单选题 The Supreme Court's decisions on physician-assisted suicide carry important implications for how medicine seeks to relieve dying patients of pain and suffering.
Although it ruled that there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, the Court in effect supported the medical principle of "double effect, " a centuries-old moral principle holding that an action having two effects—a good one that is intended and a harmful one that is foreseen—is permissible if the actor intends only the good effect.
Doctors have used that principle in recent years to justify using high doses of morphine to control terminally ill patients' pain, even though increasing dosages will eventually kill the patient.
Nancy Dubler, director of Montefiore Medical Center, contends that the principle will shield doctors who "until now have very, very strongly insisted that they could not give patients sufficient medication to control their pain if that might hasten death. "
George Annas, chair of the health law department at Boston University, maintains that, as long as a doctor prescribes a drug for a legitimate medical purpose, the doctor has done nothing illegal even if the patient uses the drug to hasten death. "It's like surgery, " he says. "We don't call those deaths homicides because the doctors didn't intend to kill their patients, although they risked their death. If you're a physician, you can risk your patient's suicide as long as you don't intend to kill them. "
On another level, many in the medical community acknowledge that the assisted-suicide debate has been fueled in part by the despair of patients for whom modern medicine has prolonged the physical agony of dying.
Just three weeks before the Court's ruling on physician-assisted suicide, the National Academy of Science (NAS) released a two-volume report, Approaching Death . Improving Care at the End of Life. It identifies the under treatment of pain and the aggressive use of "ineffectual and forced medical procedures that may prolong and even dishonor the period of dying" as the twin problems of end-of-life care.
The profession is taking steps to require young doctors to train in hospitals, to test knowledge of aggressive pain management therapies, to develop a Medicare billing code for hospital-based care, and to develop new standards for assessing and treating pain at the end of life.
Annas says lawyers can play a key role in insisting that these well-meaning medical initiatives translate into better care. "Large numbers of physicians seem unconcerned with the pain their patients are needlessly and predictably suffering, " to the extent that it constitutes "systematic patient abuse. " He says medical licensing boards "must make it clear.., that painful deaths are presumptively ones that are incompetently managed and should result in license suspension. /

单选题 From the first three paragraphs, we learn that ______.
A. doctors used to increase drug dosages to control their patients' pain
B. it is still illegal for doctors to help the dying end their lives
C. the Supreme Court strongly opposes physician-assisted suicide
D. patients have no constitutional right to commit suicide

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】本题为细节题。是针对文章的第一段到第三段的内容进行的测试，根据文章第三段的信息可知“直到近几年医生才用这个“double effect”原则为自己的行为辩护”，而A选项所说的过去常常这个说法是不准确的；再根据第二段第一句可知“宪法并没有赋予医生协助病人自杀的权利”，所以B选项是正确的；C选项说最高法院“强烈”支持医生协助病人自杀，通过第二段可知法院虽然在某种程度上支持这一做法，但并未达到strongly的程度，所以C项不可选；文中第二段首句说的是医生没有权利协助病人自杀，而D项则换成了病人，所以D项是错误的，故正确答案为B。

单选题 Which of the following statements its true according to the text?
A. Doctors will be held guilty if they risk their patients' death.
B. Modern medicine has assisted terminally ill patients in painless recovery.
C. The Court ruled that high-dosage pain-relieving medication can be prescribed.
D. A doctor's medication is no longer justified by his intentions.

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】本题属于细节判断题，应对四个选项进行逐项分析。根据文章第五段第一句“as long as a doctor prescribes a drug for a legitimate medical purpose, the doctor has done nothing illegal even if the patient uses the drug to hasten death.”可知“只要医生不是想杀死病人，那么他们的死亡就不能被称为谋杀”，因此可以判定A项不正确；选项B有说到病危者的无痛康复，而在文中并没有提到康复问题；根据第二段所说的“double effect”原则可知高等法院认为只要医生是出于好意，则可以去做。因此选项C是正确的。通过通读全文可知，事实上，医生的意图在判断其行为是否合法上是非常重要的，所以D项是错误的，故正确答案为C。

单选题 According to the NAS's report, one of the problems in end-of-life care is ______.
A. prolonged medical procedures
B. inadequate treatment of pain
C. systematic drug abuse
D. insufficient hospital care

单选题 Which of the following best defines the word "aggressive" (line 3, paragraph 7)?
A. Bold. B. Harmful.
C. Careless. D. Desperate.

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】本题为考查词义题。单词“aggressive”的所在句“It identifies the undertreatment of pain and the aggressive use of 'ineffectual and forced medical procedures that may prolong and even dishonor the period of dying'as the twin problems of end-of-life care.”中，说的是对病痛处理不力和大胆使用“无效而强制性的医疗程序，这些程序可能会延长死亡期，甚至会让死亡期难堪”。对这种“无效的”医疗程序的使用必须是“aggressive”的。所以这个单词的意思就是“bold”大胆的，冒失的，故正确答案为A。