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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  52
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".
What does the phrase "pill poppers"(Lines 5-6, Paragraph 1)means?
选项 A、Pill distributors.
B、Pill manufacturers.
C、Pill promoters.
D、Pill takers and abusers.
答案D
解析 第一段第五至第六行的词组pill poppers的意思是什么?[A]药品经销商。[B]药品生产商。[C]药品促销员。[D]药品服用者和滥用者。根据上下文，文章先提到几十万对体重敏感的美国人发现新药fen—phen能抑制他们的食欲；然后又讲另一种新药Redux有同样的作用，但副作用较小，显然更会吸引那些“对体重敏感的美国人”，也说是那些服用这些药物甚至服药上瘾的人，即[D]。pill poppers指“长期大量服药的人，服药成瘾者”。而其他三个选项“药品经销商”、“药品生产商”和“药品促销员”都不符合上下文逻辑。
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