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Just about every week now, we read a newspaper headline about the genetic basis for breast
cancer, intelligence Such news stories may lead us to believe our lives are being revolutionized by
genetic discoveries. We may be close to changing and getting rid of mental illness, for example and
identify the causes of crime, personality, and other basic human weaknesses.
But these hopes, it turns out, are based on faulty assumptions about genes and behavior.
In many cases, people are motivated to accept research claims by the hope of finding solutions
for frightening problems, like breast cancer. Accepting genetic causes for their characteristics can
relieve guilt about behavior they want to change but can't. Efforts made to fight against them, at
growing expense, have made little or no visible progress. The public wants to hear that science can
help.
Meanwhile, genetic claims are being made for many ordinary and abnormal behaviors, from
addiction to shyness and even to political views and divorce . If who we are is determined from
pregnancy, then our efforts to change or to influence our children may be useless. There may also
be no basis for insisting that people behave themselves and obey laws. Thus, the revolution in thinking
about genes has great consequences for how we view ourselves as human beings.
Most claims linking emotional disorders and behaviors to genes are statistical in nature. The
research finds are insufficient for deciding that alcoholism or manic-depression (躁狂抑郁症患者)
is inherited. In the late 1980s, genes for manic-depression were identified by teams of geneticists. The
claims have now been definitively proved wrong.
Genetic data on the major mental illnesses make it clear that they can't be reduced to purely genetic
causes. According to Myrna Weissman, Ph.D., Americans born before 1905 had a 1 percent rate
of depression by age 75. Among Americans born a half century later, 6 percent become depressed
by age 24! Similarly, while the average age at which manic-depression first appears was 32 in the mid
1960s, its average beginning today is 19. Only social factors can produce such large shifts in rate and
age of beginning of mental disorders in a few decades.
Scientists actively debate whether disorders like alcoholism are more or less biologically driven.
If they are mainly biological-rather than psychological, social, and cultural-then there may be a genetic
basis for them. In 1990,Kenneth Blum, Ph.D., of the University of Texas, and Ernest Noble, M.D.,
of the University of California, Los Angeles, found a certain gene in 70 percent of a group of alcoholics,
but in only 20 percent of a non-alcoholic group. But in 1993 Joel Gelernter, M.D., of Yale and his
colleagues surveyed all the studies that examined this gene and alcoholism. Different from Blum and
Noble's research, the results were that 18 percent of non-alcoholics, 18 percent of problem drinkers,
and 18 percent of severe alcoholics all had the gene. As for Blum and Noble's work, a more reasonable
model is that genes may affect how people experience alcohol. Perhaps some people's nerves are more
activated by alcohol. But although genes can influence reactions to alcohol, they cannot explain why
some people continue drinking to the point of destroying their lives.
Therefore, claims that our genes cause our problems, our misbehavior, even our personalities are
more a mirror of our culture's attitudes than a window for human understanding and change.
1.The word "revolutionized" in paragraph 1 can best replaced by ________.
A. identified
B. changed
C. misunderstood
D. disturbed
2.Which of the following is conveyed in this article?
A. Some people are happy to accept genetic causes for their behavior.
B. We are close to finding solutions to human weaknesses.
C. The public wants scientists to help fight against illnesses.
D. Americans became depressed at an early age for genetic causes.
3.If our characteristics are genetic, then _______.
A. We can only rely on environment to influence our children
B. We may think of who we are differently
C. We can change our children's behavior
D. We need to make greater efforts to behave ourselves
4.What can we learn from Dr. Gelernter and his colleagues' research?
A. There may be a genetic basis for alcoholism.
B. Genes can explain why people drink too much.
C. Perhaps drinking is more rewarding for alcoholics.
D. There was no link between gene and alcoholism.
5.Which do you think is the best title of the passage?
A. My Genes Made Me Do It
B. Nature and Education
C. Here's the Myth of Genes
D. Genetic Discoveries
