B. GNP excludes both capital consumption allowances and indirectbusiness taxes.
C. Personal income is regarded as the total money incomereceived by an individual after his or her taxes are paid.
D. The moneythat goes for capital consumption is not regarded as income.
3. It canbe known from this passage that the government levy tax on
A. corporationprofits.
B. every individual even though his income is very low.
C.those who work in joint ventures.
D. those who work in governmentdepartments.
4. According to this passage, the money you get as interestfrom government bonds is
A. money earned.
B. not money earned butmoney received.
C. money received because you have contributed to theeconomy.
D. money earned because you have furnished a service to theeconomy.
5. The passage implies that
A. people willingly pay taxesbecause they want to do something useful to the country.
B. peoplewillingly pay taxes because they do not want to be looked down upon by others.
C. people pay taxes unwillingly because they feel they will be arrested ifthey do not.
D. people pay taxes somewhat unwillingly.
The Gene Industry
Major companies are already inpursuit of commercial applications of the new biology. They dream of placingenzymes in the automobile to monitor exhaust and send data on pollution to amicroprocessor that will then adjust the engine. They speak of what the New YorkTimes calls “metal-hungry microbes that might be used to mine valuable tracemetals from ocean water.” They have already demanded and won the right to patentnew life forms.
Nervous critics, including many scientists, worry that thereis corporate, national, international, and inter-scientific rivalry in theentire biotechnological field. They create images not of oil spills, but of“microbe spills” that could spread disease and destroy entire populations. Thecreation and accidental release of extremely poisonous microbes, however, isonly one cause for alarm. Completely rational and respectable scientists aretalking about possibilities that stagger the imagination.
Should webreed people with cow-like stomachs so they can digest grass and hay, therebyrelieving the food problem by modifying us to eat lower down on the food chain?Should we biologically alter workers to fit the job requirement, for example,creating pilots with faster reaction times or assembly-line workers designed todo our monotonous work for us? Should we attempt to eliminate “inferior” peopleand breed a “super-race” ? (Hitler tried this, but without the genetic weaponrythat may soon issue from our laboratories. )Should we produce soldiers to do ourfighting? Should we use genetic forecasting to pre-eliminate “unfit” babies?Should we grow reserve organs for ourselves, each of us having, as it were, a“savings bank” full of spare kidney, livers, or hands?
Wild as thesenotions may sound, every one has its advocates(and opposes) in the scientificcommunity as well as its striking commercial application. As two critics ofgenetic engineering, Jeremy Rifkin and Ted Howard, state in their book WhoShould Play God? “Broad scale genetic engineering will probably be introduced toAmerica much the same way as assembly lines, automobiles, vaccines, computersand all the other technologies. As each new genetic advance becomes commerciallypractical, a new consumer need will be exploited and a market for the newtechnology will be created. ”
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