马鞍山市2014高考英语阅读理解、动词短语精讲讲练（20）及答案
Genetics is not just a science, let alone a technology or a business. Genetics is a profound idea. Genetics journals, for instance, fill their pages with discoveries of “disease genes” that lurk (潜伏) silent, in the twists and bends of our DNA, ready to turn on us. The very idea of disease genes that have yet to actually cause disease makes us feel “sick” even if we don’t have any symptom. Cancer genetics has brought even deeper changes. The disease used to be blamed on disguise d external (外部的) agents attacking the body. But now the disease is seen as “a natural born part of the self”. You get cancer not solely, or even largely, because of something you ate, or because of some place you lived in, or because of some chemical you breathed. You have cancer because of who you are. After all, not everyone who lived as you lived got cancer. Cancer_becomes_an_expression_of_our_essential_nature.
Such a view affects how we act, as individuals and as a society. We get tested for cancer genes ( and don’t know what to make of the result: after all, about 25 to 50 percent of women who carry either of the two breast－cancer genes discovered so far do not get breast cancer). We think individually rather than socially, with results that we may, one day, regret. Environmental pollutants get less attention now that we are told, again and again, that the cause of disease lies in us. If we had focused on genes rather than viruses perhaps there would have been no social response to the epidemic (流行病). As a result of discoveries in genetics, says Rothman, “we are looking to locate problems in the individual.” Thinking genetically makes us say that the problem is not ours as a society but yours as an individual.
5．What is the new discovery that often leads to disease in the genetic field?
