阅读理解 Aging happens to all of us, and is generally thought of as a natural part of life. It would seem silly to call such a thing a "disease. "
On the other hand, scientists are increasingly learning that aging and biological age are two different things, and that the former is a key risk factor for conditions such as heart disease, cancer and many more. In that light, aging itself might be seen as something treatable, the way you would treat high blood pressure or a vitamin deficiency.
Biophysicist Alex Zhavoronkov believes that aging should be considered a disease. He said that describing aging as a disease creates incentives to develop treatments.
" It unties the hands of the pharmaceutical industry so that they can begin treating the disease and not just the side effects," he said.
" Right now, people think of aging as natural and something you can't control," he said. "In academic circles, people take aging research as just an interest area where they can try to develop interventions. The medical community also takes aging for granted, and can do nothing about it except keep people within a certain health range. "
But if aging were recognized as a disease, he said, "It would attract funding and change the way we do health care. What matters is understanding that aging is curable. "
"It was always known that the body accumulates damage," he added. "The only way to cure aging is to find ways to repair that damage. I think of it as preventive medicine for age-related conditions. "
Leonard Hayflick, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, said the idea that aging can be cured implies the human lifespan can be increased, which some researchers suggest is possible. Hayflick is not among them.
"There're many people who recover from cancer, stroke, or heart disease. But they continue to age, because aging is separate from their disease," Hayflick said. "Even if those causes of death were eliminated, life expectancy would still not go much beyond 92 years. "

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】考查细节理解题。文章第二段提到，科学家们逐渐认识到衰老和生物学年龄是两件不同的事情，前者是诸如心脏病、癌症和更多疾病的主要风险因素。这样看来，衰老本身或许可以看作是能治疗的，就像治疗高血压或缺乏维生素一样。由此可见，现在有许多科学家认为可以预防和治疗衰老。故本题选A。