Listening and vocabulary优质课教案内容

Presenter: Our topic for this week is cloning. To discuss it, we have with us Dr. Hugh Donaville, head of a company that has already cloned a number of animals.

Hugh

Donaville: Good morning.

Presenter: Dr. Donaville, could you begin with a simple explanation of cloning?

Hugh

Donaville: Certainly. Cloned animals are created in a laboratory. They take all their genes from a single parent.

Presenter: So cloned animals come from one parent only.

Hugh

Donaville: Precisely.

Presenter: How successful has cloning been so far?

Hugh

Donaville: Well, as most people know, in 1997 scientists cloned a sheep called Dolly. Since then, scientists have cloned animals such as pigs and cats.

Presenter: You make cloning sound easy.

Hugh

Donaville: Do I? I wish it was. If it was easy, I'd be a very rich man by now.

Presenter: So what are the difficulties?

Hugh

Donaville: Unfortunately, cloned animals get ill and die quite young. For example, Dolly the sheep died in 2003. She should have lived longer.

Presenter: Why do they get ill?

Hugh

Donaville: We've got a few ideas but we don't really understand why yet.

Presenter: I see. Now obviously, Dr. Donaville, you believe that cloning will be beneficial to human beings.

Hugh

Donaville: Yes, I do. If I didn't believe that, I'd be in a different job.

Presenter: Many people believe that cloning is wrong and against nature.

How do you answer them?

Hugh

Donaville: I tell them that cloning is a way of helping nature.

Presenter: But cloning treats animals and people as things, as products.

Hugh

Donaville: Nonsense! I don't think that's true at all. I don't think

scientists treated Dolly the sheep as a product. She was a sheep!

Presenter: I'm not sure everyone believes that. Also, people are afraid that scientists will create thousands of copies of the same person.

Hugh

Donaville: I agree, if that happened, it would be terrible. We need laws to prevent that.

Presenter: I'm glad you agree about that. But why do scientists want to clone humans? I can't see any good reasons for this.

Hugh

Donaville: On the contrary, there are very good reasons. For example, if a couple can't have children, then cloning can give them a child.

And if a child dies, we could clone it.

Presenter: Create an identical copy, you mean? I think that's a terrible idea.

Hugh

Donaville: A clone can never be an identical copy of another person. It's not just your genes that create who you are. It's your family and society as well.

Presenter: True.

Hugh

Donaville:

To continue, we could clone animals that are becoming extinct.

Presenter: Yes, if we were able to do that, it would be wonderful. I can see there are many arguments both for and against cloning.