试题库在线考试题库-历年真题模拟试题及答案-考博英语在线试题测试中心-希赛网

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When a disease of epidemic proportions rips into the populace, scientists immediately get to work, trying to locate the source of the affliction and find ways to combat it.Oftentimes, success is achieved, as medical science is able to isolate the parasite, germ or cell that causes the problem and finds ways to effectively kill or contain it. In the most serious of cases, in which the entire population of a region or country may be at grave risk, it is deemed necessary to protect the entire population through vaccination, so as to safeguard lives and ensure that the disease will not spread.The process of vaccination allows the patient’s body to develop immunity to the virus or disease so that, if it is encountered, one can ward it off naturally. To accomplish this, a small weak or dead strain of the disease is actually injected into the patient in a controlled environment, so that his body’s immune system can learn to fight the invader properly. Information on how to penetrate the disease’s defenses is transmitted to all elements of the patient’s immune system in a process that occurs naturally, in which genetic information is passed from cell to cell. This makes sure that, should the patient later come into contact with the real problem, his body is well equipped and trained to deal with it, having already done so before.There are dangers inherent in the process, however. On occasion, even the weakened version of the disease contained in the vaccine proves too much for the body to handle, resulting in the immune system succumbing, and therefore, the patient’s death. Such is the case of the smallpox vaccine, designed to eradicate the smallpox epidemic that nearly wiped out the entire Native American population and killed massive numbers of settlers.Approximately 1 in 10,000 people who receives the vaccine contract the smallpox disease from the vaccine itself and dies from it. Thus, if the entire population of the United States were to receive the Smallpox Vaccine today, 3,000 Americans would be left dead.Fortunately, the smallpox virus was considered eradicated in the early 1970s, ending the mandatory vaccination of all babies in America. In the event of a reintroduction of the disease, however, mandatory vaccinations may resume, resulting in more unexpected deaths from vaccination. The process, which is truly a mixed blessing, may indeed hide some hidden curses.1. The best title for the text may be ____.2. What does the example of the Smallpox Vaccine illustrate?3. The phrase “ward it off naturally” (Para. 3) most probably means ____.4. Which of the following is true according to the text?5. The purpose of the author in writing this passage is ____.

BY EARLY 1920, nearly two years after the end of The First World War and the first outbreak of Spanish flu, the disease had killed as many as 100m people—more than both world wars combined. Yet few would name it as the biggest disaster of the 20th century. Some call it the “forgotten flu”. Almost a century on, “Pale Rider”, a scientific and historic account of Spanish flu, addresses this collective amnesia.Influenza, like all viruses, is a parasite. Laura Spinney traces its long shadow over human history; records are patchy and uncertain, but Hippocrates’s “Cough of Perinthus” in 412 BC may be its first written description. Influenza-shaped footprints can be traced down the centuries: the epidemic that struck during Rome’s siege of Syracuse in 212 BC; the febrisitalica that plagued Charlemagne’s troops in the ninth century. The word “influenza” started being used towards the end of the Middle Ages from the Italian for “influence”—the influence of the stars. That was the state of knowledge then; in some ways at the start of the 20th century it was little better.Ms. Spinney, an occasional contributor to The Economist, recreates the world that Spanish flu came into. At the beginning of the 20th century science was on the rise. Scientists had switched miasma theory of disease for germ theory: they understood that many diseases were caused not by “bad airs”, but by microscopic organisms like bacteria. This led to improvements in hygiene and sanitation, as well as the development of vaccines. But viruses were almost unknown. The magnification of optical microscopes was too weak to show them up. People could spot bacteria, but not viruses, which are smaller than the wavelength of visible light. Until the electron microscope was invented in the 1930s, influenza was, like the Higgs boson before 2012, a theoretical entity: its existence was deduced from its effects. In the face of such uncertainty, public faith in medicine wavered. People reverted to superstition: sugar lumps soaked in kerosene, and aromatic fires to clear “miasmas”.Even so, Spanish flu was exceptionally deadly—about 25 times more so than seasonal flu. No one fully understands why. Ms. Spinney ties the virulence of Spanish flu to its genetic irregularities and does a good job of explaining containment strategies through epidemiology. She draws on contemporary research, too, including the recent controversy about recreating the strain responsible for the pandemic. Ms. Spinney is sanguine about the risks of such experiments: influenza appears to have all the ingredients for another catastrophic pandemic and scientists, using caution, should probably do all they can to learn more about it.Perhaps the most valuable aspect of this book, though, is its global perspective, tracing the course of the disease in Brazil, India, South Africa and Australia, among other places. In Europe and North America the First World War killed more than Spanish flu; everywhere else the reverse is true. Yet most narratives focus on the West, and only partly because that is where the best records are. Ms. Spinney’s book goes some way to redress the balance.1. Which of the following description about Spanish flu is true?2. What was the world like when Spanish flu came into according to Ms. Spinney?3. Why did the public turn to superstition when the Spanish flu broke out?4. What does “sanguine” mean in the Paragraph 4?5. The global perspective of Spinney makes us know ____.

Historically, humans get serious about avoiding disasters only after one has just struck them. On that logic, 2006 should have been a breakthrough year for rational behavior. With the memory of 9/11 still __51__ in their minds, Americans watched hurricane Katrina, the most expensive disaster in U. S. history, on live TV. Anyone who didn’t know it before should have learned that bad things can happen. And they are made __52__ worse by our willful blindness to risk as much as our reluctance to work together before everything goes to hell.Granted, some amount of delusion is probably part of the __53__ condition. In A. D. 63, Pompeii was seriously damaged by an earthquake, and the locals immediately went to work __54__, in the same spot—until they were buried altogether by a volcano eruption 16 years later. But a review of the past year in disaster history suggests that modern Americans are particularly bad at __55__ themselves from guaranteed threats. We know more than we ever did about the dangers we face. But it turns __56__ that in times of crisis, our greatest enemy is rarely the storm, the quake or the surge itself. More often, it is ourselves.So what has happened in the year that __57__ the disaster on the Gulf Coast? In New Orleans, the Army Corps of Engineers has worked day and night to rebuild the flood walls. They have got the walls to where they were before Katrina, more or less. That’s not __58__, we can now say with confidence. But it may be all that can be expected from one year of hustle.Meanwhile, New Orleans officials have crafted a plan to use buses and trains to __59__ the sick and the disabled. The city estimates that 15,000 people will need a ride out. However, state officials have not yet determined where these people will be taken. The __60__ with neighboring communities are ongoing and difficult.

The applications of genetic engineering are abundant and choosing one appropriate for this case can be rather difficult.

For years an acrimonious debate over how to protect heroin users impeded efforts in the U. S. to control the spread of AIDS.

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