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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  57
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".
The worst case that revealed the fatal dark side of the diet pills is
选项 A、82 patients on fen-phen and seven on Redux had developed heart disease.
B、a woman patient on fen-phen had died of abnormally high blood pressure.
C、a woman patient on fen-phen had died of a lung disease.
D、both diet pills have caused brain damage.
答案C
解析 显示减肥药致命副作用的情况最糟的事例是[A]82名服用fen—phen的病人和7名服用Redux的病人患上心脏病。[B]一位服用fen—phen的女病人死于非正常的高血压。[C]一位服用fen—phen的女病人死于肺病。[D]这两种减肥药都会引起大脑损伤。由第四段可知，减肥药已导致诸多服用者患上心脏病，可这好像还不够糟糕，据医生报道，一位服用fen—phen不足一个月的妇女因患肺部高压病而死去。可见，这起死亡病例是本文提到的减肥药致死副作用的唯一事例，故选[C]。原文中pulmonary hypertension不是“高血压”，由下文可知它是一种fatal lung condition，故[B]不对。
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