The Human Genome Project: reading answers and analysis
The Human Genome Project aims to map every letter of human DNA, 3 billion of them, enough to fill 7,000 volumes. It could transform treatment of the thousands of single-gene disorders, with muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis genes already found. The writer warns that without wisdom it could bring new discrimination, as the atom did.
Questions 27-40 · 14 marks · 2 question blocks
Where the answers sit
The sentence completions (27-32) run from the first paragraph to the fifth. The classification (33-40) needs the whole passage, so decide whose voice each statement comes from.
Questions 27-32
The details come in order: the scale comparison (the Apollo programme), the completion date, the number of volumes, why a genetic defect isn't a 'disease' in the usual sense, and the two first successes (muscular dystrophy in 1986, cystic fibrosis in 1989).
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 27 | Apollo programme | Apollo space programme / Apollo program / Apollo space program |
| 28 | early next century | next century |
| 29 | 7,000 | 7000 / seven thousand |
| 30 | disease | — |
| 31 | muscular dystrophy | — |
| 32 | cystic fibrosis | — |
Questions 33-40
The test is who is speaking. The project's aims (record every component, map the order) are facts. New understanding of diseases and parents free of worry are hopes. Monsters and a purely genetic definition of 'human' are other people's fears. New discrimination and misuse drawn from past experience are the writer's own fears.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 33 | D | — |
| 34 | C | — |
| 35 | B | — |
| 36 | C | — |
| 37 | D | — |
| 38 | B | — |
| 39 | A | — |
| 40 | A | — |
The questions most people get wrong
A (the writer's fears). The warning about new discrimination is in the writer's own voice: 'if the new knowledge is not used wisely'. The official key gives A.
B. It's 'many people' who worry that the focus on genes may make us forget life is more than a genetic program.
Single-gene disorders aren't a 'disease' in the conventional sense because the defect is in every cell, so no curative drug can be given.
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The full Cambridge 2 Test 4 reading paper: all three passages, 60 minutes, marked the second you finish with a review of every answer. Already done it? Take it again and see if the same traps still get you.
Cambridge IELTS 2, Test 4, Reading Passage 3. The passage name belongs to Cambridge University Press. No passage text or question wording is reproduced on this page. The answers are published for self-marking, and the analysis is our own.