首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Reading the papers and looking at television these days, one can easily be persuaded that the human species is on its last legs,
Reading the papers and looking at television these days, one can easily be persuaded that the human species is on its last legs,
admin
2011-01-10
28
问题
Reading the papers and looking at television these days, one can easily be persuaded that the human species is on its last legs, still tottering along but only barely making it. In this view, disease is the biggest menace of all. Even when we are not endangering our lives by eating the wrong sorts of food and taking the wrong kinds of exercise, we are placing ourselves in harm’s way by means of the toxins we keep inserting into the environment around us.
As if this were not enough, we have fallen into the new habit of thinking our way into illness: ff we take up the wrong kind of personality, we nm the risk of contracting a new disease called stress, followed quickly by coronary occlusion. Or if we just sit tight and try to let the world slip by, here comes cancer, from something we ate, breathed or touched. No wonder we are a nervous lot. The word is out that if we were not surrounded and propped up by platoons of health professionals, we would drop in our tracks.
The truth is something different, in my view. There has never been a time in history when human beings in general have been statistically as healthy as the people now living in the industrial societies of the Western world. Our average life expectancy has stretched from 45 years a century ago to today’s figure of around 75. More of us than ever before are living into our 80s and 90s. Dying from disease in childhood and adolescence is no longer the common occurrence that it was 100 years ago, when tuberculosis and other lethal microbial infections were the chief causes of premature death. Today, dying young is a rare and catastrophic occurrence, and when it does happen, it is usually caused by trauma.
Medicine must get some of the credit for the remarkable improvement in human health, but not all. The profession of plumbing also had much to do with the change. When sanitary engineering assured the populace of uncontaminated water, the great epidemics of typhoid fever and cholera came to an end. Even before such advances, as early as the 17th century, improvements in agriculture and nutrition had increased people’s resistance to infection.
In short we have come a long way--the longest part of that way with common sense, cleanliness and a better standard of living, but a substantial recent distance as well with medicine. We still have an agenda of lethal and incapacitating illnesses to cause us anxiety, but these shouldn’t worry us to death. The diseases that used to kill off most of us early in life have been brought under control.
Meanwhile, biomedical research has moved us into the early stage of a totally new era in medicine. So much has recently been learned about fundamental processes at cellular and subcellular levels that there are no longer any disease mechanisms that have the look of impenetrable mysteries. There is a great deal still to be learned about the ailments of our middle years and old age—cancer, heart disease, stroke, dementia, arthritis and the rest. But they no longer seem unapproachable, as they did just ten years ago.
Today’s powerful technologies for basic research have made it possible for scientists to investigate almost any question. This does not guarantee a quick answer, of course, or even a correct one; but the ability to make intelligent guesses and then to formulate sharp questions concerning medicine’s hardest problems is something new.
It no longer stretches the imagination to see a time ahead when human beings, in industrialized society, can be relatively free of disease for a full run through life. This does not mean that we shall be any happier or be living much longer than we do now. We shall still die most often by wearing out, according to our individual genetic clocks; but we shall not be so humiliated by the chronic illnesses that now make old age itself seem a disease.
One hundred years ago, people were ______.
选项
A、not as healthy as today
B、as strong as today
C、not as poor as today
D、as hard as today
答案
A
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/XJcO777K
本试题收录于:
NAETI中级口译笔试题库外语翻译证书(NAETI)分类
0
NAETI中级口译笔试
外语翻译证书(NAETI)
相关试题推荐
Walkingthroughmytrainyesterday,staggeringfrommyseattothebuffetandback,IcountedfivepeoplereadingHarryPottern
Nomatterhowhardyoutry,youcanfindnoparallelexistingbetweenthem.
Thehumanintelligencethatcreatedindustrialcivilizationnowhastheassignmentofmakingthecivilization______man’sbasicn
SexualReproductionBirdsdoit.Beesdoit.Butdandelionsdon’t.Theprodigiousspreadofthesewinsomeweedsunderscoresa
AGreatFriendshipThomasJeffersonandJamesMadisonmetin1776.Couldithavebeenanyotheryear?Theyworkedtogetherst
Becausefolkartisneithercompletelyrejectednoracceptedasanartformbyarthistorians,theirfinalevaluationsofitnec
Fewthingsweremoreembarrassingformethanwerecaughtonthetoiletbyourguests.
Wehavetoacknowledgetooweneverknowtheoneswestop.It’snosmallthingstogofrom13to4,giventhewayitripplesthr
下面你将听到联合国秘书长接受有关奖项的一段讲话。Mr.Chairman,Excellencies,LadiesandGentlemen,Ishouldlike,firstofall,toonceagainthank
A、Shewasimpressedbyit.B、Itwasawasteofmoney.C、Shewasamazedithadopenedsosoon.D、Shedidn’tlikeitasmuchasth
随机试题
白去一片去悠悠,________。(张若虚《春江花月夜》)
嘌呤核苷酸从头合成时,首先合成的前体足
患者,男,18岁。因癫痫病突然跌倒,此时急救的首要步骤是
硫脲类药物对甲亢的病因治疗作用指
急性上呼吸道感染最常见的细菌为
AChinesestudentmakesasentenceasfollows:Heisarichmanwholiketraveling.Theerrorinthatsentenceistheresultof_
2015年11月18日,习近平在亚太经合组织工商领导人峰会上的主旨演讲中指出,要解决世界经济深层次问题,单纯靠货币刺激政策是不够的,必须下决心在推进经济结构性改革方面做更大努力,使供给体系更适应需求结构的变化。关于供给侧结构性改革,表述不正确的是(
在下列评价指标中,属于非折现正指标的是()。
《政府与中共代表会谈纪要》中说:“一致认为应迅速结束训政,实施宪政,并先采必要之步骤,由国民政府召开政治协商会议,邀集各党派代表及社会贤达,协商国是,讨论和平建国方案,及召开国民大会各项问题。”这表明()
我国社会主义建设时期的统一战线的根本任务是()
最新回复
(
0
)