Номер B, страница 90 - гдз по английскому языку 11 класс учебник Комарова, Ларионова

Unit four.

Reading.

A healthier tomorrow.

From the Stone Age to today's Information Age, we humans have used the materials around us to revolutionize our world. However, some say that we are about to enter a new age.

According to experts, the new and defining element of our next stage of development will be something that comes from inside us: our genes. This, they say, is the dawn of the genetic age.

So, what will the key technologies of the genetic age be?

If you only paid attention to headline grabbing stories in the media, you might believe that our genetic future seems a bit trivial. For example, it was recently reported that a Korean company, RNL Bio, had been commissioned to clone someone's dog.

Although it costs, at current prices, eighty-seven thousand euros to have your pet cloned, the company is expecting good business once the technology becomes cheaper.

Also, a major European football club has admitted that it is looking for a genetic test to find the crack footballers of tomorrow.

Thanks to a discovery made by researchers at the European University in Madrid, young players may, in the near future, be routinely tested for a speed gene.

The idea is that if this gene is found to be part of their genetic code, they could have a natural predisposition to success on the pitch and, therefore, be sold to other teams for mega bucks.

Despite the silly stories making the front pages of the press, it is much more likely that the genetic age will be characterized by a revolution in healthcare.

The human genome was first decoded just a few years ago, but already our knowledge about how genetics affects our health is transforming the way diseases are understood, treated, and predicted.

Tests are already available to show who is most at risk from over one thousand three hundred diseases, including cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.

People with a family history of certain diseases can be screened to see if they are at risk and be given appropriate drugs or treatment as early as possible.

Unfortunately, finding the genes that cause illness does not mean that a disease can be prevented yet. At the moment, most drugs produced by pharmaceutical companies are treatments for the symptoms of ill health. The challenge for the future will be to produce genetic cures.

The first of these is expected to be produced within a few years and will help to eradicate a form of blindness in old people.

So, the next time genetics hits the headlines, let's hope it's about a medical discovery that makes incurable disease preventable, rather than sports stars or cloned pets.