IELTS Reading 122: The Line Between Treating and Choosing

Adapted from Stanford Report / WHO / China MOST ethics guidelines (2024-2025). IELTS Reading Section 3 difficulty, approximately 1,050 words. Source: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/06/stanford-explainer-crispr-gene-editing-and-beyond

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Reading Passage

A. In November 2018, a Chinese biophysicist named He Jiankui announced, to global shock, that he had used the CRISPR gene-editing tool to modify human embryos, which had then been carried to term as baby girls. He said the edit was intended to make the children resistant to HIV. The scientific reaction was not admiration but outrage. The work had been performed without proper ethics approval, the edit was unnecessary when safer ways of preventing HIV transmission exist, and — most alarmingly — the changes would be inherited. He was later jailed. The episode did not, as some had hoped, end an era; it forced the world to draw a line that had been blurrier than anyone liked to admit. CRISPR itself, a molecular scissors that lets researchers cut and rewrite DNA with unprecedented precision, was already curing real disease in consenting adults. The question was never whether to edit genes at all, but where to stop. CRISPR had already, in the years before 2018, shown that a molecular pair of scissors could snip a faulty gene and replace it with a healthy one — a feat that had once belonged to science fiction. The babies' birth forced that quiet laboratory promise into the glare of the public square.

B. That line runs between two very different kinds of editing. Somatic editing changes the body cells of a single patient. It is used, or trialled, to repair the gene that causes sickle-cell anaemia, to correct defects that lead to blindness, and to treat certain cancers. Because the edit lands only in the patient's own cells, it dies with them and is not passed to children. Almost everyone agrees this is medicine: a therapy, like any other, aimed at healing one sick person. Heritable, or germline, editing is different. It alters sperm, eggs, embryos — the cells whose changes flow into the next generation. Every such edit is a permanent modification of the human gene pool, a bet made by one generation on the bodies of descendants who cannot consent. The moral weight of that difference is the reason the scientific community, almost alone on an issue it usually argues about, called for a pause. Few experts dispute that somatic editing is medicine; almost none argued in 2018 that a baby should be edited, and born, on an unproven technique.

C. The technical objections are not just philosophical. CRISPR is precise but not infallible. Alongside the intended cut, the tool can make "off-target" edits elsewhere in the genome — changes whose consequences may not show up for years. In an adult patient, a rogue edit can be monitored, and if it harms a particular organ the harm stops there. In an edited embryo, every cell in the resulting person carries the change, including the eggs or sperm that person will one day use. There is no way to know, today, whether a given tweak that prevents one disease also raises the risk of another decades later. That uncertainty, multiplied across a lifetime and across future generations, is why regulators around the world moved, after 2018, to make the implantation of edited embryos a serious, punishable offence. China's 2024 ethics guidelines state plainly that edited germ cells and embryos must never be used to establish a pregnancy, and that clinical research on heritable editing is, for now, irresponsible and not permitted.

D. Yet a pause is not the same as a wall, and the debate is now moving into the murkier territory of enhancement rather than cure. The easiest case to defend is preventing a devastating genetic disease — a child born almost certain to develop Huntington's disease, for example, might be spared it by an edit made before birth. The moment the goal shifts from avoiding suffering to adding a trait — greater height, a certain eye colour, perhaps even a predisposition to particular talents — the ethical problem changes shape. Editing for enhancement would, almost by definition, be available first to whoever can pay for it, building genetic advantage into the lucky children of the wealthy. Critics warn that this is not medicine but techno-eugenics: the old dream of improving the human species, now made affordable enough to be sold on the open market. Proponents reply that parents already shape their children's lives through education and environment, and that drawing an absolute line ignores the real suffering that safe editing might prevent. Where, they ask, is the moral difference between choosing a school and choosing a genome? That question is precisely the one society has not answered.

E. The governance that has emerged is, by design, neither uniform nor settled. Major gene-therapy societies proposed, in 2025, a ten-year moratorium on heritable editing — long enough to let the science mature and the argument happen, short enough to leave the door open. The United States bars federal funding for embryo editing; China tightened its rules after 2018; other countries have written the ban into law. But regulators already worry about a race to the bottom, in which entrepreneurs seek out jurisdictions with weak oversight — so-called regulatory havens — and sell "designer babies" to clients rich enough to fly there. The hard problem, in the end, is not technical. We already know how to cut DNA. The hard problem is collective: how a species governs a tool powerful enough to rewrite its own inheritance, without either banning the cure for fear of the enhancement or embracing the enhancement and losing the cure. The line between treating and choosing is real, but it moves with every experiment, and the world has not yet decided who gets to draw it. A generation from now, people may look back on the 2020s as the moment the pause began, or as the moment it quietly ended.

Questions 1-4

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B, C, D and E from the list of headings below.

List of Headings i. The line between two kinds of editing ii. Why the technical risk is not just philosophical iii. From curing disease to selling advantage iv. A patchwork of rules — and a race to the bottom v. How CRISPR was discovered vi. The history of HIV treatment vii. Why all gene editing is forbidden

1. Paragraph B: ____
2. Paragraph C: ____
3. Paragraph D: ____
4. Paragraph E: ____

Questions 5-8

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

5. What is the key difference between somatic and heritable editing? A. Somatic editing affects only the patient; heritable editing changes DNA passed to children. B. They are identical in effect. C. Somatic editing is always illegal. D. Heritable editing is cheaper.

6. Why is "off-target" editing especially serious in an embryo? A. The edit appears in every cell of the resulting person and in future generations. B. It only affects the patient's liver. C. It cannot be detected at all. D. It makes the embryo larger.

7. Why do critics call enhancement "techno-eugenics"? A. It would be affordable only to the wealthy, building genetic advantage into their children. B. It cures Huntington's disease. C. It is banned everywhere. D. It has no commercial market.

8. What is a "regulatory haven"? A. A hospital that performs free surgery. B. A jurisdiction with weak oversight that entrepreneurs may exploit. C. A secure laboratory in the United States. D. A type of gene therapy.

Questions 9-13

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer?

Write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9. He Jiankui said his edit was intended to make the children resistant to HIV.
10. Somatic editing changes are passed down to future generations.
11. China's 2024 guidelines allow edited embryos to be implanted to establish a pregnancy.
12. In 2025, major gene-therapy societies proposed a ten-year moratorium on heritable editing.
13. CRISPR was invented in the United States.

Questions 14-15

Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage.

CRISPR can make unintended "off-target" edits elsewhere in the genome; in an edited (14) __________, every resulting cell — including future sperm or (15) __________ — carries the change.

Answers & Explanations

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