not now miracle doctoc 翻译

Not Now, Dr. Miracle Severino Antinori is a rich Italian doctor with a string of private fertility clinics to his name. he likes watching football and claims the Catholic faith. Yet the Vatican is no fan of his science. In his clinics, Antinori already offers every IVF treatment under the Sun, but still there are couples he cannot help. So now the man Italians call Dr. Miracle is offering a clone his patients to create babies they so desperately want. And of course it’s created quite a stir, with other scientists rounding on Antinori as religious leaders line up to attack his cloning plan as an insult to human diginity. Yet it’s an ambition Antinori has expressed many times before. What’s new is that finally it seems to be building a head of steam. Liked-minded scientists from the US have joined Antinori in his cloning adventure. At a conference in Rome last week they claimed hundreds of couples have already volunteered for the experiment. Antinori shot to fame seven years ago helping grandmothers give birth using donor eggs. Later he pioneered the use of mice to nurture the sperm of men with poor fertility. He is clearly no ordinary scientist but a showman who thrives on controversy and pushing reproductive biology to the limits. And that of course is one reason why he’s seen as being so dangerous. However his idea of using cloning to combat infertility is not as mad as it sounds. Many people have a hard job seeing the point of reproductive cloning. But for some couples, cloning represents the only hope of having a child carrying their genes, and scientists like Antinori are probably right to say that much of our opposition to cloning as a fertility treatment is irrational. In future we may want to change our minds and allow it in special circumstances. But only when the science is ready. And that’s the real problem. Five years on from Dolly, the science of cloning is still stuck in the dark ages. The failure rate is a shocking 97 per cent and deformed babies all too common. Even when cloning works, nobody understands why. So forget the complex moral arguments. To begin cloning people now, before even the most basic questions have been answered, is simply a waste of time and energy. This is not to say that Antinori will fail, only that if he succeeds it is likely to be at an unacceptably high price. Hundreds of eggs and embryos will be wasted and lots of women will go through difficult pregnancies resulting in miscarriages and abortion. A few years from now techniques will have improved and the wasteful loss won’t be as excessive. But right now there seems to be little anyone can do to keep the cloners at bay. And it is not just Antinori and his team who are eager to go. A religious group called the Raelians believes cloning is the key to achieving immortality, and it, too, claims to have the necessary egg donors and volunteers willing to be implanted with cloned embryos. So what about tougher laws? Implanting cloned human embryos is already illeagal in many countries but it will never be prohibited everywhere. In any case, the prohibition of cloning is more likely to drive it underground than stamp it out. Secrecy is already a problem. Antinori and his team are refusing to name the country they’ll be using as their base. Like it or not, the research is going ahead. Sooner or later we are going to have decide whether regulation is safer than prohibition. Antinori would go for regulation, of course. He believes it is only a mater of time before we lose our hang-ups about reproductive cloning and accept it as just another IVF technique. Once the first baby is born and it cries, he said last week, the world will embrace it. But the world will never embrace the first cloned baby if it is unhealthy or deformed or the sole survivor of hundreds of pregnancies. In jumping the gun, Dr. Miracle and his colleagues are taking one hell of a risk. If their instincts are wrong, the backlash against cloning ----and indeed science as a whole---- could be catastrophic. 还不是时候,神奇医生 塞维里诺·安蒂诺里是一位富有的意大利医生,他名下有一系列生育诊所。他喜欢看足球比赛,还自称是忠实的天主教信徒。即便如此,在信奉天主教的地方也很少有人支持他的研究。 在安蒂诺里的诊所里,他已为许多人进行了试管婴儿治疗,但仍有一些夫妇无法治愈。这位被意大利人称为神奇医生的人,打算应用克隆手术的方式,来帮助那些非常想要孩子的患者。 可想而知,他的这种想法引起了轩然大波,科学家们大加批判,宗教领袖们群起而攻之,认为他的这种做法是对人类尊严的玷污。安蒂诺里曾多次提出他 的远大志向,而这次不同的是,他终于要付诸于实践。美国一些与安蒂诺里志同道合的科学家加入了他的克隆实验,打算尝试一次冒险。上周在罗马召开的会议上,他们宣布已经有几百对夫妇愿意成为实验的志愿者。 七年前,安提诺瑞因帮助一位祖母级的老妇人通过捐献的卵子生下一个孩子,一时名声大震。随后,他率先用老鼠为生育能力低下的男人培育精子。显然,他并非普通的科学家,而是爱炫耀,备受争议却将生殖生物学推向极限的人。当然,这也是大家视他为危险人物的原因之一。 然而,利用克隆技术战胜不育症的想法听起来并没有那么疯狂。只是很多人还难以接受利用克隆进行生育,但对于某些夫妇而言,如果想要一个携带自己基因的孩子,克隆技术是他们唯一的希望。像安迪诺瑞这样的科学家有权指出认为我们无端反对克隆医疗手段是荒谬的。未来我们也许会改变自己的观点并允许特殊的情况下使用克隆技术。 但是科学技术何时才能发展成熟,这才是真正的问题。虽然克隆绵羊多利出生五年了,但克隆技术却一直不见曙光。克隆的失败高达97%率,这实在令人震惊,而且畸形婴儿屡见不鲜。即使克隆手术成功了,也没人能弄明白其究竟,所以我们先抛下复杂的伦理道德问题。在最基本问题解决之前就开展人体克隆手术,实在是浪费时间和精力。 当然,这并不是说安蒂诺里注定会失败,问题是即使他的手术成功了,价格也会高得让人负担不起。可能出现的情况有,手术会浪费掉大量的卵子和胚胎;很多妇女会因难产而遭受流产或堕胎的痛苦。往后的几年里,科技水平将会大大提高,不必要的损失也会随之降低。但是,至今我们仍然对阻止生育克隆无能为力。 现在,不仅仅是安蒂诺里及其团队热衷于克隆,还有一个叫雷尔的宗教组织坚信克隆是实现永生的关键,他们宣称已经拥有必要的卵子和志愿者愿意接受移植胚胎。 那些更为严格的法律又将如何呢?虽然目前很多国家认为克隆人类胚胎是非法行为,但并不是所有的地方都会明令禁止这项技术。对克隆的禁止很有可能会使其转入地下,并非根除。因为保密是一个问题,安蒂诺里及其团队拒绝透露将把哪个国家作为研究基地。无论喜欢与否,克隆研究仍会进行下去。对克隆研究化管理还是强行禁止?迟早我们要做出抉择。 当然,安蒂诺里主张对克隆进行规范化管理。因为他相信,人们一定会摆脱对克隆生育的疑虑,并将其作为另一种试管受精技术,只是时间的问题。上周他说道,“如果第一个克隆婴儿呱呱坠地,全世界一定会敞开怀抱欢迎他的到来。” 但是,如果第一个克隆婴儿不健康、畸形,或者只是成百上千个克隆婴儿中唯一的幸存者,世界绝不会接受他。如果过早的开始克隆实验,神奇医生及其同事们将面临极大的风险。如果他们的直觉出错,对克隆技术甚至对整个科学事业带来的都是一场毁灭性的灾难。