Q5

[tzyc]

I think the question is basically asking what the sentence's role is...I chose C because the author uses the word "grim" and seems to oppoose to it (or the opponent opposes to it) and the opponents argue it could cause disaster in nature...
Why is the answer E?
Is it because it talks about totalitarian society and how the engineers surve a specific role in the society??

Thank you

[ohthatpatrick]

I think the 2nd to last paragraph is where the passage talks about the possible environmental ramifications, culminating with the scary line 55 about the 'destruction of humanity'.

Meanwhile, the last paragraph is now about ETHICAL, not environmental ramifications. It's saying, "does this technology give humans new, unprecedented power that could potentially be used in weird, possibly grim ways?"

So you're certainly correct that the author's use of 'grim' indicates his concern about the subject, but the subject is the potentially unethical use of rDNA technology, exemplified by the totalitarian society in Brave New World.

(C) is perfectly dialed in to what the 2nd to last paragraph was talking about, but we're on a new topic now.

(A) also seems more like 2nd to last paragraph material, i.e. "who knows what crazy physical stuff will happen when this new rDNA gets loose?" (but really, "medical dangers" seems out of scope)

(B) is too positive ... this goes against the "grim", cautionary tone of the last paragraph.

(D) is too extreme and literal ... the author wasn't claiming that
Brave New World "accurately predicted" the present .. the author is claiming that the future, if we go down a certain road, may have elements that resemble Brave New World.

(E) is just a paraphrase for the topic of the last paragraph, which is to consider the ethical ramifications of humans suddenly wielding an unnatural power. The author culminates this paragraph with the scary notion of a totalitarian society that engineers humans to fill certain roles, so (E) is accurately addressing that topic.

Hope this helps.