话题18 科学与技术-2020高考英语【试吧大考卷】高中全程训练计划

话题十八　科学与技术 A [2019·武汉市高三调研测试] The police recently caught the suspected Golden State Killer using a tool they could only have dreamed of decades ago, when a shocking series of murders shook California: a database filled with people's genetic data (基因数据)．[来源:Zxxk.Com] The police used an open­source database called GEDmatch to find relatives who matched genetic material taken from an old crime scene, then worked backward to identify and catch the 72­year­old former police officer Joseph James DeAngelo. GEDmatch's 950,000 users voluntarily upload and share their genetic information, making it accessible to others who share their own data — including law enforcement agencies(执法机关). More than a dozen other similar platforms also exist. “If your relatives have contributed and you are part of even a family tree that appears online in one of these shared resources, you can be indirectly tracked through the combination of their DNA and the publicly available family history，” says Dr. Robert Green, a medical geneticist at Harvard Medical School. Data sent to commercial companies like 23andMe, which has over 5 million customers, is much tougher for outsiders to access, but the case has still highlighted the issue of genetic privacy. Although many genetic­testing companies have been asked to cooperate with legal investigations, and clearly warn customers of this possibility, not all requests are honored. “23andMe has never given customer information to law enforcement officials，” a company representative told Time. The risks of keeping such sensitive data private are high. The potential for abuse exists; for example, insurance companies could theoretically use genetic data to refuse coverage (保险范围), Green says. But the systems in place to prevent misuse appear to be working. One is the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008, a law that protects consumers from employment and insurance discrimination related to genetics. As long as that's the case, Gre