Bài thực hành nghe Tiếng Anh nâng cao - Bài 20 - Thẩm Tâm Vy - Năm 2018 (Có âm thanh)

 Thẩm Tâm Vy, December 17th, 2018 PRACTISE LISTENING FOR ADVANCED LEARNERS [20] 
PRACTISE LISTENING – FOR ADVANCED LEARNERS [20] 
Genetics and ethics 
NEXT TIME, ASK FIRST 
BEIJING 
The affair of the gene-edited babies rumbles on 
 On November 26
th
 He Jiankui a DNA-sequencing expert at the Southern University of 
Science and Technology, in Shenzhen, claimed he had orchestrated the birth of the 
world’s first gene-edited babies: twin girls who arrived in early October. That claim 
brought the fury of the world raining down upon his head and he has since disappeared 
from view—though he has not, apparently, been arrested as some news reports have 
suggested. 
 Exactly what Dr He achieved has also been called into question. He says he used a 
gene-editing technique called CRISPRCas9 to disable, in one of the twins, called Nana, 
both parental copies of a gene called CCR5. This gene encodes a protein used by HIV 
to enter cells. If Dr He’s claim is true, he may have conferred on Nana immunity to 
infection by HIV, thus protecting her from aids, which HIV causes. Moreover, by 
editing the genes of a fertilised egg—from which all body tissues, including the ovaries, 
are derived—he has done this in a way that can be passed down the generations, a 
process known as germ-line editing. 
 Nana’s sister Lulu, Dr He says, has also had her genome modified, but with only 
partial success in that only one parental copy of CCR5 was disabled and so she remains 
unprotected. However, an independent assessment of Dr He’s data by several gene-
editing experts, including Kiran Musunuru of the University of Pennsylvania, suggests 
the experiment achieved only partial success in both twins. 
 On the face of things, Dr He may have broken the rules in China (and would certainly 
have broken the law in some countries, had he conducted his experiments elsewhere). 
An official investigation led by the university is under way into the details of the case, 
and will report in due course. But, regardless of the specifics, the whole affair prompts 
wider questions about the culture and ethics, in both China and the rest of the world, of 
the rapidly developing area of gene editing. 
 Such questions will be debated by the Global Observatory for Gene Editing, which 
will be launched next spring in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The project, masterminded 
by Sheila Jasanoff of Harvard University and Benjamin Hurlbut of Arizona State 
University, in Tempe, who are both social scientists rather than geneticists, will try to 
broaden discussion about the technology. 
 The idea is to involve ethicists, legal experts and representatives of governments and 
civil society, as well as scientists, thus enabling people from all of these fields to see the 
others’ points of view. By coincidence, Dr Hurlbut is particularly close to the He affair. 
He has met and corresponded with Dr He. Also, his father, William, is a bioethicist and 
physician at Stanford University, in California, where Dr He worked after he had 
completed his PhD. According to William Hurlbut, “Dr He sought me out because he 
had genuine concerns about the ethical implications of his work. He really wanted to 
understand.” 
 To many researchers, it was unsurprising that the He affair happened in China. 
 “Ethical governance has long been the Achilles’ heel of China’s scientific endeavour,” 
says Lei Ruipeng, executive director of the Centre for Bioethics at Huazhong University 
of Science and Technology, in Wuhan. Regulatory loopholes, lack of accountability, 
lack of penalties for violating rules and a lack of awareness of the rules among health-
care staff and the public alike have earned the country a reputation for being 
biotechnology’s Wild West. [!] 
 The rampant application of unproven stem-cell therapies, for example, made China a 
magnet for medical tourism until the government banned such practices in 2012. In the 
same year a trial on children, without the consent of their parents, of the nutritional 
effects of genetically modified rice, sparked public outcry. More recently, somatic 
gene-editing therapies (those that modify the body cells of people already alive, rather 
than the cells of those yet to be born) have been mushrooming without always having 
had proper approval. Moreover, many Chinese scientists feel they are in a competition 
with the West that has nationalistic overtones, and have even more incentive to do high-
visibility work as a consequence. In light of this the CRISPRbabies scandal was, says 
Dr Lei, a “time bomb waiting to explode.” A pressing question in her mind is, “are there 
other time bombs lurking around?” 
 Not everyone, though, is inclined to think this is the whole story. In Dr Musunuru’s 
view Dr He—and anybody who may have helped and encouraged him—are the 
products of a general scientific culture (not merely a Chinese one) that puts a premium 
on competition, sensational research and being the first. As he puts it, “If you do 
something that is very attention-raising, you are more likely to get funding. If you do 
something truly revolutionary, you might get a Nobel prize.” 
 Benjamin Hurlbut views the He affair as “a prism for seeing some of the profoundly 
troubling issues of international science.” 
 William believes that despite Dr He’s mistake their conversations at Stanford revealed 
a man who was aware of the ethical issues. What struck both Hurlbuts was how little 
foundation Dr He had for clear ethical thinking. “This was clearly not part of the 
training he received,” in either China or America, says William Hurlbut. “I was trying 
to give him what he had never received—a sort of road map of the kind of issues and 
questions behind his work—but I couldn’t possibly do what his training didn’t do in a 
few conversations,” he says. 
 “He still felt the pull of doing what he both believed was good and would earn him an 
international reputation in science.” 
 Benjamin Hurlbut observes that Dr He is just one of many scientists who want to 
understand the ethical implications of their work but do not have the training or 
resources to think them through [!]. The gene-editing observatory, with its more wide-
reaching approach to expertise, will seek to fix that. How to handle germ-line editing—
indeed, whether it should ever be permitted—is a problem given urgency by Dr He’s 
activities. As those activities demonstrate, it is not one that scientists can be trusted to 
deal with by themselves. [Soursce: The Economist, December 15th , 2018] 
 Thẩm Tâm Vy, December 17th, 2018 PRACTISE LISTENING FOR ADVANCED LEARNERS [20] 
Notes. 
 - orchestrated: bố trí, dàn dựng (để có kết quả theo ý của mình) 
 - genome: khối / bộ gen di truyền 
 - masterminded: vạch sẵn kế hoạch; chỉ đạo 
 - Regulatory loopholes: thòng lọng kiểm soát (= luật pháp hạn chế, cấm đoán) 
 - rampant application: áp dụng, vận dụng tràn lan 
 - sparked public outcry: gây ra sự phản đối của công luận 
 - somatic: thuộc về cơ thể ( ≠ mental; thuộc về tinh thần, trí óc) 
 Tác giả dùng biện pháp tu từ “metaphor: ẩn dụ” trong 2 câu sau: 
 - That claim brought the fury of the world raining down upon his head.(cơn phẩn nộ 
trút xuống như mưa) 
 - Ethical governance has long been the Achilles’ heel of China’s scientific endeavour. 
(gót chân Achilles = khuyết điểm NHỎ dẫn đến sự thất bại của một công trình LỚN) 
Mr. He-Jiankui 
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/fears-of-regulatory-backlash-in-wake-
of-gene-edited-babies-scandal/3009835.article