1 . NATURE has many ways of reminding us who is in charge. Her most deadly weapons — bacteria, viruses, and parasites (寄生虫) —claim millions of lives every year.
But thanks to the hard work of great scientists, mankind could turn nature against itself. And it is for exactly this sort of work that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Oct 5.
Half of the prize was awarded to the Irish William Campbell and the Japanese Satoshi Ōmura for discovering avermectin (阿维菌素), a drug that kills the parasitic worms that cause river blindness and lymphatic filariasis (象皮病). Chinese scientist Tu Youyou shared the other half of the prize for developing Artemisinin, a drug that helps kill the parasite that causes malaria.
Ōmura is a microbiologist by training. He studied Streptomyces bacteria to find compounds (化合物) that work against harmful microbes (微生物). Campbell, working in the US, took bacteria found by Ōmura and took out avermectin, which is effective against parasites in farm animals. An improved type of avermectin was later produced for humans, which greatly reduced the cases of river blindness and lymphatic filariasis.
Avermectin comes from bacteria, but artemisinin comes from plants. Its discovery was the result of Project 523, a Chinese government project to find a new malaria drug in the late 1960s.
Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease caused by parasites, which attack red blood cells, causing fever, and sometimes, brain damage and death. Tu and her team made 380 herbal extracts from 2,000 recipes from traditional Chinese medical books. In 1971, after more than 190 failures, Tu’s team finally found an extract that was 100 percent effective against malaria parasites. It was called qinghaosu, later renamed artemisinin. In 2001, the World Health Organization named artemisinin the first choice in the treatment of malaria.
Millions of people are still troubled by infections caused by parasites. But the WHO said that by 2013, malaria deaths had fallen by 47 percent compared with 2000. Similarly, river blindness used to be one of the leading causes of preventable blindness. These days, doctors are talking about chances of wiping the disease off Earth. All of these achievements would not be possible at all without the drugs that Campbell, Ōmura and Tu helped to discover.
1. The drug Tu Youyou developed, artemisinin, has proven effective in treating ______.| A．river blindness |
| B．malaria |
| C．lymphatic filariasis |
| D．infections caused by Streptomyces bacteria |
| A．bacteria | B．plants | C．farm animals | D．ocean animals |
| A．It took Tu and her team about 10 years to discover artemisinin. |
| B．Tu and her team achieved success after about 380 failures. |
| C．Artemisinin has saved millions of people’s lives since its discovery. |
| D．Artemisinin was discovered thanks to the efforts of scientists from at home and abroad. |
If you have an allergy to some food, even a very tiny bit of food can make you sick. Lots of kids have food allergies — about 3 million in the United States alone.
The foods that cause the most food allergies include peanuts and other nuts; seafood, such as shrimp; milk, particularly cow's milk; eggs; wheat.
What Is a Food Allergy?
Food allergies occur when your immune system makes a mistake. Usually, your immune system protects you from germs and disease. It does this by making antibodies that help you fight off bacteria, viruses, and other tiny organisms that can make you sick. But if you have a food allergy, your immune system mistakenly treats something in a certain food as if it's really dangerous to you.
What's a Reaction Like?
In the most serious cases, a food allergy can cause anaphylaxis (过敏症). This is a sudden, severe allergic reaction in which several problems occur all at once and can involve the skin, breathing, digestion, the heart and blood vessels. A person's blood pressure can drop, breathing tubes can narrow and the tongue can swell. People at risk for this kind of reaction have to be very careful and need a plan for handling emergencies, when they might need to get special medicine to stop these symptoms from getting worse.
What Will the Doctor Do?
If you think you may be allergic to a certain food, let your parents know. They will take you to the doctor to get it checked out. If your doctor thinks you might have a food allergy, he or she will probably send you to see a doctor who specializes in allergies. The allergy specialist will ask you about past reactions and how long it takes between eating the food and getting the symptom, such as hives. The allergist also may ask about whether anyone else in your family has allergies or other allergyrelated conditions. The allergist may also want to do a skin test. This is a way of seeing how your body reacts to a very small amount of the food that is giving you trouble.
1. According to the passage, you will have a food allergy when your immune system ________.| A．recognizes tiny organisms in a certain food |
| B．mistakenly makes antibodies to help fight off something in a certain food |
| C．prevents something harmful in the food from entering your digestive system |
| D．releases chemicals to remove harmful things in a certain food |
| A．Blood pressure rising. |
| B．Lips swelling. |
| C．Breathing difficulty. |
| D．Heart beating becoming slow. |
| A．Taking medicine as soon as an allergic reaction appears. |
| B．Avoiding eating any food when going outside. |
| C．Always carrying with special medicine for possible symptoms. |
| D．Preparing a plan for dealing with emergencies ahead of time. |
| A．Ask you about the allergyassociated information. |
| B．Give you some medicine right away. |
| C．Enquire about your present feeling towards the food. |
| D．Give you a shot of liquid extract of food. |
3 . “Friendly doctors are bad for their patients' health,” researchers have warned as a new study revealed two thirds of young doctors struggle to be truthful with patients they like.
Blurring (使……变得模糊不清) the lines between social and professional relationships can affect the level of care offered and prevent patients from being honest about important side effects.
“Doctors should avoid adding patients as friends on Facebook, and they should not hug or allow patients to call them by their first names,” regulators have warned. “Those who break the boundaries will face some punishment.”
It comes as a survey of 338 oncologists (肿瘤学家) under the age of 40, finding 59 per cent said they found it difficult to tell the truth to those patients they like. Sixty per cent of respondents said if doctors felt too close to their patients, it could prevent them from making objective decisions about a person's care.
Lesley Fallowfield of Brighton and Sussex Medical School said：“Oncology is a profession that can be enormously rewarding but is filled with many challenges. Young oncologists have to master the means of dealing with anxious patients who are facing a lifethreatening disease, conveying the true prognosis (预断), discussing the complexity of modern treatments, and explaining the unavailability of some drugs, the side effects of treatments, and likely treatment aims.”
But she also said, “Those doctors who have entered the profession in the age of ‘the Internet world’ are more likely to fall victim to blurring the professional boundaries with patients.”
She said, “The difficulty, if you hug and kiss patients, if you allow them to call you by your first name, is that quickly the relationship can become confusing as a social one rather than a professional one. Doctors become confused, ‘I really like these people, how can I bear to tell them that they're going to die?’ They find it more difficult to be objective.”
1. Why are friendly doctors bad for their patients' health?| A．Because they don't like to cheat patients. |
| B．Because they are not good at treating patients. |
| C．Because they find it not easy to be objective to the patients. |
| D．Because they seldom blur the relationship with patients. |
| A．Add patients as friends on Facebook. |
| B．Have a close connection with patients in life. |
| C．Always be cold to patients. |
| D．Keep patients at a proper distance. |
| A．dealing with a lot of lifethreatening diseases |
| B．discussing difficulties of treatments with patients |
| C．explaining the unavailability of some medicines |
| D．informing patients of the possible results of the treatments |
| A．Oncology is a rewarding profession without challenges. |
| B．The Internet makes it easier for young doctors to break the boundaries. |
| C．It's not the doctors' duty to deal with patients' anxiety. |
| D．Becoming friends with patients will help them recover soon. |
4 . Hospitals employ many therapeutic (治疗的) methods, such as medication (药物治疗), massage (按摩) therapy and music therapy. And music therapy is growing in popularity.
Sandra Siedliecki is a Senior Scientist at the Nursing Institute of Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. She says music is a low-cost treatment. And she says scientists have done a lot of research on music’s effect on pain. Dr. Marian Good did a lot of studies looking at surgery (外科) patients and the use of music. In her studies, patients just listened to relaxing music. Dr. Good found that her surgery patients took fewer painkillers after they listened to music. Music had a good effect on short-term pain. However, chronic pain, the kind that recurs (复发) continually, changed little under the effect of music.
Dr. Linda Chlan was studying something different. She was not interested in patients’ pain, but instead, their anxiety. She spent a lot of time with people who were in the hospital because their anxiety was so great that they couldn’t breathe. People with this condition often have to use breathing machines. Dr. Chlan said that the machines sometimes did little to improve their condition. Sometimes they even made things worse. The patients would become more anxious. Dr. Chlan let nurses tell patients that music was a good choice to make them feel better. They also placed signs near the patients’ beds—Listen to your music at least twice a day. The people who listened to music had a reduction (减少) in the amount of medication they received. In addition, their anxiety reduced by about 36 percent.
Both doctors had similar explanations for why music was so helpful. Music can be a very powerful distracter (干扰) in the brain when we’re listening to music that is pleasing and then it interrupts stressful thoughts.
1. Dr. Marian Good’s studies show that music therapy
.| A．can help patients recover fast |
| B．cannot take the place of medication |
| C．doesn’t work well on all patients |
| D．is cheaper than massage therapy and medication |
| A．Dr. Good and Dr. Chlan didn’t agree with each other on music’s effect. |
| B．Patients will forget their illnesses completely while listening to music. |
| C．Patients with great anxiety would not recover after taking medicine. |
| D．Listening to enjoyable music is a good way to relieve anxiety. |
| A．The brain. | B．Music. |
| C．Stress. | D．Medicine. |
| A．To show that music therapy is useful. |
| B．To encourage all patients to listen to music. |
| C．To tell how to reduce pain and anxiety. |
| D．To explain how music reduces pain and anxiety. |
5 . “That’s funny! These fellows in the middle of the plate have died，” Dr Alexander Fleming was talking to another doctor in a laboratory in London.He had been studying some germs (细菌)that he was growing on a plate.They were very dangerous germs because they caused different kinds of illnesses that could kill people.Dr Fleming found that a mould (霉菌) had floated in through the window landing on the plate.It had killed some of the germs it had touched.
“This certainly looks promising，” Fleming said.“We must grow some of this mould to see if it will kill other germs.”
He named the strange mould “penicillin”．It proved to be a killer of many germs.Fifty mice were given deadly germs and then half of them were injected (注射) with penicillin.The twentyfive untreated mice died，but twentyfour of those that had been treated with penicillin lived.Dr Fleming wrote a report about what he had found out.Hardly anybody took any notice of it.
In 1938 Dr Howard Florey，an Australian working in London, read Dr Fleming’s report and was very interested.He found that penicillin was effective in treating blood poisoning in human beings.
When World War II broke out，it was not possible to make enough penicillin in England.Dr Florey went to America where he helped to have enormous amounts of this wonderful drug made.It saved the lives of thousands of soldiers，sailors and airmen who would have died from their wounds if the hospitals had not had penicillin.
1. Dr Alexander Fleming ______.| A．had been studying a mould which was very dangerous and could kill people |
| B．had been studying some of the germs on a plate which could cure illnesses |
| C．had been making experiments on some germs that he was growing on a plate |
| D．had been making experiments on different germs that could help sick people to get better |
| A．they had been given deadly germs and had been injected with penicillin |
| B．they were almost dead ahead of the experiment |
| C．they were easy to die in the experiment |
| D．they had been given deadly germs and had not been injected with penicillin |
| A．left England for America，making the drug |
| B．went to America to save the lives of thousands of soldiers，sailors and airmen |
| C．found penicillin effective in treating blood poisoning in human beings |
| D．went to America to make this drug for mice |
| A．rest | B．appropriate |
| C．little | D．huge |
6 . First aid means the aid or the help that can be given to an injured person first, that is, before any other help arrives. Nowadays there is usually a telephone not far away and the first we should do, if a serious accident happens, is to call for an ambulance. Sometimes quick action by us may save someone’s life.
Shock. People often suffer from shock after receiving an injury, sometimes even when the injury is a small one. The face turns grey, and the skin becomes damp and cold. They breathe quickly. They should be kept warm. Cover them with a blanket and give them a warm drink.
Broken bones. Do not move the patient. Send for an ambulance at once.
Bleeding. A little bleeding doesn't harm. It washes dirt from the wound. But if the bleeding continues, try to stop it by placing a clean cloth firmly over the wound until the bleeding stops or help arrives.
Poison. A person who has taken poison should be taken to a hospital at once. With some poisons, sleeping pills, for example, it is a good thing to make the patient throw up by pressing your fingers down his throat.
Remember: When an accident happens, send someone to telephone for an ambulance at once. Keep the injured person warm and quiet. Give him plenty of air. Do not let other people crowd around him.
1. How many common accidents are mentioned in this passage?| A．Two. | B．Three. | C．Four. | D．Five. |
| A．the patient breathes quickly. | B．the face turns grey. |
| C．the skin becomes damp and cold. | D．All of the above. |
| A．Don’t move the injured person if he has broken his legs. |
| B．When a person has taken poison, we must make him throw up at once. |
| C．If an injured person goes into shock, we must try to keep them warm. |
| D．First aid means to give an injured person necessary help at once before the doctor comes |
| A．something we must remember. |
| B．some examples of common accidents. |
| C．some facts about some common accidents. |
| D．some advice on how to deal with common accidents. |
7 . Researchers at the University of Scotland have discovered a protein that can influence viruses developing and even can control cancer. Now the fight is on to fully understand how it works in the hope of turning the laboratory research into a treatment.
The protein is called Hira. Technically it is a histone（组蛋白）complex, but it is easier to understand in terms of what it can do. Three years ago Dr Taranjit Singh Rai and colleagues at the Beatson Cancer Institute and Glasgow University reported that Hira could possibly suppress the division of cells that causes cancer. In the course of that research, Dr Rai found out something unusual. In the lab they have established that the Hira protein has a role to play in the anti-viral fight, thus, making it have a fundamental role to play in fighting against cancer.
The trick in using it to fight diseases may lie in increasing Hira levels in our cells. “I think what researchers might be interested in is how we can increase levels of this protein to deal with the viruses better, Dr Rai said.
Dr Rai has led an international study and support has come from Cancer Research UK and the results are published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research. But there is a major concern that the research is still limited to the laboratory.
It is going to take some time, probably years, before this work can move out of the lab and into clinics and hospitals. But the researchers are excited Hira will one day be the basis of a new approach in medicine.
1. What does the underlined word “suppress" in Paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Motivate. | B．Monitor. | C．Control. | D．Improve. |
| A．Hira has been used in the medical treatment. |
| B．More studies should be done on Hira. |
| C．The levels of Hira in cells are unchangeable. |
| D．Hira can bring about side effects. |
| A．Cautious. | B．Optimistic. |
| C．Disapproving. | D．Doubtful. |
| A．A new way to use the protein. |
| B．A new approach to improving the division of cells. |
| C．A new medicine that can fight diseases. |
| D．A protein that can stop viruses developing. |
8 . As doctors performed surgery on Dagmar Turner’s brain, the sound of a violin filled the operating room. The music came from the patient on the operating table. In a video from the surgery, the violinist was moving her bow (琴弓) up and down as surgeons worked to remove her brain tumor (肿瘤). The King’s College hospital surgeons woke her up in the middle of the operation in order to ensure they did not damage parts of the brain necessary for playing the violin and keep her hand’s functions intact.
Turner, 53, learned that she had a slow-growing tumor. Later doctors found that it had become more aggressive and the violinist decided to have surgery to remove it. “We knew how important the violin is to Turner, so it was vital that we preserved function in the delicate areas of her brain that allowed her to play,” Keyoumars Ashkan, a doctor at King’s College Hospital, said in a press release.
Before Turner’s operation, Ashkan and his colleagues spent two hours carefully mapping her brain to identify areas that were active when she played the violin and those controlling language and movement. Waking her up during surgery then allowed doctors to monitor whether those parts were suffering damage.
Brad Mahon, expert at Carnegie Mellon University, said the basic features of an “awake craniotomy” — the type of brain surgery where patients are awake in order to avoid damage to critical brain areas — have remained largely unchanged for decades. But he said that doctors are now able to map the patient’s brain activity in great detail before the surgery, using an imaging technique called functional MRI. That means surgeons are coming into the operating room with far more information about a specific patient’s brain. That kind of information helps doctors tailor tests to a patient’s particular needs.
1. What does the underlined word “intact”mean in the first paragraph?| A．Strong. | B．Sound. |
| C．Talented. | D．Influential. |
| A．To keep her brain more active when she played the violin. |
| B．To monitor whether her brain had suffered damage severely. |
| C．To recognize the areas related to music and movement precisely. |
| D．To remove the tumor while keeping all function of her brain. |
| A．Doctors are using an imaging technique to monitor the surgery. |
| B．Patients are asleep to protect critical brain areas in a surgery. |
| C．A patient’s language ability couldn’t be preserved before. |
| D．Surgeons can personalize a patient’s operation by mapping his brain. |
| A．Musician joined in her own brain surgery |
| B．Mapping a brain is realized after surgery |
| C．The violinist suffers from a brain tumor |
| D．Doctors perform surgery on a brain |
9 . Nowadays medical technology seems to be advanced enough for doctors to perform brain transplants (移植). Though this procedure has only been successfully performed on animals so far, doctors are still hoping to perform this procedure on humans. However, in my opinion, brain transplants should not be performed at all, especially not on humans because of the large number of problems and side effects that could come along with. Hopefully these dangerous side effects will convince doctors not to perform this procedure on humans.
Despite many benefits technology brings, I do not think this medical technology of brain transplants will help. We were all born with one brain and through childhood to adolescence our mind developed into who we are, so if with a different brain we would no longer be unique. A person with a different brain would seem to be a total stranger and in many ways they would be. No one should steal our identity from us, even if we are seriously injured, and change it to a completely new one. Also for the people who have died with healthy brains, that was their identity and it should not be given to anyone else.
Another problem with brain transplants is how doctors can choose what are “healthy” or “normal” brains. An elderly person who has died would have an aged brain that would not be as efficient as a younger person’s brain. Then would doctors have to find healthy brains of the same age as the person who needs it? This could also bring up other factors such as intelligence, gender, or physical problems that a person might have had before death. Also another problem might be how long a brain can be kept “alive” after death and how it can be kept “alive” without damage.
Overall, my feelings about this surgery are that it should not be done on humans until doctors have overcome all the problems and obstacles (障碍) that stand in their way of making human brain transplants successful.
1. Why does the author think brain transplants should not be performed at all?| A．The cost of the surgery is extremely high. |
| B．Doctors are not able to perform brain transplants. |
| C．A good many problems and side effects may arise. |
| D．This procedure has only been successful on animals. |
| A．People shouldn’t give their healthy brains to others. |
| B．Having a brain transplant means losing one’s identity. |
| C．Transplanting brains is changing old brains into new ones. |
| D．Having brain transplants indicates stealing identity from others. |
| A．Aged brains aren’t healthy brains. | B．Young brains are always healthy. |
| C．Healthy brains cannot be kept “alive”. | D．It’s very difficult to tell healthy brains. |
| A．To encourage brain donation. |
| B．To stress the importance of brain operation. |
| C．To argue against brain transplants on humans. |
| D．To introduce the technology of brain transplants. |
10 . Sam is a fourth-year student at Harvard Medical School，but poetry is still a big part of his life，now with a new teacher，Rafael Campo，who believes poetry can benefit every doctor’s education and work. Rafael is a physician，professor and a highly respected poet.
“Poetry is in every encounter(邂逅)with my patients. I think healing is really in a very great way about poetry. And if we do anything when we’re with our patients，we’re really immersing(使沉浸于)ourselves in their stories，really hearing their voices. And，certainly，that’s what a poem does，”he said.
Rafael worries that something important has been lost in medicine and medical education today：humanity，which he finds in poetry. To end that，he leads a weekly reading and writing workshop for medical students and residents(住院医生).
He thinks medical training focuses too much on distancing the doctor from his or her patients，and poems can help close that gap.
Third-year resident Andrea Schwartz was one of the workshop regulars. She said. “I think there’s no other profession other than medicine that produces as many writers as it does. And I think that is because there’s just so much power in doctors and patients interacting when patients are at their saddest. ”Not everyone believes that’s what doctors should do，though.
Rafael said，“I was afraid of how people might judge me，actually. In the medical profession，as many people know，we must always put the emergency first. But，you know，that kind of treatment，if it’s happening in the hospital，very regrettably，sadly，results in a bad outcome. The family is sitting by the bedside. The patient hasn’t survived the cancer. Don’t we still have a role as healers there?”
In a poem titled“Health”，Rafael writes of the wish to live forever in a world made painless by our incurable joy. He says he will continue teaching students，helping patients and writing poems，his own brand of medicine.
1. What do we know about Rafael Campo?| A．He works as a doctor. | B．He is under medical care. |
| C．He is a literature professor. | D．He knows little about poetry. |
| A．The importance of medical training. |
| B．The effect of poetry in medical treatment. |
| C．The similarity involved in poetry and medical work. |
| D．The present relationship between patients and doctors. |
| A．It comforts patients’family. |
| B．It contributes to medical work. |
| C．It has nothing to do with doctors. |
| D．It keeps doctors away from patients. |
| A．It requires a lot of spare time. |
| B．It can provide a useful tool for doctors. |
| C．It has little effect on patients’conditions. |
| D．It should be included in emergency treatments. |
