Now’s the time to let your imagination take flight! For this fun exercise you’ll pretend to be a Nobel Laureate in your chosen field. You can choose to talk about your life story and how it led you to become a writer, scientist, or economist. You can choose to talk about issues that are important to you. You can even imagine that you come from a different country if you like—it doesn’t have to really be about you. The point of the exercise is to be able to choose appropriate subject matter, like Márquez and Yan, and to be able to imitate their tone. Remember, you should try to create a sense of wonder in your audience before moving onto an important issue or the serious point of your speech, and then finally end on a note of hopefulness for the future. Your speech can be as long as you like, but it should be at least 400 words.

Explanation:

What do you think of when you hear the word ‘Genetically Modified’? Soybeans? Corn? No. This time, human beings. The human genome editing technology has progressed at a surprising pace in these three decades from the Human Genome Project to CRISPR. There was an announcement last week that the two scientists have just won the Nobel Prize of Chemistry for their contribution to the genome editing technology, named ‘CRISPR Cas9’.*1 That makes possible to cut off the target sequence of genomes and insert a different sequence. Cas9 is an enzymatic protein that works like scissors.*2 The human genomes have been decoded and mapped. It is possible for this technology to be applied to the human genomes. ‘Designer baby’ is more realistic than ever. ‘What would you like our baby to look like, darling? My blue eyes or your brown ones?’ Will a conversation like this be common soon?

         The technology has an enormous possibility in several fields, particularly in medicine. The technology could be hopeful for people who have a serious disease such as HIV or hemophilia and are afraid of passing it on their children. Two years ago, Chinese scientists produced twin babies applying the technology, ‘CRISPR’, in order to prevent the babies from being infected with HIV because their father had the disease.*3 One of the scientists claimed that their achievement in giving the resistance to HIV to the babies could lead to taking fear of infectious disease away from human beings.

         But there is one question popping up: Is practicing the technology directly to the human embryos ethically acceptable, even with such a good intention? Some people may think that the human embryos are already human lives and using the technology directly to them is equivalent to God’s deed, so that should not be done by human. President Bush banned the human embryonic stem cell researches in 2001 for a similar reason. Moreover, the technology makes errors and those errors could cause serious consequences to the babies. Who would take responsibility if that happens and how? The science community needs careful discussion about using the technology. And people also have to know more about it.

         I think that making use of the genetic editing technology to the human genomes should be limited to developing treatments to cure and prevent of serious illnesses like cancer. We all need a thorough discussion: The scientists need a discussion to make ethical and judicial rules stricter than ever for researching with it and applying it to medicine. People also have to learn more and have their own opinions about the technology. I believe that parents should not genetically modify their unborn child only because they want their baby to have any particular appearance or ability. You should not use the term, ‘designer baby’, so lightly. That’s the issue of the human life.

active voice: my father cut the tree.

passive voice: the tree was cut by my father.

active voice: people buy newspapers every day.

passive voice: newspapers are bought (by people) every day.

active voice: people have been using movies as political propaganda since world war ii.

passive voice: movies have been used as political propaganda since world war ii.

active voice: donna gave me my birthday present.

passive voice: i was given my birthday present (by donna). / my birthday present was given to me (by donna).

active voice: mom will leave the keys on the counter.

passive voice: the keys will be left (by mom) on the counter.

the words in parentheses are the agent of the passive voice and can be omitted when obvious, generic, or simply unnecessary.

answer: do you have any options

explanation: