苏州大学
Can electricity cause cancer? In a society that literally runs on electric power, the very idea seems preposterous. But for more than a decade, a growing band of scientists and journalists has pointed to studies that seem to link exposure to electromagnetic fields with increased risk of leukemia and other malignancies. The implications are unsettling, to say the least, since everyone comes into contact with such fields, which are generated by everything electrical, from power lines and antennas to personal computers and micro-wave ovens. Because evidence on the subject is inconclusive and often contradictory, it has been hard to decide whether concern about the health effects of electricity is legitimate—or the worst kind of paranoia.Now the alarmists have gained some qualified support from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In the executive summary of a new scientific review, released in draft form late last week, the EPA has put forward what amounts to the most serious government warning to date. The agency tentatively concludes that scientific evidence “suggests a casual link” between extremely low-frequency electromagnetic fields—those having very long wave-lengths—and leukemia, lymphoma and brain cancer. While the report falls short of classifying ELE fields as probable carcinogens, it does identify the common 60-hertz magnetic field as “a possible, but not proven, cause of cancer in humans.”The report is no reason to panic —or even to lose sleep. If there is a cancer risk, it is a small one. The evidence is still so controversial that the draft stirred a great deal of debate within the Bush Administration, and the EPA released it over strong objections from the Pentagon and the White House. But now no one can deny that the issue must be taken seriously and that much more research is needed.At the heart of the debate is a simple and well-understood physical phenomenon. When an electric current passes through a wire, it generates an electromagnetic field that exerts forces on surrounding objects, For many years, scientists dismissed any suggestion that such forces might be harmful, primarily because they are so extraordinarily weak. The ELF magnetic field generated by a video terminal measures only a few milligauss, or about one-hundredth the strength of the earth’s own magnetic field. The electric fields surrounding a power line can be as high as 10 kilovolts per meter, but the corresponding field induced in human cells will be only about 1 millivolt per meter. This is far less than the electric fields that the cells themselves generate.How could such minuscule forces pose a health danger? The consensus used to be that they could not, and for decades scientists concentrated on more powerful kinds of radiation, like X-rays, that pack sufficient wallop to knock electrons out of the molecules that make up the human body. Such "ionizing" radiations have been clearly linked to increased cancer risks and there are regulations to control emissions.But epidemiological studies, which find statistical associations between sets of data, do not prove cause and effect. Though there is a body of laboratory work showing that exposure to ELF fields can have biological effects on animal tissues, a mechanism by which those effects could lead to cancerous growths has never been found.The Pentagon is for from persuaded. In a blistering 33-page critique of the EPA report, Air Force scientists charge its authors with having "biased the entire document" toward proving a link, “Our reviewers are convinced that there is no suggestion that (electromagnetic fields) present in the environment induce or promote cancer,” the Air Force concludes. “It is astonishing that the EPA would lend its imprimatur on this report.” Then Pentagon’s concern is understandable. There is hardly a unit of the modern military that does not depend on the heavy use of some kind of electronic equipment, from huge ground-based radar towers to the defense systems built into every warship and plane.1. The main idea of this passage is ( ).2. The view-point of the EPA is ( ).3. Why did the Pentagon and White House object to the release of the report?Because(  ) 4. It can be inferred from physical phenomenon ( ).5. What do you think ordinary citizens may do after reading the different arguments?
In general, our society is becoming one of giant enterprises directed by a bureaucratic(官僚主义的)management in which man becomes a small, well-oiled cog in the machinery. The oiling is done with higher wages, Nell-ventilated factories and piped music, and by psychologists and “human – relations” experts; yet all this oiling does not alter the fact that man has become powerless, that he is bored with it. In fact, the blue and the white-collar workers have become economic puppets who dance to the tune of automated machines and bureaucratic management. The worker and employee age anxious, not only because they might find themselves out of a job; they are anxious also because they unable to acquire any real satisfaction of interesting life. They live and die without ever having confronted the fundamental realities of human existence as emotionally and intellectually independent and productive human beings.Those higher up on the social ladder are no less anxious. Their lives are no less empty than those of their subordinates. They are even more insecure in some respects. They are in a highly competitive race. To be promoted or to fall behind is not a matter of salary hut even more a matter of self-respect. When they apply for their first job, they are tested for intelligence as well as for the right mixture of submissiveness and independence. From the moment on they are tested again and again- - by the psychologists, for whom testing is a big business, and by their superiors, who judge their behavior, sociability, capacity to get along, etc. This constant need to prove that one is as good as or better than one’s fellow—competitor creates constant anxiety and stress, the very causes of unhappiness and illness.Am I suggesting that we should return to the preindustrial mode of production or to nineteenth-century “free enterprise” capitalism? Certainly not. Problems are never solved by returning to a stage which one has already outgrown. I suggest transforming our social system form a bureaucratically managed industrialism in which maximal production and consumption are ends in themselves into a humanist industrialism in which man and foil development of his potentialities— those of all love and of reason—are the aims of social arrangements. Production and consumption should serve only as means to this end, and should be prevented from ruling man.1.By “a well-oiled cog in the machinery” the author intends to deliver the idea that man is ( ).2.The real cause of the anxiety of the workers and employees is that ( ).3.From the passage we can conclude that real happiness of life belongs to those ( ).4.To solve the present social problems the author puts forward a suggestion that we should ( ).5.The author's attitude towards industrialism might best be summarized as one of ( ).
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