单选题
IT is a startling claim, but one that Congresswoman Deborah Pryce uses to good effect: the equivalent of two classrooms full of children are diagnosed with cancer every day. Mrs Pryce lost her own 9-year-old daughter to cancer in 1999. Pediatric cancer remains a little-understood issue in America, where the health-care debate is consumed with the ills, pills and medical bills of the elderly. Cancer kills more children than any other disease in America. Although there have been tremendous gains in cancer survival rates in recent decades, the proportion of children and teens diagnosed with different forms of the disease increased by almost a third between 1975 and 2001. Grisly though these statistics are, they are still tiny when set beside the number of adult lives lost to breast cancer (41,000 each year) and lung cancer (164,000). Advocates for more money for child cancer prefer to look at life-years lost. The average age for cancer diagnosis in a young child is six, while the average adult is diagnosed in their late 60s. Robert Arceci. a pediatric cancer expert at Johns Hopkins, points out that in terms of total life-years saved, the benefit from curing pediatric cancer victims is roughly the same as curing adults with breast cancer. There is an obvious element of special pleading in such calculations. All the same, breast cancer has attracted a flurry of publicity, private fund-raising and money from government. Childhood cancer has received less attention and cash. Pediatric cancer, a term which covers people up to 20 years old, receives one-twentieth of the federal research money doled out by the National Cancer Institute. Funding, moan pediatric researchers, has not kept pace with rising costs m the field, and NCI money for collaborative research will actually be cut by 3% this year. There is no national pediatric cancer registry that would let researchers track child and teenage patients through their lives as they can do in the case of adult sufferers. A pilot childhood-cancer registry is in the works. Groups like Mr Reaman's now get cash directly from Congress. But it is plainly a problem most politicians don't know much about. The biggest problem could lie with 15-19-year-olds. Those diagnosed with cancer have not seen the same improvement in their chances as younger children and older adults have done. There are some physical explanations for this: teenagers who have passed adolescence are more vulnerable to different sorts of cancer. But Archie Bleyer, a pediatric oncologist at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Centre in Texas, has produced some data implying that lack of health insurance plays a role. Older teenagers and young adults are less likely to be covered and checked regularly.
单选题
The author cites the example of Mrs. Pryce to show that
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】本题问作者举皮斯太太的例子是为了说明什么。首段提到每天有相当于整两个教室的孩子被诊断患有癌症，皮斯夫人有效地利用了这一消息。还谈到她9岁的女儿也是死于癌症。可见，作者提到她一方面是要引出那则消息，即儿科癌症的数量已经达到不容忽视的程度了，另一方面她本身就有亲身经历，比较有说服力。总之，是要说明儿科癌症患者数量颇多。故[A]“儿科癌症已不再是罕见病例”正确。 [B]现在美国人很少关心儿科癌症：首段后半部分提到美国人不重视儿科癌症，但这是皮斯太太的例子之后提到的内容，并不是说明同一个问题。实际上首段的前半部分和后半部分有隐含的转折关系，全段主线是：儿科癌症发生率已不算低，但是美国人对此还没有重视起来。 [C]当今关于健康护理的讨论颇为费时：这是对首段末句中“where the health-care debate is consumed with the ills，pills and medical bills of the elderly”的曲解，文中是指关于健康护理的讨论集中在成年人身上，而不关注小孩。不要将“consume”与费时联系起来。 [D]学校的孩子更容易被诊断出癌症：作者淡到“two classrooms”指的是每天被诊断患有痛症的人有两教室人那么多，并不是说学校的孩子被诊断出癌症。
单选题
According to Robert Arceci, child cancer research is also worth funding because
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】本题问Robert Arceci认为儿科癌症研究也值得资助的原因。由关键词Robert Arceci定位到第三段末句“Robert Arceci…points out that in terms of total life-years saved，the benefit from curing pediatric cancer victims is roughly the same as curing adults with breast cancer”，也就是说，一个孩子被治好后，其生存期可能更长。所以虽然儿科癌症患者比较少，但被挽救的生命总和也许并不少，因此挽救儿童患者也跟挽救成年患者—样重要。故[B]“被挽救的孩子可以活得更长”正确。 [A]儿科癌症的统计数据相当惊人：第三段首句提到尽管儿科癌症的数据比较惊人，但跟成年人癌症的数据相比还是小巫见大巫。因此数据的多少并不是儿科癌症值得资助的原因。 [C]成年癌症患者不值那么多的资助：Robert Arceci认为儿科癌症研究的重要性应该提高到跟成年癌症研究一样，他并没有反对成年癌症研究的重要性。 [D]对儿科癌症的资助经济且有效：文中并没有对儿科癌症研究与成年痛症研究的有效性进行对比。