Book 2 Listening (1108796), страница 10
Текст из файла (страница 10)
It has also produced trout that are immune to a bacterial infection called cold-waterdisease, and it is now working on amberjack that will be less likely to suffer infestations ofmonogean, a parasitic flatworm. The upshot should be healthier, cheaper fish - and happierfish farmers. (From The Economist, November 3, 2012)Script 11. Animal rightsWhales are people, tooA declaration of the rights of cetaceansThe "Declaration of the Rights of Man" was a crucial step in the French revolution. Thedocument, drafted by the Marquis de Lafayette, marked a break with the political past byproposing that everyone, however humble his birth, had certain inalienable civil rights.
Thesewere liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression. Merely being a man conferredthem. These days, such rights extend to women as well. But what if you are not human?A session on cetaceans at the AAAS meeting discussed a proposal that whales anddolphins, too, should have rights. The suggestion of the speakers was that the protectionsthese species are afforded by human laws should be extended and recognized not as anindulgence of the human aristocracy towards the bestial peasantry, but as a right as naturalas those which humans now afford, in the more civilised parts of the world, to themselves.The proposition that whales have rights is founded on the idea that they have a highdegree of intelligence, and also have self-awareness of the sort that humans do.
That is acontroversial suggestion, but there is evidence to support it. Lori Marino of Emory University,in Atlanta, Georgia, reviewed this evidence.One pertinent observation is that dolphins, whales and their kind have brains asanatomically complex as those of humans, and that these brains contain a particular type ofnerve cell, known as a spindle cell, that in humans is associated with higher cognitive44functions such as abstract reasoning.
Cetacean brains are also, scaled appropriately for bodysize, almost as big as those of humans and significantly bigger than those of great apes,which are usually thought of as humanity's closest intellectual cousins.Whales and dolphins have complex cultures, too, which vary from group to group withina species.
The way they hunt, the repertoire of vocal signals and even their use of toolsdiffers from pod to pod. They also seem to have an awareness of themselves as individuals.At least some can, for example, recognise themselves in a mirror - a trick that humans, greatapes and elephants can manage, but most other species cannot.Thomas White, of Loyola Marymount University, in Los Angeles, then discussed theethical implications of what Dr Marino had said. Dr White is a philosopher, and he sought toestablish the idea that a person need not be human.
In philosophy, he told the meeting, aperson is a being with special characteristics who deserves special treatment as a result ofthose characteristics. In principle, other species can qualify. For the reasons outlined by DrMarino, he claimed, cetaceans do indeed count as persons and therefore have moral rightsthough ones appropriate to their species, which may therefore differ from those that would beaccorded a human (for example, the right not to be removed from their natural environment).Chris Butler-Stroud, of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, in Britain, and KariKoski of the Whale Museum in San Juan Island, Washington state, then charted some of thehesitant steps already being taken in the direction of establishing cetacean rights. Mr ButlerStroud showed how the language used by international bodies concerned with these animalsis changing.
The term "stocks", for example, with its implication that whales and dolphins area resource suitable for exploitation, is being overtaken by "populations", a word that is alsoapplied to people.Ms Koski gave an even more intriguing example. She told of how a group of killerwhales that lives near Vancouver, passing between waters controlled (from a human point ofview) by Canada and the United States, have acquired legal protection even though thespecies as a whole is not endangered. After a battle in the American courts these particularwhales have been defined by their culture, and that culture is deemed endangered.The idea of rights for whales is certainly a provocative one, and is reminiscent of theAustralian philosopher Peter Singer's proposal that human rights be extended to the greatapes - chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans.
Like Dr Singer's suggestion, though,it does ignore one nagging technicality. The full title of the French revolutionary documentwas "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen". No one has yet argued for votes forwhales and dolphins. But considering some of the politicians who manage to get themselveschosen by human electorates, maybe it would not be such a bad idea. (From The Economist,February 25, 2012)45Unit 6. BrainScript 12.
Diagnosing dementia.Advance warningHow to detect Alzheimer's before symptoms appear-if you are a womanAlzheimer’s disease has no cure. There are, however, five drugs - known and approved- that can slow down the development of its symptoms. The earlier such drugs areadministered, the better. Unfortunately, the disease is usually first noticed when peoplecomplain to their doctors of memory problems. That is normally too late for the drugs to domuch good. A simple and reliable test for Alzheimer's that can be administered to everybodyover the age of about 65, before memory-loss sets in, would therefore be useful.Theo Luider, of the Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam, and hiscolleagues think they have found one - but it works only in women. They made theirdiscovery, just reported in the Journal of Proteome Research, by tapping into a longterm,continuing study that started in 1995 with 1,077 non-demented and otherwise healthy peopleaged between 60 and 90.
At the beginning of the project, and subsequently during theperiods 1997-99 and 2002-04, participants were brought in for a battery of neurological andcognitive investigations, physical examinations, brain imaging and blood tests.During the first ten years of the study, 43 of the volunteers developed Alzheimer'sdisease. When Dr. Luider compared blood samples from these people with samples from 43of their fellow volunteers, matched for sex and age, who had remained Alzheimer's-free, hefound something startling.
Levels of a substance called pregnancy zone protein had beenunusually high, even before their symptoms appeared, in some of those who went on todevelop Alzheimer's disease.Those "some", it turned out, were all women. On average, levels of pregnancy zoneprotein in those women who went on to develop Alzheimer's were almost 60% higher thanthose of women who did not.
In men, levels of the protein were the same for both.The reason for this curious result seems to be that the brain plaques associated withAlzheimer's disease are themselves turning out pregnancy zone protein. Certainly, when DrLuider applied a chemical stain specific to that protein to the plaques of dead Alzheimer'spatients he found the protein present in them.Confusingly, though, it was there in the plaques of both sexes. Presumably, female cells(and therefore the plaques of female brains) make more of it than male cells do. But thatremains to be proved. Whatever the reason, however, this result means that women, at least,may soon be able to tell whether and when they are at risk of Alzheimer's - and thus dosomething about it before they start losing their minds.
(From The Economist, October 8,2011)Script 13.1 Growing model brains. Part I.An embryonic ideaA group of stem-cell biologists have grown an organoid that resembles a brainRegenerative medicine, the science of producing tissues and organs from stem cells, isa rapidly developing field. This week, however, it took a leap forward that was big even by itsown demanding standards. A team of researchers led by Madeline Lancaster of the AustrianAcademy of Sciences, in Vienna, announced that they have grown things which, while nothuman brains, resemble brains in important ways.Dr Lancaster’s organoids, as she calls them, are a far cry from the brains in jars belovedof the writers of horror movies. But they do contain several recognizably different types ofnerve cell and have anatomical features which look like those of real brains.
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