Read the passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 3...

Read the passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 31 to 40.

        Human microbiome science promises therapies for chronic conditions ranging from inflammatory bowel disease to diabetes. Yet collecting microbiome samples from Indigenous communities is shadowed by exploitation and exclusion from benefits. An emerging coalition argues for a relational framework to reconfigure ownership, consent, and benefit-sharing so participation becomes co-governed rather than extractive. [I] By foregrounding community priorities, the framework aims to rectify entrenched inequities that have long privileged Western medicine while sidelining Indigenous interests and knowledges.

        Scholars note that microbes associated with Indigenous peoples have been framed as valuable resources to restore lost microbial diversity and treat chronic disease in industrialized populations; however, such projects frequently decenter the very communities whose data make them possible. [II] As Alyssa Bader and colleagues contend, the problem is not curiosity but governance: research trajectories can be clinically promising yet ethically misaligned when community needs, terms of participation, and future benefits are not centered from the outset.

        To counter this drift, the proposed framework anchors microbiome work in the Indigenous principle of relationality, emphasizing mutual obligations among people, data, lands, and non-humans. [III] This includes ensuring Indigenous partners lead in formulating questions, co-designing consent and data protocols, and interpreting and communicating findings. In practice, deep collaboration means sovereignty is upheld through community-controlled repositories, culturally grounded consent processes, and transparent data stewardship, so that impact is defined with, not for, communities.

        Microbiome ownership, then, is less about exclusive property than about situated stewardship and fair return. [IV] Ethical practice requires clear benefit-sharing, community governance over sample use, and data access rules that honor provenance and protect against future misuse. The “Nature Microbiology” perspective pieces develop these commitments into operational guidance, urging researchers and institutions to institutionalize co-governance, track benefits over time, and avoid extractive logics masquerading as innovation.

(Adapted from McGill University Newsroom, “A relational framework for microbiome research that includes Indigenous communities”)

Question 31. The word rectify in paragraph 1 mostly means ______.

A. loosely palliative                                        B. merely cosmetic

C. effectively remedial                                D. purely symbolic