid （勇猛无畏的）pioneers, and even described one of them, Robert Lanza, “as the living embodiment of the character played by Matt Damon in the movie Good Will Hunting”. Not just scientific pioneers; Hollywood heart-throbs （心跳，情人）to boot.Despite all this, the announcement immediately provoked a storm of protest. President George Bush declared that “the use of embryos to clone is wrong. We should not as a society grow life to destroy it. And that’s exactly what’s taking place.” The Vatican （梵蒂冈, 罗马教廷）joined in, saying that the firm’s announcement “called for unequivocal （明确的，不含糊的）condemnatio