1. What are the speakers mainly talking about?
| A．Their vets. | B．Money spent on pets. | C．Ways to buy dogs’ medicines. |
| A．Brett. | B．Fargo. | C．Ferguson. |
| A．The limited services. |
| B．The prices her vet charged. |
| C．The difficulty of getting an appointment. |
| A．Going to his vet. | B．Looking online. | C．Going to a special pet store. |
1. What is the matter with Mr. Smith?
| A．He is unqualified for his job. | B．His leg is broken. | C．He got a sore throat. |
| A．Chinese. | B．English. | C．Physics. |
| A．He has to help his students prepare for the exam. |
| B．He has trouble sleeping. |
| C．He wants to visit a friend. |
1. How did the woman know Jesse was in hospital?
| A．Jesse told her. | B．The police called her. | C．Dr. Andrews phoned her. |
| A．He crashed into a tree. | B．He caused an accident. | C．A tree fell on his car. |
| A．Pass some tests. |
| B．Get something to eat. |
| C．Give the woman more information. |
4 . On Monday, a lawsuit (诉讼) in the US got huge headlines around the world. It deals with a truly 21st century issue—whether human genes (基因) may be patented.
Myriad Genetics, a biotechnology company, discovered two genes — BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 — that are highly related to breast cancer. Myriad patented its discoveries and a group of researchers challenged that the patent was illegal.
The US patent law protects the temporary economic rewards inventors get from their inventions. But it also says a product of nature or a law of nature can’t be patented. For example, Einstein couldn’t patent on his discovery of E=mc2.
And until relatively recently, many of the medical researchers voluntarily gave up patents on their inventions. When Dr. Jonas Salk, the inventor of the polio vaccine (小儿麻痹症疫苗), was asked in 1955 whether he had a patent on the vaccine, he replied, “Could you patent the sun?”
Myriad Genetics, however, says that the genes it identified are not like the sun. It notes that there are 20,000 genes in the human body and that it has sorted through all those genes and found the two that are closely related to breast cancer.
Not so, say those challenging the patent. Human genes are products of nature. They are just a part of the human body. “All Myriad does is take the part out of the body,” says the challengers’ lawyer, Christopher Hansen. “Can the person who first takes the heart out of the body patent on hearts?”
Rochelle Dreyfuss, a patent expert who is not associated with this case, is a little more down to earth. “At some level it is about money,” he says, “because medicine doesn’t happen for free. The patent system is very important to encourage companies to spend more money on scientific research and development.”
Then how do other countries handle this tricky situation? Most countries approve patents on genes, but they also allow other scientists to use the genes freely to do research and develop new medicines and testing methods.
1. Which of the following can be patented according to the US patent law?| A．The law of gravity force. | B．A unique orbit found in space. |
| C．A new medicine based on BRCA 1. | D．The basic working principle of planes. |
| A．A product of nature can’t be patented. |
| B．Public interests should be put before profits. |
| C．It is unacceptable to the other countries in the world. |
| D．The connection between genes and cancers is not obvious. |
| A．Angry. | B．Rude. | C．Smart | D．Practical. |
| A．The consequences of the lawsuit. | B．Other countries’ solution to the case. |
| C．The public reactions to the news. | D．Some scientists’ support for the patent. |
5 . With the widespread use of smartphones, emojis (表情符号) have become a popular medium for expressing emotions and ideas. Researchers now believe these expressive symbols can play a significant role in medicine, increasing the response rate of health surveys.
Scientists say that employing emojis in healthcare communications has several benefits, such as general recognition across diverse populations. So the study authors strongly support the use of emojis to bolster communication between patients and physicians.
“By promoting more effective communication between patients and care providers, as well as between physicians themselves, an emoji-based language system with a common agreement of meanings can be developed,” says Professor Kendrick Davis, who is an associate professor at the UCR School of Medicine. The professor has been working on creating an emoji-based measurement system for the past two years. And he has even conducted a study using emojis to measure health among college students.
Davis further explains that a significant part of medical communication includes surveys, which are often areas of communication breakdown. “Surveys are usually passed to patients in a variety of different stages of their care. But many surveys are explained with language that can introduce an obstacle. This is where emojis, which are friendly and widely used, come into play by replacing survey language that can be hard for some patients to understand,” he says. The authors also point out that while effective communication is important for successful treatment and care, certain health conditions such as brain injury can cause major obstacles. In such cases, emojis could be helpful.
However, Davis also acknowledges the importance of qualitative (定性的) methods. He expresses an interest in partnering researchers whose methodologies are heavily qualitative.
1. Why does the author mention the use of smartphones in paragraph 1?| A．To introduce the functions of emojis. | B．To explain why emojis develop fast. |
| C．To tell us where emojis are mainly used. | D．To show emojis have become widely used. |
| A．Improve. | B．Start. | C．Predict. | D．Suggest. |
| A．Emojis shouldn’t be used in letters from doctors. |
| B．Physicians are poor at communicating with patients. |
| C．Major obstacles can be caused by emojis sometimes. |
| D．Emojis can help patients finish medical surveys better. |
| A．Create completely new emojis. | B．Use emojis to measure mental health. |
| C．Work with researchers with qualitative methods. | D．Create an emoji-based measurement system alone. |
6 . This year brought some exciting news for patients of Alzheimer’s disease and their families. Leqembi, a new drug for the disease made through a US-Japanese partnership, has been available in a pilot zone in China’s Hainan province since September.
Being a currently uncurable disease, Alzheimer’s disease damages or even kills nerve cells (神经细胞) in the brain. Damaged cells can cause breakdowns in various parts of the brain, resulting in memory loss, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. A kind of plaque (斑块) made up of protein is the “suspect”. Plaques build up in the spaces between nerve cells, which can break up the communication between cells. Although most people develop such plaques as they age, Alzheimer’s patients tend to have more, beginning in the areas responsible for memory.
This July, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) fully approved Leqembi. It became the first Alzheimer’s drug to receive FDA approval in 20 years. Leqembi is designed to “remove plaques that have already formed and prevents them from forming”, US medical expert Jon LaPook told CBS News. Therefore, the drug can only be effective in those who are in the early stage of the disease. Patients would also need to have evidence of plaques in their brain, which can be detected through brain scans or blood tests.
Sadly, this drug is not a cure. According to the FDA’s press release, after a 79-week trial on human patients, the drug could slow but not reverse (逆转) the development of the disease and its related effect on memory. What it offers is a way for patients with Alzheimer’s to maintain their ability to live a more or less normal life for longer.
According to the World Health Organization, at least 55 million people are living with dementia (痴呆) worldwide, with Alzheimer’s disease being the most common cause. As scientists make more effort, there’s growing hope that they can one day create a world where Alzheimer’s disease no longer affects millions of families like it used to.
1. What makes Alzheimer’s patients excited?| A．A US-Japanese partnership. | B．Damaged nerve cells in the brain. |
| C．A new drug for Alzheimer’s disease. | D．A kind of plaque in the memory area. |
| A．It can detect the plaque in patients’ brain. |
| B．It can reverse the development of disease. |
| C．It can be used in the late stage of the disease. |
| D．It can remove plaques and prevent their forming. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Uncaring. | C．Positive. | D．Negative. |
| A．Progress in Treating Alzheimer’s Disease |
| B．A Promising Treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease |
| C．The Impact of Alzheimer’s Disease on Patients |
| D．The Role of Plaque in Alzheimer’s Disease |
Robots are highly beneficial to healthcare. Statistics show that around 16 million patients in China are
Advanced robotics, moreover, considerably eases patients’ discomfort created by the traditional gastroscopy (胃镜),
8 . William Osler, a doctor, once said, “The person who takes medicine must recover twice: once from the disease and once from the medicine.” It tells us medicine may have some side-effects. Therefore, many people in the west are turning to other treatments to replace some medicine. Acupuncture(针刺) is one of these treatments.
What is acupuncture? It is based on the idea that energy flows through the human body along 12 lines or meridians(经络). These meridians end up at organs in the body, and illness is the result of blockage of the energy flow to these organs. To remove the blockage(堵塞), an acupuncturist inserts very fine needles into the body at points along the meridians. This stimulates the flow of energy, and restores the patient’s health.
Acupuncture is a traditional Chinese treatment, which has been practiced for around 3,000 years. It is used to treat a wide range of diseases, such as headaches, dental pain, back pain, high blood pressure, stress, depression, and anxiety.
Since acupuncture is known to be effective against pain, it is not surprising that many people have experimented with it. Martina Hingis, a famous tennis player, had a wrist injury cured through acupuncture. NBA legend Kobe Bryant also used it on his leg. It has been used widely in the German football league, including the national team. The Queen of England is also interested in it.
If you do decide to visit an acupuncturist, it is important that you should check they are qualified and registered to practice, for some people are allergic to it while being treated, although this is very uncommon.
1. What can we learn according to the passage?| A．Medicine have little side effects. |
| B．Acupuncture was originally used in the west. |
| C．Acupuncture can treat physical as well as mental diseases. |
| D．The person who takes medicine recovers twice from the disease. |
| A．By making comparison | B．By giving definition |
| C．By taking examples | D．By listing numbers |
| A．Positive | B．Negative | C．Skeptical | D．Indifferent |
| A．The Function of Acupuncture |
| B．The History of Acupuncture |
| C．Acupuncture ---- Be Careful |
| D．Acupuncture ---- An Effective Treatment |
9 . Have you ever sat in a hospital bed with the doctors around talking about you as though you didn’t exist? Research into patients’ view of healthcare has shown that this is common. This behaviour gets to the root of how patients evaluate the quality of care they receive.
While doctors like to focus on treatment outcomes, this isn’t how the public assesses whether their doctor is good. Research has consistently shown that most patients evaluate their experiences on how polite the doctor was, not on the actual quality of medicine practised.
My mum, for example, recently started losing her sight. She went for an urgent appointment with an eye specialist at her local NHS hospital. When I telephoned her that evening to see how it went, she replied: “Oh, they were all so lovely and kind.” In fact, the clinic was running late and she’d had to wait an hour to see the nurse, and three hours to see the consultant. From a medical perspective, the consultation clearly hadn’t been a success. While they’d ruled out emergency causes for her sight loss, they hadn’t really got to the bottom of the problem. She was now back at home, still unable to see properly and with no idea if she was going to go permanently blind. But what mattered to her was that a nurse had met her at the door and helped her to her seat. One of the nurses offered to get my mum a sandwich when lunch came. The consultant listened to her as she explained what had happened. They’d asked about how the loss of sight had impacted on her life and the clinic nurse had asked to see photographs of my new nephew. My mum felt she had received good care simply because the doctors and nurses had listened to her.
Patients don’t evaluate the actual medicine; it’s the communication skills of the doctor that determine how they evaluate the care. If doctors listened to their patients, that means we can improve the NHS without spending money.
1. What is the common opinion of patients according to the research?| A．They like the quality of their medical care. |
| B．They can’t communicate with the doctors. |
| C．They’re informed of the treatment results. |
| D．They can understand their doctors well. |
| A．They stayed late to find the cause. |
| B．They cured her of her loss of sight. |
| C．They reacted slowly to her condition. |
| D．They showed great concern for her. |
| A．How well doctors communicate with them. |
| B．Whether their relatives care about them. |
| C．How much they can save when in hospital. |
| D．Whether they can be cured of the disease. |
| A．Doctors Need Training to Be Good Communicators |
| B．Medical Care Can Be Improved Without Money |
| C．Good Medical Care Needs Patient Communication |
| D．Research Is Carried out About Better Medical Care |
10 . David Bennett became the first person to have a heart transplanted successfully into him from a pig. In press material issued three days after the operation, the University of Maryland confirmed Mr Bennett was doing well, and was capable of breathing on his own. While he continues to rely on artificial support to pump blood around his body, the team behind the surgery, led by Bartley Griffith, plan gradually to reduce its use.
This operation is a milestone for xenotransplantation — the transfer of organs from other species to human patients. Doctors say the next few weeks will be a critical to see how Bennett does with the new organ and whether his body begins to reject it.
The operation itself received exceptional authorization from America’s Food and Drug Administration under a provision which lets doctors use experimental treatments as a matter of last resort. Prior to the operation, Mr. Bennett was diagnosed with terminal heart disease, but was judged too ill to qualify for a human transplant. Having spent months in a hospital bed with no improvement to his condition, he gave his agreement to the surgery.
Bennett released a statement through the medical center the day before the operation. In it, he said: “It was either die or do this transplant. I want to live. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last choice.”
Past attempts at pig-to-human transplants have failed because of genetic differences that caused organ rejection. To reduce the risk of that happening in this case, scientists removed several genes from the donor pig that are linked with organ rejection. They also removed another gene from the animal in an effort to prevent too much growth of pig heart tissue.
Bennett’s genetically modified pig heart was provided by Revivicor, a regenerative medicine company based in Blacksburg, Virginia. On the morning of the surgery, the transplant team removed the pig’s heart and placed it into a special device to keep it running until the operation.
1. Why did Bennett adopt a pig heart transplant?| A．Genetic differences may cause organ rejection. |
| B．He failed to get approval from America’s Food and Drug Administration. |
| C．He couldn’t manage to find a suitable human heart. |
| D．His heart disease was too severe to receive a human transplant. |
| A．A possibility that shoots oneself in the evening. |
| B．A belief that all things will go smoothly. |
| C．A guess that is based on little evidence or information. |
| D．A challenge someone must face. |
| A．By taking away some of unfavorable genes. |
| B．By promoting the growth of pig heart issue. |
| C．By placing the pig’s heart into a special device. |
| D．By connecting to a heart-lung machine until the operation. |
| A．Bennett’s New Life with a Pig Heart |
| B．First Successful Pig-to-Human Transplant |
| C．A New Progress in Life-Saving Transplants |
| D．Past Attempts at Pig-to-Human Transplants |
