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  3. Less than a year ago, a new generation of diet pills seemed to offer the long-sought answer to our chronic weight problems. Hund

Less than a year ago, a new generation of diet pills seemed to offer the long-sought answer to our chronic weight problems. Hund

admin2015-04-10  61
问题     Less than a year ago, a new generation of diet pills seemed to offer the long-sought answer to our chronic weight problems. Hundreds of thousands of pound-conscious Americans had discovered that a drug combination known as "fen-phen" could shut off voracious appetites like magic, and the FDA had just approved a new drug, Redux, that did the same with fewer side effects. Redux would attract hundreds of thousands of new pill poppers within a few months.
    But now the diet-drug revolution is facing a backlash. Some of the nation’s largest HMOs, including Aetna U.S. Healthcare and Prudential Healthcare, have begun cutting back or eliminating reimbursement for both bills. Diet chains like Jenny Graig and Nutri System are backing away from them too. Several states, meanwhile, have restricted the use of fen-phen. Last week the Florida legislature banned new prescriptions entirely and called on doctors to wean current patients from the drug within 30 days; it also put a 90-day limit on Redux prescriptions. Even New Jersey doctor Sheldon Levine, who touted Redux last year on TV and in his book The Redux Revolution, has stopped giving it to all but his most obese patients.
    The reason for all the retrenchment: potentially lethal side effects. Over the summer, the FDA revealed that 82 patients had developed defects in their heart valves while on fen-phen, and that seven patients had come down with the same condition on Redux.     As if that weren’t bad enough, physicians reported that a woman who had been taking fen-phen for less than a month died of primary pulmonary hypertension, a sometimes fatal lung condition already associated with Redux. And an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association last month confirmed earlier reports that both fen-phen and Redux can cause brain damage in lab animals.
    These findings led the New England Journal to publish an editorial admonishing doctors to prescribe the drugs only for patients with severe obesity. Meanwhile, FDA asked drugmakers to put more explicit warnings on fen-phen and Redux labels. Since mid-July, prescriptions for fen-phen have dropped 56%, and those for Redux 36%, according to IMS America, a pharmaceutical-market research firm.
    All that really does, however, is bringing the numbers down to where they should have been all along. Manufacturers said from the start that their pills offered a short-term therapy for the obese, not for people looking to fit into a smaller bathing suit. FDA approved Redux with just such a caveat, and when limited to these patients, the drugs may still make sense— despite the risks—because morbid obesity carries its own dangers, including heart disease, diabetes and stroke. Too often, however, Redux and fen-phen were peddled to all comers, almost like candy. The current backlash, says Levine, is a "roller coaster that never should have happened".
We can infer from the last paragraph that
选项 A、the severe obesity carries the potential of illnesses.
B、the pills were sold to all comers without discrimination.
C、the pills may still be effective if properly administered.
D、the pills shouldn’t have been hailed as miraculous cures and then discarded.
答案D
解析 从最后一段中我们可以推断出，[A]极端肥胖有潜在的患病风险。[B](减肥)药被毫无歧视地卖给所有来的人。[C]如果受到合理管理，(减肥)药仍然会有效果。[D](减肥)药不应先被当成奇迹般的治疗良方，然后又被抛弃。文章最后一句话提到：这种大起大落本来就是不该发生的事情。也就是说，fen一phen和Redux这两种减肥药经历大受欢迎之后，被发现其副作用很大，又受到攻击。其中rollercoaster本意为“过山车”，在此的意思为“像过山车般大起大落”，故[D]为正确答案。[A]是文章中明确说到的，不是推论出来的；[B]与原文意思不符，因为文章中说这两种减肥药通常被推销给任何一个人，就像分发糖果一样，暗示它被滥用了；[C]之所以不正确是因为文章说，这些药只限于对严重肥胖者会有一定效果。
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