Process Unit

PGD

Vocabulary (5 Minutes)

Directions: Try to guess the meaning of the highlighted words based on your knowledge of English. In each set of words, underline the two words that have similar meanings to the words in bold letters on the left. Use your dictionaries if necessary. The first one has been done for you.

1. furor	a. uproar	b. anger	c. turmoil
2. challenge	a. confront	b. face	c. argue
3. match	a. fire	b. equal	c. counterpart
4. conceive	a. create	b. form	c. imagine
5. relative	a. next of kin	b. family member	c. daughter
6. infusion	a. blend	b. stirring	c. mixture
7. harbinger	a. omen	b. demise	c. indication
8. furious	a. firey	b. irate	c. enraged
9. trait	a. feature	b. characteristic	c. face
10. plight	a. procedure	b. dilemma	c. predicament

Rapid Reading Warm-Up (30 Seconds)

Directions: The exercise below has 25 problems that will help you read faster. You will have only 30 seconds to finish. You will probably not finish all 25 problems, but you are to work as quickly as you can. Be careful not to make any error, so read rapidly but carefully. In this exercise, there are six words: one word to the left of the line and five to the right. Read the word on the left and then find it among the five words to the right. Once you have found it, circle it.

Example

raft	rift	rate	raft	rote	reef
1. case	care	came	cage	case	cave
2. check	cheek	chalk	check	chain	chair
3. worrying	worming	worrying	wearing	working	warming
4. failing	filling	flailing	fooling	feeling	failing
5. affect	affect	effect	defect	effort	effective
6. nervous	nerves	never	neither	nervous	nerve
7. percent	person	perceive	percent	parson	percents
8. due	die	doe	dues	duty	due
9. have	heave	haven	hear	hove	have
10. both	bath	booth	both	bout	bother
11. praise	prize	prayers	pried	praise	praises
12. charge	change	cheer	charge	charges	chain
13. raise	raisin	rise	rose	rains	raise
14. choose	choose	chose	chooses	chosen	chairs
15. where	when	wharf	wheeze	where	here
16. policy	police	polemic	policy	pools	poles
17. agreed	agree	greed	agree	agrees	greedy
18. little	liter	litter	ladle	listen	little
19. plight	plait	flight	light	plight	plate
20. sought	ought	south	sooth	sought	sight
21. easy	essay	ease	easy	easier	eases
22. specialist	specialize	special	spleen	specialist	specialists
23. noted	nose	noted	knotted	notes	nosed
24. sick	sack	sic	sock	stick	sick
25. save	slave	shave	safety	saves	save

First Reading (3 Minutes for Preview – 3½ Minutes for Reading)

Directions: Starting with the first sentence of the passage, read as quickly as you can for three and a half minutes. Circle the last word you read when the time is up.

Second Reading (3½ Minutes)

Directions: Starting with the first sentence of the passage, read as quickly as you can for three and a half minutes. Circle the last word you read when the time is up.

Third Reading (3½ Minutes)

Directions: Starting with the first sentence of the passage, read as quickly as you can for three and a half minutes. Circle the last word you read when the time is up.

Fourth Reading (3½ Minutes)

Directions: Starting with the first sentence of the passage, read as quickly as you can for three and a half minutes. Circle the last word you read when the time is up.

Line

Word

Count

Adam Nash is the first known case of a test-tube baby born to be a transplant donor thanks to a genetic test originally invented to check whether embryos carry an inherited disease. The American baby was born in Denver on August 26, 2000, to save his ailing six-year-old sister, Molly, who is suffering from an inherited, fatal blood disease, Fanconi anemia. The case has caused a furor in the medical profession, challenging medical ethics and sparking a debate as to whether the operation was acceptable, worrying yet inevitable, or a chilling step towards the “designer” infant.

The boy, who was born specifically so that his stem cells could replace the failing bone marrow of his sister, was selected among a batch of embryos, conceived in vitro, by his parents in the hope of finding a tissue match for their daughter. His parents said that, in any case, they wanted a second healthy child. They were previously reluctant to conceive, fearing that the same blood disease would affect any new baby. The selection, which took place at Chicago’s Reproductive Genetics Institute, used pre-implantation genetics diagnosis (PGD) in choosing an embryo free of the gene for Fanconi anemia. This technique is normally used to see if a fetus is carrying a serious genetic disorder such as cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, hemophilia, or Huntington’s disease, a crippling disorder of the nervous system.

When Adam Nash’s tissue was found to be 100 percent compatible with that of his sister, he became the perfect donor. Molly’s doctors say she now has a 90 percent chance of survival due to a transplant of stem cells from Adam’s umbilical cord instead of the 30 percent she would have had with a transplant from a non-relative. The girl, who received the transplant in a Minneapolis hospital, is now recuperating from a painless procedure which involved the collection of cells from her brother’s umbilical cord and their infusion into her circulatory system. Her doctors are very optimistic that within a week they will be able to report a successful outcome.

The procedure has been both a promising and worrisome harbinger of where scientific advances are taking human reproduction in the near future. In some medical circles, it has won praise. However, in some others, it has unleashed furious accusations that Man is trying to play God – a charge that has colored so many past rows about reproduction, from contraception and abortion to in vitro fertilization itself.

The case, therefore, has raised questions about parents’ ability to choose the traits of their children for whatever practical or capricious reason they may have. Paul Vey, a consultant in stem-cell transplants at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, said that the issue raised questions about where the cut-off line should be in genetic screening. He also pointed out the fact that it was a start towards being able to choose the right color of eyes and the right intelligence of one’s children.

Vivienne Nathanson, head of Ethics and Policy at the British Medical Association, said regulations in Britain’s governing genetic screening were tighter than in the United States. She stated there was little doubt that British authorities would have agreed to the use of the technique to determine which embryos carried disease gene and would have avoided implanting those. She maintained that she was much less certain that they would have sanctioned the selection of the one healthy embryo that would have been the best tissue match.

Nicole Alby, a leading French child psychologist, argued that many would sympathize with the plight of the Nash family as they saw their daughter’s health decline and desperately sought a solution. She added that, in tragic cases of transplant or death, there was no easy solution. “It’s a very complicated problem in which no one has the right to make value judgments, a horrible situation for a family,” she contended.

Thierry Leblanc, a specialist in childhood blood disorders at Paris’ Saint Louis Hospital, said that the use of PGD to identify the donor had “reached the ethical limits.” However, he noted that there had been many cases in the past which were never reported by the media. He claimed that many desperate couples had attempted to have another child in the hope of providing a tissue match to save their children. Having no recourse to PGD, they used amniocentesis after 14 to 16 weeks’ pregnancy to see if the match was right. If it were wrong, the fetus was often aborted. Doctors, he asserted, did not advise any of these actions as a rule but could not prevent them altogether, thus, insinuating that desperate couples would take desperate measures in order to save their children.

In conclusion, some say that the Nash case marks a step towards the nightmare of “designer” babies selected for looks or smartness. Others defend it, saying a child’s life may be saved. Still, many others throw up their hands and say the issue is worrying yet insoluble.

Adapted from The Arab Times, October 4 and 9, 2000

151

195

255

306

352

401

454

500

556

598

655

707

747

802

826

Reading Comprehension (10 Minutes)

Directions: Circle the letter next to the statement that best answers the following questions.

1. An appropriate title for the article would be _____.

a. Choosing the Traits of Your Child

b. Scientific Possibilities of “Designer” Babies

c. Debate over Gene Screening

d. Choosing Healthy Embryos

2. The thesis statement of the article begins in _____.

a. line 3

b. line 5

c. line 1

d. line 9

3. The issue discussed in the article is _____.

a. whether PGD should be used to find perfect donors

b. whether Fanconi anemia patients should be given transplants

c. whether “designer” babies should be chosen for their intelligence

d. whether test-tube babies should be allowed to exist

4. PGD is used _____.

a. to determine if embryos carry the genes of certain diseases

b. for implanting a fetus in the mother’s womb

c. exclusively in choosing an embryo free of the gene for hemophilia

d. none of the above

5. A description of how Molly’s transplant was carried out is found in paragraph _____.

a. 1

b. 2

c. 3

d. 4

6. Faconi anemia is a disease affecting the _____.

a. nervous system

b. muscles

c. bone marrow

d. genes

7. According to Nathanson, British authorities _____.

a. do not permit the use of PGD

b. permit the use of PGD only for disease screening

c. permit the use of PGD only if couples wish it

d. do not permit the use of PGD unless the embryos are healthy

8. “Designer” infant means _____.

a. A baby whose embryo was chosen for being a non-relative

b. a baby whose embryo was chosen for its specific traits

c. a baby who is intelligent

d. a baby who is beautiful

9. Nicole Alby said that _____.

a. she could not understand the plight of the Nash family

b. she was looking for a solution to the problem

c. people do not have the right to condemn the decision of the family

d. people do have the right to choose certain traits for their baby

10. The difference between PGD and amniocentesis is _____.

a. PGD is used in the USA while amniocentesis is used in France

b. PGD is only used after four months of pregnancy

c. after PGD, the fetus is aborted if the match is wrong while, with amniocentesis, the fetus is kept alive

d. PGD is a pre-implantation screening while amniocentesis is a post-implantation screening

11. The author of the article _____.

a. is for the use of PGD

b. is against the use of PGD

c. does not express other people’s opinions