填空题
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which
are based on Reading Passage 3 below.
Does water have memory?
The practice of homeopathy was first developed by the German physician
Samuel Hanuman. During research in the 1790s, Hahnemann began experimenting with
quinine, an alkaloid derived from cinchona bark that was well known at the time
to have a positive effect on fever. Hahnemann started dosing himself with
quinine while in a state of good health, and reported in his journals that his
extremities went cold, he experienced palpitations, an "infinite anxiety", a
trembling and weakening of the limbs, reddening cheeks and thirst—" in short",
he concluded, "all the symptoms of relapsing fever
presented themselves successively..." Hahnemann's main observation was that
things which create problems for healthy people cure those problems in sick
people, and this became his first principle of homeopathy: simila s/m/1/bus
(with help from the same). While diverging from the principle of
apothecary practice at the time—which was contraria contraries (with help from
the opposite)—the efficacy of
simila similibus was reaffirmed by
subsequent developments in the field of vaccinations.
Hahnemann's second principle was minimal dosing—treatments should be taken
in the most diluted form at which they remain effective. This negated any
possible toxic effects of
simila similibus.
In 1988 the
French immunologist Jacques Benefits took minimal dosing to new extremes when he
published a paper in the prestigious scientific journal Nature in which he
suggested that very high dilutions of the anti-leg antibody could affect human
basophile granulocytes, the least common of the granulocytes that make up about
0.01% to 0.3% of white blood cells. The point of controversy, however, was that
the water in Benveniste's test had been so diluted that any molecular evidence
of the antibodies no longer existed. Water molecules, the researcher concluded,
had a biologically active component that a journalist later termed "water
memory". A number of efforts from scientists in Britain, France and the
Netherlands to duplicate Benveniste's research were unsuccessful, however, and
to this day no peer-reviewed study under broadly accepted conditions has been
able to confirm the validity of "water memory".
The third
principle of homeopathy is "the single remedy". Exponents of this principle
believe that it would be too difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain the
potential effects of multiple homeopathic remedies delivered simultaneously. If
it did work, they suggest, one could not know quite why it worked, turning
homeopathy into an ambiguous guessing game. If it did not work, neither patient
nor practitioner would know whether the ingredients were all ineffective, or
whether they were only ineffective in combination with one another. Combination
remedies are gaining in popularity, but classical homeopaths who rely on the
single remedy approach warn these are not more potent, nor do they provide more
treatment options. The availability of combination remedies, these homeopaths
suggest, has been led by consumers wanting more options, not from homeopathic
research indicating their efficacy.
Homeopathy is an extremely
contentious form of medicine, with strong assertions coming from both critics
and supporters of the practice. "Homeopathy: There's nothing in it"
announces the tagline to 10:23, a major British anti-homeopathy campaign. At
10.23 a.m. on 30 January 2010, over 400 supporters of the 10:23 stood outside
Boots pharmacies and swallowed an entire bottle each of homeopathic pills in an
attempt to raise awareness about the fact that these remedies are made of sugar
and water, with no active components. This, defenders of homeopathy say, is
entirely the point. Homeopathic products do not rely on ingredients that become
toxic at high doses, because the water retains the "memory" that allows the
original treatment to function.
Critics also point out the fact
that homeopathic preparations have no systematic design to them, making it hard
to monitor whether or not a particular treatment has been efficacious.
Homeopaths embrace this uncertainty. While results may be less certain, they
argue, the non-toxic nature of homeopathy means that practitioner and patient
can experiment until they find something that works without concern for side
effects. Traditional medicine, they argue, assaults the body with a cocktail of
drugs that only tackles the symptoms of disease, while homeopathy has its sights
aimed on the causes. Homeopaths suggest this approach leads to kinder, gentler,
more effective treatment.
Finally, critics allege that when
homeopathy has produced good results, these are exceedingly dependent on the
placebo effect, and cannot justify the resources, time and expense that the
homeopathic tradition absorbs. The placebo effect is a term that describes
beneficial outcomes from a treatment than can be attributed to the patient's
expectations concerning the treatment rather than from the treatment itself.
Basically, the patient "thinks" himself into feeling better. Defenders suggest
that homeopathy can go beyond this psychological level. They point to the
successful results of homeopathy on patients who are unconscious at the time of
treatment, as well as on animals.
Questions
27-32
Complete each sentence with the correct
ending, A-K, below.
Write the correct
letter, A-K, in boxes 27-32 on your answer
sheet.
A．avoid the unpredictable outcomes of combining
many remedies at once.
B．explain the success of 18th century
apothecary medicine.
C．produce fever-like symptoms in a healthy
person.
D．keep antibody molecules active in parts as low as
0.01%.
E．support the notion official similibus.
F．offer more remedial choice.
G．produce a less effective
dose.
H．recreate the original results.
I．retain qualities of an antibody to which they were previously
exposed.
J．satisfy the demand of buyers.
K．treat effectively someone with a fever.