World News for Students of English

05-12-2025 15:00

A new company named Preventive raised 30 million dollars to study how to safely change the genes in human embryos.

This technology, called genome editing, aims to prevent people from having genetic diseases, but this research is very controversial and raises serious ethical questions. People who support the company say they are working for a medical breakthrough. Critics say the technology may not be useful because doctors already have other ways to prevent passing on diseases. They also worry about the possibility of eugenics, where parents might choose or pick traits for their children, creating big problems in society. The biggest risk is that doctors make changes to the embryo’s DNA that will pass down to all future children, making the effects unknown and possibly unsafe for future generations.

Difficult words: controversial (causing disagreement or public debate), ethical (concerning what is right and wrong), breakthrough (a sudden, important discovery or achievement that solves a major problem or opens up new possibilities), eugenics (the belief or practice by carefully controlling who has children and what they are like), trait (a specific quality or characteristic of a person).

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