作者简介：

Paul Root Wolpe

埃默里大学的生物论学中心主任，美国国家航天局的首席生物伦理学家。还是美国日报生物伦理杂志的编辑，是美国国家计划生育联合会的首席生物伦理顾问。他在宾夕法尼亚大学的精神病学，社会学，医药伦理学部门工作了有20多年，08年夏天才来到埃默里大学。是宾大生物伦理中心的高级成员，指导了Scattergood 的健康行为应用伦理学计划和宾大医学院的精神病伦理学。著作方面，Wople教授在社会学，医学，生物伦理学方面的文章，评论，书本章节有超过125部，而且他还对百科全书中的生物伦理学问题有突出的贡献。

他的书籍：

SexualityandGender in Society

AComparisonof Ethics with ART in theU.S.andAbroad

EmbryoDonationand Embryo Adoption

And in fact, this technology has gotten so developed that this creature -- this is a moth -- this is the moth in its pupa stage, and that's when they put the wires in and they put in the computer technology, so that when the moth actually emerges as a moth, it is already prewired. The wires are already in its body, and they can just hook it up to their technology, and now they've got these bugbots that they can send out for surveillance.They can put little cameras on them and perhaps someday deliver other kinds of ordinance to warzones.

实际上，这项技术已经如此发达以至于这生物--这是个蛾。这是蛾的蛹期，这也是他们设置天线和电脑技术的时期。所以当这蛾变成蛾的时候，它已经被埋入天线好了。天线已经在它的体内，他们只要把它连接和他们的技术相连接，它们就能变成虫器，它们就能被派出作为侦查。他们可以把微型摄像头放在它们上面或者某天运送某种军用设备去战场。

It's not just insects. This is the rat bot, or the robo-rat by Sanjiv Talwar at SUNY Downstate. Again, it's got technology -- it's got electrodes going into its left and right hemispheres; it's got a camera ontop of its head. The scientists can make this creature go left, right. They have it running through mazes, controlling where it's going. They've now created an organic robot. The graduate students in Sanjiv Talwar's lab said,"Is this ethical? We've taken away the autonomy of this animal." I'll get back to that in a minute.

这还不仅仅用昆虫。这是个老鼠机器，或者叫机器鼠，由美国纽约州立大学的三久·塔瓦尔研发。再一次，它包含了现代科技，电极刺入它的左右半脑，在它的头上有一个摄像机。科学家就能让这个生物向左，向右走。他们能让它穿行于迷宫中，控制它的走向。他们已经创造出了生物机器人。在三久·塔瓦尔实验室的研究生说，“这是道德的吗？我们剥夺了这动物的自主权。”我会过一会儿再讲这些。

There's also been work done with monkeys. This is Miguel Nicolelis of Duke. He took owl monkeys, wired them up so that a computer watched their brains while they moved, especially looking at the movement of their right arm. The computer learned what the monkey brain did to move its arm in various ways. They then hooked it up to a prosthetic arm, which you see here in the picture, put the arm in another room. Pretty soon, the computer learned,by reading the monkey's brainwaves, to make that arm in the other room do whatever the monkey's arm did. Then he put a video monitor in the monkey's cage that showed the monkey this prosthetic arm, and the monkey got fascinated. The monkey recognized that whatever she did with her arm, this prosthetic arm would do.And eventually she was moving it and moving it,and eventually stopped moving her right arm and, staring at the screen, could move the prosthetic arm in the other room only with her brainwaves -- which means that monkey became the first primate in the history of the world to have three independent function alarms.

这技术也应用在猴子上。这是杜克的米格尔·尼古拉雷思。他使用猫头鹰猴，置入电极，电脑就能监视它们的大脑，当它们运动的时候，特别是当他们右手活动的时候。电脑会学习猴脑如何运作，用不同方式来移动它的手臂。接着他们把它连接到一个假肢上，就如你能看到的一样，把手臂放在另一个房间。很快，电脑就学会，通过读取猴子的脑电波，来控制另外那个房间的手臂做任何猴子手臂在做的事情。接着他把一个视频显示器放在猴子的笼子里给猴子看这个假肢，结果猴子对此很着迷。猴子意识到无论她用手做什么，那假肢也会做什么。最后她会动一下动一下的，最终会停止舞动她的右手并盯着屏幕，挥舞来另外一个房间的假肢，仅仅靠她的脑电波--这意味着猴子已经成为世界历史上一个拥有三个独立功能手臂的灵长类动物。

And it's not just technology that we're putting into animals. This is ThomasDeMarse at the University of Florida.He took 20,000 and then 60,000 disaggregated rat neurons -- so these are just individual neurons from rats -- put them on a chip. They self-aggregated into a network, became an integrated chip.And he used that as the IT piece of a mechanism which ran a flight simulator.So now we have organic computer chips made out of living, self-aggregating neurons. Finally,Mussa-Ivaldi of Northwestern took a completely intact,independent lamprey eel brain. This is a brain from a lamprey eel. It is living --fully-intact brain in a nutrient medium with these electrodes going off to the sides,attached photosensitive sensors to the brain, put it into a cart -- here's the cart, the brain is sitting there in the middle -- and using this brain as the sole processor for this cart, when you turn on a light and shine it at the cart, the cart moves toward the light; when you turn it off, it moves away.It's photophilic.So now we have a complete living lamprey eel brain. Is it thinking lamprey eel thoughts, sitting there inits nutrient medium? I don't know, but in fact it is a fully living brain that we have managed to keep alive to do our bidding.

这不仅仅是个科技，让我们应用在动物上。这是佛罗里达大学的托马斯·迪马斯。他实验了2万，接着6万个分解的鼠神经元--这些只是老鼠身上的分离的神经细胞--把它们放入芯片中。它们会自主的连接到网络中，成为一个完整的芯片。 他把这作为电脑芯片来运行飞行模拟机械。现在我们有了生物电脑芯片，由自主连接的神经细胞组成。最后，西北部的穆萨·伊瓦尔迪完成了一个完整无缺的，独立的鳗鱼脑。这就是那个鳗鱼脑。它是活着的，完整无损的大脑浸在营养液中，通体置入了电极，连接着大脑的光敏感应器，然后把它放进一个推车--这就是那个推车，大脑就在这个里面--并用这个大脑作为这推车的单独的处理器，当你打开灯照射这推车的时候，推车会向光源移动；当你关闭光源，它就会远离。它是趋光性的。现在我们有了个完整的活体的鳗鱼脑。它是不是用鳗鱼的思维方式，而浸泡在这营养液中呢？我不知道，但是事实是它是一个完整的活体的大脑，是我们试着让它保持生命活性，来行使我们的命令。

So,we are now at the stage where we are creating creatures for our own purposes.This is a mouse created by Charles Vacanti of the University of Massachusetts. He altered this mouse so that it was genetically engineered to have skin that was less immunoreactive to humanskin, put a polymer scaffolding of an ear under it and created an ear that could then be taken off the mouse and transplanted onto a human being. Geneticengineering coupled with polymer physiotechnology coupled with xenotransplantation. This is where we are in this process.

所以，我们现在在一个我们能够依照我们自己目的，创造生命的阶段。这是只由马萨诸塞大学的查尔斯·瓦坎蒂创造的老鼠。他改造了这老鼠，所以它是被基因改造过的，有着更少排斥性的人类肌肤，在它内部有着支撑耳朵的聚合脚手架，这创造出的耳朵能从老鼠体内取出并移植给人类。基因工程，伴随着聚合物理技术，协同异种移植技术。这就是我们在这个过程中的进度。

Finally,not that long ago, Craig Venter created the first artificial cell, where he took a cell, took a DNA synthesizer, which is a machine, created an artificial genome, put it in a different cell -- the genome was not of the cell he put it in -- and that cell then reproduced as the other cell. In other words, that was the first creature in the history of the world that had a computer as its parent -- it did not have an organic parent. And so, asks The Economist: "The first artificial organism and its consequences."

最后，不久之前，克雷格·范特创造出了一个人工细胞，他用了一个真的细胞，利用DNA合成器（读取了它的染色体），这是一种能制造人工染色体的机器，再把合成器放进另一个细胞中--另一个细胞的染色体和第一个细胞的是不一样的--当第二个细胞自己复制，就复制出了第一个细胞。换句话说，这是世界历史上一个用电脑作为父母的生物--它没有生物意义上的父母。所以，《经济学家》提出“第一个人工生物和它的结局。”

So you may have thought that the creation of life was going to happen in something that looked like that. But in fact, that's not what Frankenstein's lab lookslike. This is what Frankenstein's lab looks like.This is a DNA synthesizer, and here at the bottom are just bottles of A, T, Cand G -- the four chemicals that make up our DNA chain.

你可能会想，这生物的生命，会变成看起来像这样的东西。但是实际上，这不是弗兰肯斯坦实验室的样子。这才是弗兰肯斯坦实验室的原貌。这是个DNA合成器，在这底部，有着标记着A,T,C和G的瓶子--这四种化学物质，组成了我们的DNA链。

And so, we need to ask ourselves some questions.For the first time in the history of this planet, we are able to directly design organisms. We can manipulate the plasmas of life with unprecedented power,and it confers on us a responsibility. Is everything okay?Is it okay to manipulate and create whatever creatures we want? Do we have freereign to design animals? Do we get to go someday to Pets 'R' Us and say, "Look, I want a dog. I'd like it to have the head of a Dachshund, the body of a retriever,maybe some pink fur, and let's make it glow in the dark"? Does industry get to create creatures who, in their milk, in their blood, and in their saliva and other bodily fluids, create the drugs and industrial molecules we want and then ware house them as organic manufacturing machines? Do we get to create organic robots, where we remove the autonomy from these animals and turn them just into our playthings?

所以，我们需要问我们自己一些问题。作为地球史上第一次，我们能够直接设计生物体。我们用空前的力量操控生物等离子体。如果赋予我们的是一种责任。那我们做什么都可以吗？操控和制造任何我们想要的生物是可行的吗？我们是否可以无约束地设计生命体？某天我们是否会根据喜好决定宠物，并说，“看，我想要一只狗。我想要它有达克斯猎狗的头，猎狗的身体，也许一些粉色的毛，再让它在黑暗中发光。”是否工业创造生物，用它们的奶，血，和唾液和其他的体液，来生产我们需要的药物和工业分子，并圈养它们成为生物制药机器，是可以的？是否我们创造出生命机器，导致这些动物失去自由来把它们变成我们的玩物是可以的？

And then the final step of this, once we perfect these technologies in animals and we start using them in human beings, what are the ethical guidelines that we will use then? It's already happening. It's not science fiction. We are not only already using these things in animals, some of them we're already beginning touse on our own bodies.

接着最后的一步，一旦我们用动物体完善了这些科技，我们就会开始在人体上运用，这就涉及到道德界限，我们是否可能用？这已经发生了；这不是科幻小说。我们不仅仅已经运用在动物体内，我们也开始运用一部分，在我们人体内。

We are now taking control of our own evolution. We are directly designing the future of the species of this planet. It confers upon us anenormous responsibility that is not just the responsibility of the scientists and the ethicists who are thinking about it and writing about it now. It is the responsibility of everybody because it will determine what kind of planet and what kind of bodies we will have in the future.

我们现在在说的是控制我们自己的进化。我们正直接的设计星球上的未来的物种。它赋予了我们巨大的责任，而且不仅仅是对那些思考这问题和论述这问题的科学家和论理学家的责任。它也是每个人的责任所在，因为它关系到未来我们将会有哪些生物体居住在这星球。

文中生词：

Moth:蛾;飞蛾 A moth isan insect like a butterfly whichusually flies about at night.

Pupa: 蛹 A pupa is an insect that is in the stageof development between alarva and a fully grown adult. It has a protectivecovering and does not move.

Surveillance: (尤指来自警方、军队等组织的)监视，监察 Surveillance is the carefulwatching of someone, especially by anorganization such as the police or thearmy.

Prosthetic:假体的Prosthetic parts of the body areartificial ones used toreplace natural ones.

Neurons:神经细胞;神经元 A neuron isa cell which ispart of the nervous system. Neurons send messages to and fromthe brain.

Simulator:模拟装置 A simulator is a device which artificially creates the effectofbeing in conditions of some kind. Simulators are used in training peoplesuchas pilots or astronauts.

Lampreyeel:鳃鳗primitive eellike freshwater oranadromous cyclostome having roundsucking mouth with a rasping tongue

Photophilic:喜光的，嗜光的，适光的 of or pertaing to an organism, as a plant, that is receptiveto,seeks, or thrives in light.

Immunoreactive:免疫反应性的The reaction resulting fromtherecognition and binding of an antigen by its specific antibody or byapreviously sensitized lymphocyte.

Polymer:聚合物；多聚体；高分子 A polymer is a chemical compound with large molecules made ofmanysmaller molecules of the same kind. Some polymers exist naturally andothersare produced in laboratories and factories.

Xenotransplantation:异种移植a surgical procedure in whichtissue orwhole organs are transfered from one species to another species

Synthesizer:音响合成器 A synthesizer is an electronic machine that produces speech,music,or other sounds, usually by combining individual syllables or sounds thathavebeen previously recorded.

Plasmas:等离子电视；等离子体作用；电浆的；等离子体的研究（Physics) the ionized gas inanelectric discharge or spark, containing positive ions and electrons and asmallnumber of negative ions together with un-ionized material

Dachshund:腊肠犬 A dachshund is a small dog that has very short legs, a longbody,and long ears.

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原文出自：Ted Talk

原文链接：http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDIyOTU5MjU2.html

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