1 . 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. |
2 . When Philip Santini noticed an infection, he contacted his primary care physician, Jane Chargot, M. D., and she gave him some medicine.
However, test results showed that he wasn’t recovering. Over the phone, Santini was told he would need to go to the hospital to get infusions (输液) three times a day for a week. He was packed and ready to head out to the hospital when he received another phone call. An alternative plan was suggested instead — Hospital Care at Home.
Care at Home, a Michigan Medicine program which improves the patient experience while freeing up hospital beds, has already admitted and transferred more than 50 patients from the emergency department and inpatient hospital to receive hospital level care from the comfort of their own homes.
Santini was the first direct registration patient for this program, meaning he never presented to the hospital initially. It was no surprise that there was a celebration for this milestone.
“I was ready to head out to the emergency department,” said Santini, who even had a list of things to take when he got a call from Stephanie Paran, R. N., a nurse at U-M Briarwood Family Medicine. “Hearing Paran’s words, I sprang to my feet and didn’t hesitate to accept the advice.”
Although he initially didn’t know what to expect, he later said what the care team did was far beyond his expectations, especially the caregivers. The staff gave him infusions three times a day for six days. They took his regular medications away, just like how they would in a hospital. They checked the infection, drew blood and even brought in an ultrasound machine. “I didn’t know that was possible,” Santini said. After discharge, a Michigan Visiting Nurse visited once a week until he completely recovered.
Santini believed treatment at home has helped the healing process. “I’ve never felt really comfortable in the hospital,” he said. “It’s hard to get good sleep there. At home I had my own food, my own bed, plus my wife is here. No one has to go out of their way to visit me. It’s a healthier experience. I would encourage anyone to consider it.”
1. What is the advantage of Care at Home?| A．It can reduce the patients’ expenses. |
| B．It can lessen the pressure on hospitals. |
| C．It can avoid the waste of medical resources. |
| D．It can improve the doctor-patient relationship. |
| A．Hesitant. | B．Upset. | C．Excited. | D．Curious. |
| A．It offers professional service. | B．It is much better than hospital. |
| C．It can make impossible possible. | D．It only provides one-week treatment. |
| A．A Cure for Common Infection | B．A Tendency in Family Health |
| C．The Popularity of Medical Care | D．Hospital Level Care at Home |
3 . Online crowdfunding(众筹) for medical expenses raises less money than social media has made us believe and deepens health care inequalities, a new study reports.
The first large-scale assessment of medical crowdfunding in the United States shows That people instates with higher medical debt and lower rates of insurance(保险)coverage are more likely to try to raise money through crowdfunding websites, but less likely to succeed. From 2016 through 2020, more medical campaigns on the crowdfunding site GoFundMe were started in low-income and under-insured communities, researchers report February 3 in the American Journal of Public Health. But campaigns in wealthier communities with higher rates of insurance coverage raised significantly more money.
The study matched state and county census (人口普查) data with outcomes from more than 437,000 GoFundMe campaigns over the five-year period. During that time, more than $2 billion was raised, with the average campaign earning just under $2,000. The study also found that 16 percent of campaigns raised nothing, while less than 2 percent met their goal.
“The returns were notably low compared with the needs people have for medical expenses,” says sociologist Mark Igra of the University of Washington in Seattle.
Mississippi, for example, has the highest percentage of population with medical debt and is among the highest in percentage of uninsured, but crowdfunding campaigns there raised the least money of all 50 states. Vermont, on the other band, raised the most. Its population had one of the lowest percentages of uninsured people.
While GoFimdMe’s previous chief executive Robert Solomon has called concerns that crowdfunding increases socioeconomic inequalities “nonsense,” the new study disproves that, says Jeremy Snyder, a health researcher at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada, who was not involved with this research.
“Crowdfunding relies heavily on social networks that typically have similar characteristics, including income, to the campaigner, themselves," says Snyder, who wrote an analysis to accompany the study. ”If GoFundMe has data that suggests otherwise, then they have a duty to make it public.
1. What did researchers do during the study?| A．They raised money | B．They analysed data |
| C．They interviewed patients | D．They carried cut a census |
| A．It is relatively poor. |
| B．People there care little about health |
| C．It is no use crowdifunding there. |
| D．It has the highest number of uninsured people |
| A．Poor people are less likely to have health insurance. |
| B．Poor people tend to be-less skilled in campaigning. |
| C．The social-networks of poor people tend to have low income |
| D．Rich people are unlikely to use crowdfundiug. |
| A．Crowdfunding - the future of medical care |
| B．Crowdfunding - the reasons for its decline |
| C．Crowdfunding -a dangerous trend |
| D．Crowdfunding –less effective than thought |
