普通高中课程标准实验教科书英语选修高二下选修8 Unit 2 Cloning-Reading Task
A DEBATE
Topic:
Should medical cloning be allowed?
Team A: They support the idea that there should be medical cloning.
Hello, chairperson and everyone else here today. I suggest that medical cloning is very important for curing serious illnesses that at present have no cure; for example, to replace nerve cells in someone who has suffered a stroke. Most profitably they can be used to help with diseases that gradually cause people to lose their ability to move easily or to think (such as Parkinson's Disease). With the help of special cloning techniques, such people can be restored to perfect health and be able to live a normal life again. This is a wonderful thing for them because it improves their quality of life.
But first we need to be clear about the advantages of the procedure.
◎There is no danger of the body refusing to accept the new cells.
◎ Nobody needs to donate their own organs for someone else's benefit.
◎ Patients can be treated immediately.
It seems the benefits are so obvious that we hope you will be able to support our side's point of view. Thank you.
Team B: They disagree that there should be medical cloning.
Hello, chairperson and everyone in the room. I would like to suggest that medical cloning is not as simple an issue as my colleague claims. First of all, where do these stem cells come from? Well, from human cells of course. If you believe, that human life comes into existence as soon as the cells start to grow, then the practice of removing human stem cells from an embryo kills it. This embryo, if it was allowed to continue to grow and develop, would eventually become another human being. So by using stem cells to save one person, we are actually killing another. Is this
ethically justified (正当的)? We feel that the answer must be "no".
At the moment medical cloning research is a very new science. It has been most successful in cloning some animals - but not all. The scientists are also worried about the efficiency of the system. Steve Stice of the University of Georgia said:
"We can make thousands of embryos. The real cost and real problem for us is when we transfer ( 转变) that embryo and we don't produce a (successful) pregnancy. That costs us time and money."
It took 29 embryos to produce Dolly the sheep and that was nearly ten years ago. But the situation has not got better for mammal cloning. It seems that the problems for human cloning will be even more serious as no human has yet been cloned. It is obvious that we must be very cautious about medical cloning until these problems are solved.
We hope you will agree with us and support our point of view. Thank you.
A debate is an activity in which students can discuss two sides of an issue. It is a sort of competition with a chairperson in charge to make sure of fair play. The chairperson introduces the topic of the debate and then one person from each side has a chance to begin the argument. After that, the issue can be discussed by anyone in the room one at a time. While having a debate there are several things to remember:
◎the person who is leading the team that supports the topic will speak first
◎the person who is leading the team that disagrees with the topic will speak next
◎then other people can take turns to speak in a free discussion
◎everyone must listen when other people are speaking
◎no one can be rude to other speakers and must always talk to the chairperson
◎the chairperson will stop anyone who repeats arguments that have already been made
◎anyone can reply to another person's argument
Towards the end of the debate, the chairperson will ask the last speaker of one side to summarize the arguments that have been made to support their point of view. Then the other side will do the same. Finally everyone in the room will vote and we can see who has won the debate. So let's start now.
