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  3. Beyond the Pap Scientists have known for some time that virtually all cases of cervical cancer are triggered by a family of

Beyond the Pap Scientists have known for some time that virtually all cases of cervical cancer are triggered by a family of

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问题                         Beyond the Pap
    Scientists have known for some time that virtually all cases of cervical cancer are triggered by a family of viruses called human papillomavirus, or HPV. Most women who become infected with HPV are able to shake off the virus and suffer no apparent long-term consequences to their health. But a few women develop a persistent infection that can, for reasons that are not entirely clear, eventually lead to cancerous changes in the cervix.
    Now researchers at the Digene Corp. of Beltsville, Maryland, have developed a test that detects an active HPV infection by looking for its genetic byproducts in the vagina. The HPV test was better than the standard Pap test at finding cervical cancer at any stage, according to two studies published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association. So far, so good. Unfortunately, the test’ s false-positive rate— how often it indicated that there was a problem when none existed—was almost twice as high as that for the Pap smear. In these cases, a biopsy of the woman’ s cervix showed no sign of disease.
    And that’s the crux of the problem. How many women should undergo what is, when it comes right clown to it, unnecessary treatment to find a few more cases of cervical cancer? Shouldn’ t health officials focus instead on making sure that more women undergo regular Pap-smear examinations? After all, Pap smears, though far from perfect, have helped dramatically lower the death toll from cervical cancer, taking it from the No. 1 cause of death due to cancer in American women to the 10th.
    Complicating matters is the fact that HPV is a very common infection. In some parts of the US as many as half of all women under age 35 have an active case. Yet 99 out of 100 women who are HPV-positive will never get cervical cancer, estimates Dr. Joanna Cain, vice president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. "If those 99 women live their lives as if they’re going to develop cancer," she says, " we’ re not necessarily doing them any good.
    At present, the HPV test is approved in the US only to help resolve ambiguous results from a Pap-smear test. Many gynecologists believe that HPV will eventually replace the Pap. But they’ re not willing to abandon it without a lot more detailed information and neither should you.
Cervical cancer used to be the No. 1 killer cancer to women in America.
选项 A、Right
B、Wrong
C、Not mentioned
答案A
解析 由文章第三段最后一句中的“…taking it from the No．1 cause of death due to…to the10th．”可知，子宫颈癌是危害美国女性生命和健康的头号杀手，题干的内容表述正确，故选A。
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