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  3. Instinctively, the first thing we want to know about a disease is whether it is going to kill us. Twenty-five years ago, this wa

Instinctively, the first thing we want to know about a disease is whether it is going to kill us. Twenty-five years ago, this wa

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问题     Instinctively, the first thing we want to know about a disease is whether it is going to kill us. Twenty-five years ago, this was the only question about AIDS we could answer with any certainty; now, it is the only question we really cannot answer well at all.
    By now, those of us in the AIDS business long term have cared for thousands of patients. No one with that kind of personal experience can doubt for a moment the deadly potential of H. I. V. or the life-saving capabilities of the drugs developed against it. But there are also now hundreds of footnotes and exceptions and modifications to those two facts that make the big picture ever murkier(扑朔迷离).
    We have patients scattered at every possible point: men and women who cruise on their medications with no problems at all, and those who never become stable on them and die of AIDS; those who refuse them until it is too late, and those who never need them at all; those who leave AIDS far behind only to die from lung cancer or breast cancer or liver failure, and those few who are killed by the medications themselves.
    So, when we welcome a new patient into our world, one whose fated place in this world is still unclear, and that patient asks us, as most do, whether this illness is going to kill him or not, it often takes a bit of mental stammering(口吃)before we hazard an answer.
    Now, a complete rundown of all the news from the front would take hours. The statistics change almost hourly as new treatments appear. It is all too cold, too mathematical, too scary to dump on the head of a sick, frightened person. So we simplify. " We have good treatments now," we say. " You should do fine. "
    Once, not so long ago, we were working in another universe. Now we have simply rejoined the carnival(嘉年华)of modern medicine, noisy and encouraging, confusing and contradictory, fueled by the eternal balancing of benefits and risks.
    You can win big, and why shouldn’t you, with the usual fail-safe combination of luck and money. You have our very best hopes, so step right up: we sell big miracles but, offer no guarantees.
What does the author say about AIDS?
选项 A、It is definitely deadly twenty-five years ago.
B、The patients want to know everything about it.
C、We can answer anything about it with certainty now.
D、We could not answer questions about it well before.
答案A
解析 主旨大意题。本题考查第一段的主旨大意。第一段提到，25年前，这是唯一我们可以肯定回答的有关艾滋病的问题，根据上文可知，“这个问题”指的是“艾滋病是否致命”，由此可知，艾滋病在25年前肯定是致命的，故答案为A)。B)“病人想知道关于艾滋病的一切”原文未提及，故排除；C)“我们现在可以肯定地回答关于艾滋病的一切”与原文意思不符，原文第一段末句提到，我们现在没法很好地回答艾滋病是否致命，故排除；D)“我们以前回答不好关于艾滋病的任何问题”与原文意思不符，原文第二句提到，25年前，我们可以肯定地告诉病人艾滋病是致命的，故排除。
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