In an uncritical August 11, 1997, World News Tonight report on "diamagnetic therapy," a physical therapist explained that "magne

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问题     In an uncritical August 11, 1997, World News Tonight report on "diamagnetic therapy," a physical therapist explained that "magnets are another form of electric energy that we now think has a powerful effect on bodies." A fellow selling $ 89 magnets proclaimed: "All humans are magnetic. Every cell has a positive and negative side of it."
    On the positive side, these magnets are so weak that they cause no harm. On the negative side, these magnets do have the remarkable power of attracting the pocketbooks of gullible Americans to the tune of about $ 300 million a year. They range in scale from coin- sized patches to mattresses, and their curative powers are said to be nearly limitless, based on the premise that magnetic fields increase blood circulation and enrich oxygen supplies because of the iron pressure in the blood.
    This is fantastic flapdoodle and a financial flimflam. Iron atoms in a magnet are crammed together in a solid state about one atom apart from one another. In your blood only four iron atoms are allocated to each hemoglobin molecule, and they are separated by distances too great to form a magnet. This is easily rested by picking your finger and placing a drop of your blood next to a magnet.
    What about claims that magnets attenuate pain? In a 1997 Baylor College of Medicine double-blind study of 50 patients (in which 29 got real magnets and 21 got sham ones), 76 percent in the experimental group but just 19 percent in the control group reported a reduction in pain. Unfortunately, this study included only one 45-minute treatment, did not try other pain-reduction modalities, did not record the length of the pain reduction and has never been replicated.
    Scientists studying magnetic therapy would do well to read the 1784 "Report of the Commissioners Charged by the King to Examine Animal Magnetism" (reprinted in an English translation in Skeptic, Vol. 4, No. 3). The report was instituted by French King Louis XVI and conducted by Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Lavoisier to experimentally test the claims of German physician Franz Anton Mesmer, discoverer of "animal magnetism." Mesmer reasoned that just as an invisible force of magnetism draws iron shavings to a lodestone, so does an invisible force of animal magnetism flow through living beings.  
The statement "magnets attenuate pain" can be paraphrased as ______.

选项 A、magnets relieve pain
B、magnets increase pain
C、magnets aggravate pain
D、magnets stop pain

答案A

解析 词义题型第四段第一句用“magnets attenuate pain”设问,后面一句谈到1997年做的一项双盲测试是为了研究磁体是否能减轻痛苦(reduction in pain),因此选项A为答案。
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