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  3. Of all the goods and services traded in the market economy, pharmaceuticals are perhaps the most contentious. Though produced by

Of all the goods and services traded in the market economy, pharmaceuticals are perhaps the most contentious. Though produced by

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问题     Of all the goods and services traded in the market economy, pharmaceuticals are perhaps the most contentious. Though produced by private companies, they constitute a public good, both because they can prevent epidemics and because healthy people function better as members of society than sick ones do. They carry a moral weight that most privately traded goods do not, for there is a widespread belief that people have a right to health care.
    Innovation accounts for most of the cost of production, so the price of drugs is much higher than their cost of manufacture, making them unaffordable to many poor people. Firms protect the intellectual property (IP) that drugs represent and sue those who try to manufacture and sell patented drugs cheaply. For all these reasons, pharmaceutical companies are widely regarded as vampires who exploit the sick and ignore the sufferings of the poor.
    These criticisms reached a summit more than a decade ago at the peak of the HIV plague. When South Africa’s government sought to legalise the import of cheap generic copies of patented AIDS drugs, pharmaceutical companies took it to court. The case earned the nickname "Big Pharma v Nelson Mandela". It was a low point for the industry, which wisely backed down.
    Now arguments over drugs pricing are rising again. Activists are suing to block the patenting in India of a new Hepatitis C drug that has just been approved by American regulators. Other clashes are breaking out, in countries from Brazil to Britain. But the main battlefield is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a proposed trade deal between countries in Asia and the Americas. The parties have yet to reach an agreement, partly because of the drug-pricing question.
    Under the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, a deal signed in 1994, governments can allow a generic drugmaker to produce a patented medicine. America—home of most of the world’s big pharma, whose consumers pay the world’s highest prices for drugs—wants to use the TPP to restrict such compulsory licences to infectious diseases, while emerging-market countries want to make it harder for drug firms to win patents.
    The reoccurrence of conflict over drug pricing is the result not of a sudden emergency, but of broad, long-term changes. Rich countries want to slash health costs. In emerging markets, people are living longer and getting rich-country diseases. This is boosting demand for drugs for cancer, diabetes and other chronic diseases. In emerging markets, governments want to expand access to treatment, but drugs already account for a large share of health-care spending. Meanwhile, a wave of innovation is producing expensive new treatments.
According to Paragraph 2, we can learn that ______.
选项 A、innovation is the most important thing for production
B、poor people can hardly afford drugs
C、drugs cost more than their manufacturing
D、some companies are considered as exploiters
答案B
解析 该题定位在文章第二段。第一句“Innovation accounts for most of the cost of production”意思是“创新占据生产成本的大部分”，选项A“创新是生产的最重要因素”曲解了该句的意思。第一句后半句“so the price of drugs is much higher than their cost of manufacture，making them unaffordable to many poor people”的意思是“所以药价比其生产成本要高得多，这使得许多穷人负担不起药物”，选项B“穷人几乎买不起药品”与其意思一致，故正确。选项C是对第二段中“the price of drugs is much higher than their cost of manufacture”的误解，“药价比其生产成本要高得多”，并不是“药物本身比生产成本高”，故错误。选项D中的“some companies”不等于原文最后一句的“pharmaceutical companies”。阅读理解要求精细准确，不允许概念模糊，更不能偷换概念。
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