全球首例
——豬心臟移植到人體

西藏 旦真郎加

美國馬里蘭大學實施了全球首例將豬心臟移植到人體內的手術。 該大學醫學系的一個團隊將一顆經過10次基因改造后的豬心臟移植到了一位心力衰竭的男子身上。

主題語境：人與社會 篇幅：353詞 建議用時：7分鐘

Doctors have transplanted the heart from a genetically modified pig into the chest of a man from Maryland in an effort to save his life. The first-of-its-kind surgery is being hailed as a major step forward in the decades-long effort to successfully transplant animal organs into humans.

Although it's been tried before—one of the earliest subjects, known as Baby Fae,survived 21 days with a baboon's heart in 1984, according to Time—the practice has fallen into disuse because animal organs are usually quickly rejected by their human host.

But doctors say this new transplant is a breakthrough because the donor pig had undergone gene-editing to remove a specific type of sugar from its cells that's thought to be responsible for previous organ rejections in patients.

The man, 57-year-old David Bennett from Maryland, had a terminal (致命的) heart disease, but several medical centers had determined that he was ineligible for a human transplant, the statement said. “It was either to die or do this transplant. I want to live. I know it's a shot in the dark but it's my last choice,” Bennett said the day before his surgery. “I look forward to getting out of bed after I recover.”

“This was a breakthrough surgery and it brings us one step closer to solving the organ shortage crisis,” Dr Bartley Griffith, director of the Cardiac Transplant Program at the University of Maryland Medical Center and the surgeon who performed the transplant,said in the statement. “There are simply not enough donor human hearts available to meet the long list of potential recipients.”

According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees a network for organ transplants in the United States, there were more than 3,800 heart transplants in the country last year—a record number. More than 100,000 people in the US are currently waiting for an organ transplant, and over 6,000 people die each year before getting one.

If the method of genetically modifying donor animals to make their organs less likely to be rejected by human hosts proves successful in the long term, such procedures might be an option for many other patients awaiting transplants.

Reading Check

1. What can we know about the surgery mentioned?

A. It is the first ever animal-to-human organ transplant.

B. It is a successful animal-to-human organ transplant.

C. It involves gene-editing technology in organ transplants.

D. It's intended to test a theory about organ transplantation.

2. What does the underlined word “ineligible” mean in Para. 4?

A. Knowledgeable.

B. Unsuitable.

C. Unlikely.

D. Impatient.

3. What's Dr Bartley Griffith's attitude to the surgery?

A. Nervous.

B. Hopeless.

C. Confident.

D. Worried.

4. What can we conclude from the last but one paragraph?

A. Organ transplants are badly needed in the US.

B. Few people in the US suffer from heart diseases.

C. Heart transplants have been very successful in America.

D. The number of heart trouble has been in decline in America.

Language Study

Ⅰ. Difficult sentence in the text

But doctors say this new transplant is a breakthrough because the donor pig had undergone gene-editing to remove a specific type of sugar from its cells that's thought to be responsible for previous organ rejections in patients. 但醫生們認為，這次新的器官移植是一次突破，因為供體豬經歷了基因編輯，從其細胞中去除了一種特定類型的糖，這種糖被認為是之前在病人體內引起器官排異反應的主要因素。

【點石成金】本句是一個復合句。 because 引導一個原因狀語從句，該從句又包含一個that 引導的定語從句，先行詞是sugar，在定語從句中作主語。

Ⅱ. Text-centered chunks

modify v. 修改；更改

hail v. 贊揚；稱頌

fall into disuse 荒廢；淘汰

undergo v. 經歷；遭受

recipient n. 接受者；受方