1 . I have been a healthcare assistant with Marie Curie for four years. What led me to join this remarkable organization was a deeply personal experience.
Seven years ago, my father was in the hospital, and I was informed that he was in the end-of-life stage. He had wanted to be at home during his final moments, so I arranged for him to return home. He spent only one more night there, but he wasn’t alone. A Marie Curie nurse was by our side. Facing the emotions that come with knowing a loved one is at the end of their life can be heartbreaking. Having a nurse with us made it easier to deal with these feelings. That’s when I made the decision to join Marie Curie.
Working for the charity, I find myself on duty during most Christmases. We operate every single day, including holidays. You might assume that being with families during their last Christmas, knowing it’s a difficult time for the person they’re caring for, would be a sad experience. But what may surprise you is that it’s not. The families, in my experience, are not sad. They make the most of the time they have left and they remain positive for everyone knows what’s coming. They understand that their loved one is dying, but it’s not a time for sorrow, it’s a time of togetherness and warmth. I remember one particular family — three sisters — and the fourth was in the end-of-life stage. When I arrived, she was in a critical condition, and I knew she might not make it through the night. But sitting with the sisters, talking about their childhood, recalling what happened in the past was a special time. They mentioned that their sister had asked for peaches and cream earlier that day, and they made sure she got what she wanted. She went to sleep, and we lost her that night.
We can’t change what happens to us, but we can make a difference. We provide support through the stages of sadness and struggles. And, surprisingly, people may not suffer that much.
1. What can we learn about Marie Curie from the passage?| A．It is a remarkable healthcare organization for benefit. |
| B．It is one of the most volunteer organizations in the world. |
| C．It won’t offer the service during some important festivals. |
| D．It can be a big comfort to those facing their beloved ones’ death. |
| A．Because of the special relationship between them. |
| B．Because of their unusual and abnormal behaviour. |
| C．Because of the countless hardship the family has suffered. |
| D．Because of the family’s courage and calmness facing misfortune. |
| A．Actions speak louder than words. | B．Misfortune might be an actual blessing. |
| C．Where there is action, there is difference. | D．All things are difficult before they are easy. |
| A．Devoted and caring. | B．Gifted and generous. |
| C．Hardworking and honest. | D．Sensitive and determined. |
| A．At home. | B．In the waiting room. | C．At the doctor’s office. |
For thousands of years, an ancient Chinese medical practice, acupuncture(针灸),
Acupuncture,
4 . When colds and flu hit, many people automatically turn to over-the-counter (OTC) medicines to push through and treat their symptoms. Although these medicines are easily accessible and widely used, it might come as a surprise to many people to learn that they are not risk-free. A study estimated that every year, 26,735 people went to the emergency room for adverse (不利的) events related to OTC cold and cough medicines.
When two or more drugs are used together, their interactions can sometimes produce unexpected harmful effects. Physicians are typically knowledgeable about potential drug interactions, so it is very important for patients to ask their healthcare providers which OTC medicines are safe for them to use.
It is important to read the package ingredients of OTC medicines closely to avoid duplication of doses (剂量重复). Cold medicines are typically made up of multiple ingredients. A person who takes a single-ingredient medicine paired with one of these multi-ingredient medicines can receive an unsafe dose of that ingredient.
While everyone could potentially experience adverse effects from cold and flu medicines, some groups — including older adults, children and pregnant women — may be at greater risk. Older people who are using prescribed drugs to treat multiple health conditions may have a higher risk of drug interactions because of the higher number of medicines being used at the same time to treat different conditions. The aging body is not as expert at absorbing, distributing and clearing medicines as younger bodies are. This can put older adults at higher risk for an overdose and drug-1o-drug interactions with some medicines.
The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention do not recommend giving cold medicines to children under age 4. Because of a variety of factors, young children have a higher risk of an accidental overdose and adverse events that could lead to death.
1. What does the author advise patients to do in paragraph 2?| A．Buy medicines from hospitals. | B．Take drugs as early as possible. |
| C．Ask for suggestions from doctors. | D．Read the package ingredients of drugs. |
| A．To provide a medical choice for people who catch a cold. |
| B．To show cold medicines are more likely to cause bad effects. |
| C．To explain OTC medicines often have more than one ingredient. |
| D．To stress the importance of learning about medicines’ ingredients. |
| A．They cannot cope with aging positively. |
| B．They are more easily affected by diseases. |
| C．Their body cannot handle medicines easily. |
| D．Their desire for health makes them unwise. |
| A．OTC medicines may not be safe. |
| B．Tips for taking over-the-counter drugs. |
| C．How to deal with an OTC drug overdose. |
| D．Should medicines be available “over the counter”? |
5 . Desperately ill and seeking a miracle, David Bennett Sr. took the last bet on Jan. 7. when be became the first human to be successfully transplanted with the heart of a pig. “It creates the beat; it creates the pressure; it is his heart,” declared Bartley Griffith, director of the surgical team that performed the operation at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
Bennett, 57, held on through 60 tomorrows, far longer than any previous patient who’d received a heart from another species. His remarkable run offered new hope that such procedures, known as xenotransplantation (异种移植), could help relieve the shortage of replacement organs, saving thousands of lives each year.
The earliest attempts at xenotransplantation of organs, involving kidneys from rabbits, goats, and other animals, occurred in the early 20th century, decades before the first successful human-to-human transplants. Rejection, which occurs when the recipient’s body system recognizes the donor organ as a foreign object and attacks it, followed within hours or days. Results improved after some special drugs arrived in the 1960s, but most recipients still died after a few weeks. The record for a heart xenotransplant was set in 1983, when an infant named Baby Fae survived for 20 days with an organ from a baboon (狒狒).
In recent years, however, advances in gene editing have opened a new possibility: re-edit some genes in animals to provide user-friendly spare parts. Pigs could be ideal for this purpose, because they’re easy to raise and reach adult human size in months. Some biotech companies. including Revivicor, are investing heavily in the field. The donor pig was offered by Revivicor from a line of animals in which 10 genes had been re-edited to improve the heart’s condition. Beyond that, the pig was raised in isolation and tested regularly for viruses that could infect humans or damage the organ itself.
This medical breakthrough provided an alternative for the 20% of patients on the heart transplant waiting list who die while waiting or become too sick to be a good candidate.
1. What does the underlined word “run” in paragraph 2 refer to?| A．Donating his heart to a patient. |
| B．Performing the heart operation. |
| C．Living for 60 days after the operation. |
| D．Receiving a new heart from a pig. |
| A．Its history. | B．Its procedure. | C．Its consequence. | D．Its significance. |
| A．Their growth rate and health condition. |
| B．Their life pattern and resistance to viruses. |
| C．Their easiness of keeping and rapid growth. |
| D．Their investment value and natural qualities. |
| A．It introduced new medications to prevent organ rejection. |
| B．It proved the potential for using organs from various animals. |
| C．It guaranteed a sufficient supply of donor pigs for transplants. |
| D．It offered a prospect of replacement organs through gene editing. |
Beijing has been
Hospitals in Beijing can offer online medical
“The public hospitals should offer online medical treatments with the same price of on-site services and the costs can
Beijing has been also increasing medicine supplies to residents in the past two weeks
In order to provide related medicines to more people
The key group of people, including seniors, kids
7 . PRACTITIONERS
| Jacqueline Felice de Almania (c.1322) highlights the suspicion that women practicing medicine faced. Born to a Jewish family in Florence, she moved to Paris where she worked as a physician and performed surgery. In 1322 she was tried for practicing unlawfully. In spite of the court hearing testimonials (证明) of her ability as a doctor, she was banned from medicine. | James Barry (c.1789 — 1865) was born Margaret Bulkley in Ireland but, dressed as a man, she was accepted by Edinburgh University to study medicine. She qualified as a surgeon in 1813, then joined the British Army, serving overseas. Barry retired in 1859, having practiced her entire medical profession living and working as a man. |
| Tan Yunxian (1461 — 1554) was a Chinese physician who learned her skills from her grandparents. Chinese women at the time could not serve apprenticeships (学徒期) with doctors. However, Tan passed the official exam. Tan treated women from all walks of life. In 1511, Tan wrote a book, Sayings of a Female Doctor, describing her life as a physician. | Rebecca Lee Crumpler (1831 — 1895) worked as a nurse for eight years before studying in medical college in Boston in 1860. Four years later, she was the first African American woman to receive a medical degree. She moved to Virginia in 1865, where she provided medical care to freed slaves. |
| A．Doing teaching jobs. | B．Being hired as physicians. |
| C．Performing surgery. | D．Being banned from medicine. |
| A．She wrote a book. | B．She went through trials. |
| C．She worked as a dentist. | D．She had formal education. |
| A．Jacqueline Felice de Almania. | B．Tan Yunxian. |
| C．James Barry. | D．Rebecca Lee Crumpler. |
8 . At Southmead Hospital in Bristol, researchers are experimenting with robots programmed to interact with patients for simple forms of physiotherapy (物理治疗). Another possible use might be basic bedside checks. Real applications are still some way off, but hospital leaders think this could help ease workforce pressure.
Everyone understands that people want more out of healthcare as they live longer. Hospitals have not enough workforce to meet those demands, and of course, robotics and technology can be taught to repeat unskilled tasks.
The hospital is working with Bristol Robotics Laboratory, looking at future care of patients in their own homes. This device can be controlled remotely to help with basic household tasks. Technology can clearly help those who need assistance at home, but might people feel they lose out from lack of human contact?
Professor Praminda Caleb-Solly at Bristol Robotics Laboratory said, “In no way are we looking to replace people, because nurses and doctors always think of what other people need and give them emotional support. The idea here is to improve the quality of care that can be provided. However, there are big questions over what that will mean for patients’ experiences and the impact on staff.”
And away from patients, there’s automation. Robots deliver most supplies around the hospital, including supplies to operating theatres and meals for the wards. They even have their own lifts. Because they do the heavy physical work, staff injuries have been reduced. Robot technology is also at work in the hospital drugstore. Orders for medicines are processed rapidly and made ready for clinical (临床的) teams. Pharmacists (药剂师) say it improves patient safety by eliminating (消除) human error.
Hugh Pym, BBC health editor, says that “robotic devices are thought to offer, potentially, major long-term benefits to hospitals. There’s great potential there.” They won’t necessarily offer cups of tea or even look like this. But the fact that hospital leaders are working with engineers on robotics shows there is a new vision for post-pandemic health and care.
1. What do we know about the robots programmed at Southmead Hospital?| A．They will be put to use in the near future. |
| B．They could control patients’ home at a distance. |
| C．They can help patients to communicate with doctors. |
| D．They may make up for the lack of staff in the hospital. |
| A．Robots will replace doctors in medical treatment. |
| B．Robots are favored by patients and medical staff. |
| C．Robots are less considerate than human medical staff. |
| D．Robots can be emotional with the help of technology. |
| A．The theory behind the robotic technology. |
| B．The advantages of using robots in hospitals. |
| C．The cooperation between robots and doctors. |
| D．The effect of automation on medical treatment. |
| A．Positive. | B．Negative. |
| C．Neutral. | D．Unclear. |
增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号（∧），并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线（\）划掉。
修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1. 每处错误及其修改均仅限一词。
2. 只允许修改10处，多者（从第11处起）不计分。
The other day, I discover I couldn’t move my right arm and fingers after sleeping through a flight. Having diagnosed me with neural injury, the doctor suggested I could try acupuncture (针灸). So I followed his advices and began my treatment. Dozens tiny needles were inserted across my arm and fingers. I dared not move, because even a small change of position could cause a acute pain. Two weeks went by after I could eat a meal with chopsticks and it took a month for my arm and fingers to return back to their normal functions. I was very amazing at how magic these needles were. That I had always considered old-fashioned and useless turned out to be of great use. I hope acupuncture, with its help I recovered, will continue to bring health to other people.
10 . AIDS may be one of the most undesirable diseases in the world. Luckily, there is now hope for AIDS patients.
According to a recent paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Chinese scientists have successfully used CRISPR technology – a method of gene editing – to treat a patient with HIV. While it may not have cured the patient fully, it still represents a huge step forward in fighting the disease.
The patient was a 27-year-old Chinese man who was diagnosed with both AIDS and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (急性淋巴细胞白血病), a type of blood cancer. Despite his hopeless situation, doctors offered him a glimmer of hope: a bone marrow (骨髓) transplant to treat his cancer and an experimental treatment for his HIV.
They used this opportunity to edit the DNA in bone marrow stem cells from a donor before transplanting the cells into the patient.
Specifically, the treatment involved using the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 to delete a gene known as CCR5, which encodes a protein that HIV uses to get inside human cells. Without the gene, HIV is unable to infiltrate cells.
Talking about the gene, lead scientist Deng Hongkui told CNN, “After being edited, the cells — and the blood cells they produce — have the ability to resist HIV infection.”
Nineteen months after the treatment, the patient’s leukemia was in complete remission (缓解) and donor cells without CCR5 remained, according to the research paper.
Though the transplant did not cure the man’s HIV, it still showed the effectiveness of gene-editing technology, as there was no indication of any unintended genetic alterations – a major concern with past gene therapy experiments.
Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Centre for Health Security in the United States, who was not involved in the study, praised the treatment.
“They did a very innovative experiment. It was safe,” he told Live Science. “It should be viewed as a success.”
Deng believes gene-editing technology could “bring a new dawn” to blood-related diseases such as AIDS and sickle cell anemia (镰刀形细胞性贫血).
“Thanks to this new technology, the goal of a functional cure for AIDS is getting closer and closer,” he said.
1. The technology of CRISPR is to ________.| A．transplant cells | B．encode genes |
| C．remove proteins | D．produce cells |
| A．CCR5 and other genes in the patient’s cells were changed. |
| B．The number of cells infected by HIV decreased. |
| C．Some of the patient’s blood cells could resist HIV infection. |
| D．HIV no longer existed in the patient’s cells. |
| A．It provided an innovative way to cure AIDS patients. |
| B．It pointed out the problems of gene therapy. |
| C．It could offer a safe treatment for blood-related diseases. |
| D．It’s the first experiment to use gene-editing technology to treat AIDS. |
| A．A New Treatment to Patients | B．New Hope for HIV Patients |
| C．A New Medical Invention | D．New Technology, New Hope |
