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  3. The good news made headlines nationwide: Deaths from several kinds of cancer have declined significantly in recent years. But th

The good news made headlines nationwide: Deaths from several kinds of cancer have declined significantly in recent years. But th

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问题     The good news made headlines nationwide: Deaths from several kinds of cancer have declined significantly in recent years. But the news has to be bittersweet for many cancer patients and their families. Every year, more than 500000 people in the United States still die of cancer. In fact, more than half of all patients diagnosed with cancer will die of their disease within a few years. And while it’s true survival is longer today than in the past, the quality of life for these patients is often greatly diminished. Cancer—and many of the treatments used to fight it—causes pain, nausea, fatigue, and anxiety that routinely go undertreated or untreated.
    In the nation’s single-minded focus on curing cancer, we have inadvertently devalued the critical need for palliative care, which focuses on alleviating physical and psychological symptoms over the course of the disease. Nothing would have a greater impact on the daily lives of cancer patients and their families than good symptom control and supportive therapy. Yet the National Cancer Institute(NCI), the federal government’s leader in cancer research and training, spent less than one percent of its 1999 budget on any aspect of research or training in palliative care.
    The nation needs to get serious about reducing needless suffering. NCI should commit to and fund research aimed at improving symptom control and palliative care. NCI also could designate "centers of excellence" among the cancer centers it recognizes. To get that designation, centers would deliver innovative, top-quality palliative care to all segments of the populations the centers serve; train professionals in medicine, nursing, psychology, social work, and other disciplines to provide palliative care; and conduct research.
    Insurance coverage for palliative and hospice care also contributes to the problem by forcing people to choose between active treatment or hospice care. This "either/or" approach does not readily allow these two types of essential care to be integrated. The Medicare hospice benefit is designed specifically for people in the final stages of illness and allows enrollment only if patients are expected to survive six months or less. The benefit excludes patients from seeking both palliative care and potentially life-extending treatment.
    That makes hospice enrollment an obvious deterrent for many patients. And hospices, which may have the most skilled practitioners and the most experience in administering palliative care, cannot offer their services to people who could really benefit but still are pursuing active treatment.
    It is innately human to comfort and provide care to those suffering from cancer, particularly those close to death. Yet what seems self-evident at an individual, personal level has not guided policy at the level of institutions in this country. Death is inevitable, but severe suffering is not. To offer hope for a long life of the highest possible quality and to deliver the best quality cancer care from diagnosis to death, our public institutions need to move toward policies that value and promote palliative care.
According to the author, research on palliative care for cancer______.
选项 A、is more important than research for cancer cures
B、has been overlooked by researchers
C、is virtually non-existent
D、is regarded by researchers as a frivolous topic
答案B
解析 属信息推断题。题目中的关键词research、palliative care出现在第二段第一句、最后一句及第三段第二句：……我们无意间忽视了对姑息治疗的急切需求……国家癌症研究会1999年只花费了不到百分之一的预算用于姑息治疗的研究和培训。国家癌症研究会应该投入并资助旨在改进症状控制和姑息疗法的研究。由此不难推知，选项B正确。选项A、D(frivolous意为“不重要的”)在文中没有依据，选项C与原文内容不符。
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