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  3. The idea of ownership is everywhere. Title deeds establish and protect ownership of our houses, while security of property is as

The idea of ownership is everywhere. Title deeds establish and protect ownership of our houses, while security of property is as

admin2014-02-27  58
问题     The idea of ownership is everywhere. Title deeds establish and protect ownership of our houses, while security of property is as important to the proprietors of Tesco and Sainsbury’s as it is to their customers. However, there is a profound problem when it comes to so-called intellectual property(IP)— which requires a strong lead from government, and for which independent advice has never been more urgently required.
    The myth is that IP rights are as important as our rights in castles, cars and corn oil. IP is supposedly intended to encourage inventors and the investment needed to bring their products to the clinic and marketplace. In reality, patents often suppress invention rather than promote it: drugs are "evergreened" when patents are on the verge of running out — companies buy up the patents of potential rivals in order to prevent them being turned into products. Moreover, the prices charged, especially for pharmaceuticals, are often grossly in excess of those required to cover costs and make reasonable profits.
    IP rights are beginning to penetrate into every area of scientific endeavour. Even in universities, science and innovation, which have already been paid for out of the public purse, are privatised and resold to the public via patents acquired by commercial interests. The drive to commercialise science has overtaken not only applied research but also "blue-skies" research, such that even the pure quest for knowledge is deteriorated by the need for profit.
    The fruits of science and innovation have nourished our society and economy for years, but nations unable to navigate our regulatory system are often excluded, as are vulnerable individuals. We need to consider how to balance the needs of science as an industry with the difficulty of those who desperately need the products of science.
    Clearly it is vitally important that we continue to protect science and enable it to flourish. Science and the many benefits that science has produced have played a crucial part in our history and produced vast improvements to human welfare. It would be negligent of us if we failed to recognise the importance of science as an industry and investment in research to national and regional economic development; but against these economic concerns an overriding consideration must be the interests of the public and of humanity present and future. Science as an industry may be booming, but the benefits of science need to be more efficiently and more cheaply placed in the service of the public.
    For science to continue to flourish, it is necessary that the knowledge it generates be made freely and widely available. IP rights have the tendency to block access to knowledge and the free exchange of ideas that is essential to science. So, far from stimulating innovation and the dissemination of the benefits of science, IP all too often hampers scientific progress and restricts access to its products.
The author’s attitude towards IP seems to be______.
选项 A、concerned
B、critical
C、biased
D、neutral
答案B
解析 作者态度往往是作者在文章中的“语气”或“语调”中表现出来。作者在最后几句的措辞很准确地表现出来自己的立场：阻碍(block)知识获取：没有(far from)推动(stimulate)创新：妨碍(hamper)科学进步；限制(restrict)科学产品的普及。
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